Syncplay

Syncplay allows people to enjoy a shared viewing experience even if they are thousands of miles apart, so friends can watch anime, movies, TV shows, and other media together. The Client launches a free media player on your Windows computer, connects to a Syncplay server, and joins a virtual room on that server. Pauses unpauses and seeks made within that media player instance are relayed to fellow viewers via the server to allow for these actions to be replicated by the media players of everyone else in the same virtual room. The server keeps track of where everyone is in the video so if someone joins they can be brought to the right place, and so if someone is too far ahead they can be brought back in sync.

It can also share information about what files people are playing to make it easier for viewers to confirm they are playing the same file (or be warned if they are playing different files). Users can choose what file information is sent to the server in plain text, sent hashed, or not sent at all. Official public servers operate in ‘room isolation’ mode, meaning any information sent by clients is only passed on to others in the same virtual room, and people cannot see what rooms currently exist. People can run their own private password-protected server.

It does not use video streaming or file sharing so each user must have their own copy of the media to be played (although if their media player supports it and the connection was fast enough, the user could play a stream such as Youtube in their media player, play a file from a network share, or be downloading a file from an HTTP server and playing it at the same time). It does not synchronize player configuration, audio/subtitle track selection, or volume. Users must manually choose what file to play as the app does not synchronize which file is open. It does not provide a voice chat platform to allow for discussion during playback as Sync play is intended to be used in conjunction with a third-party communications solution such as Mumble.

It does not use encryption, so someone with the ability to spy upon your network traffic could monitor filenames (although in settings you can set these to be hashed or not sent) or in Syncplay chat messages (although you can use third-party chat solutions with encryption or speak in code).

Note: Requires VLC Media Player.

Also Available: Download Syncplay for Mac