What's So Smart About The Simkl™ TV Tracker

Can't remember if that movie or show you wanted to watch is on Netflix or Amazon? Simkl's TV Tracker is a Website, Computer App (Scrobbler), iOS\Android App and Open API to mash up your watched data that combine all your queues in one place. It automatically detects what you're watching, tells you how many episodes you've missed, and connects you to what your friends are into.

All your favorite TV Shows, Anime and Movies - in one place. Stop searching, marking and checking in. Start watching.

Currently TV Tracker can detect:

• When you are watching TV Shows, Anime and Movies on your computer. Supports all video file-types: avi, mkv, mp4, m4v, iTunes.
• What is the name of the TV, Anime or Movie that you are watching using multiple detecting algorithms, including hashing parts of video content - analyzing multiple databases with over 1.2 million tv, anime episodes and over 150,000 movies. 90% accuracy in detecting all TV and Anime shows and constantly improving.
• What is the episode name and number that you're watching

The project will be finished in a couple of stages. To complete this project we are looking for your support to develop more tracking features:

• Develop API for all major TV boxes and plugins like XBMC, Media Portal, Infuse, Plex, Popcorn and others.
• Create a larger detection database for Movie files that are available to download and stream online.
• Detect what you are watching online on popular websites such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, etc...  (See Stretch Goals).
• Connect multiple sources to display links where you can watch or buy episodes online. (See Stretch Goals).

With more than 5 years of R&D behind the Simkl™ IM Chat & Voice Recorder, the backbone of the technology is the automated algorithms in software that can automatically record and detect what exactly you are watching right now on your PC.

We are fully committed to creating the biggest TV\Anime\Movie detection database, detection apps and catalogs with personalized recommendations. Our technology is probably the easiest TV show\anime\movie tracker to use on the market, and there is less work (correction, zero effort) involved from the user than the other solutions that require you to manually check every episode you have watched (we're biased, of course).

How is Simkl™ TV Tracker different?

We Need Your Support!

We have developed, designed, redesigned and re-imagined TV, Anime and Movie Tracking website many times during the past six months, pouring countless hours into thinking about the user experience and the technical aspects of the project to make it blazing fast (really fast) to browse using new HTML5 technologies and easy to use for you. 

Our first Alpha version has been successful in detecting about 90% of all TV and Anime video files. We're looking for Kickstarter support to fund creating the biggest and easiest TV show, anime, movie library with an automated watchlist built-in. The funds will be used to pay for  engineers/programming/designing and licensing fees that will help us get release-ready.

Pledgers will be among the first to have this tracking software and apps, so you can show your friends and the whole world what you love to watch.

Who We Are Building This For

You probably already have a Netflix queue (possibly one for everyone in your household), a Hulu favorites list, and maybe some bookmarked TV shows or movies you want to stream from Amazon Video on Demand. If you are sitting in front of the TV, ready to watch something, it can be tricky to try to sort out which service the show you want to watch is on, or whether the show you are interested in is on any of them. 

Thankfully, Simkl™ TV Tracker can check and add those TV shows and movies to a queue in one place in your profile so you will always know where to find them.

We have built the Simkl™ TV Tracker for passionate people who like to watch TV Shows, Anime and Movies on their computers, and who are tired of manually tracking all shows that they watch using outdated manual watchlists. For people who are geeky enough to want a hi-tech automated Watchlist solution no matter how you watch - download video files on your computer or watch streaming video online, on Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, etc...

We are also building an open API for developers and making it available for anyone to mash up and use on their own site or app to track TV Shows, Anime and Movies. Connect it to plugins like XBMC, Media Portal, Infuse, Plex and others.

What can Simkl™ TV Tracker do?

Simkl™ TV Tracker tracks the TV shows and Movies you watch, digests the data, and suggests other TV shows and movies you might enjoy. 

• Have your complete Watchlist Collection of all your TV, Anime and Movies in one place created automatically with manual option to add older watched shows and movies.
• Select personalized recommendations from 150,000 Movies, 38,000 TV shows and 8,000 Anime shows
• Find what you love to watch
• Instantly find the source where you can watch new TV Show episode, a new Anime or a Movie on DVD, Online or in Theater near you (See Stretch Goals).
• Receive notifications about new, upcoming, released and missed TV, Anime episodes and Movies that you like.
• View popular charts to discover what's high on the lists of other users.

What can it be used for?

Track what you're watching: Your complete media collection in one place. Always know what Movie or what TV or Anime episode you have watched or not. Let your friends know what you watched and what you like. There are no websites like Simkl™ TV Tracker that let you track your complete collection with all 3 content types in one place (TV, Anime and Movies).

See what you have missed: Keeping up with every TV episode can sometimes be tricky if you had a hard working schedule or were partying all week. With Simkl™ TV Tracker all you have to do is come back to the website and the first thing you will see is exactly what episodes you have missed and need to watch.

Streaming video: Browsing multiple streaming websites trying to find something you haven't watched? Use Simkl™ TV Tracker to browse only the TV shows and Movies that you haven't seen and instantly see on which website you can watch it (See Stretch Goals).

What your friends like: Find new interesting stuff to watch by going into your friend's profile. Better yet, see your friend’s ratings and comments when browsing movies right there, on the movie page.

What to see next, your progress: You will be notified if your favorite episode was aired. You can also watch something from you planned list with the highest rank. Or maybe you want to see personalized recommendations just for you based on your watched history.

See what's next on TV: Turned on the TV and cannot figure out what's good to watch on those 1000 channels? Simkl™ TV Tracker has a separate page that displays only the best TV shows that you can watch today. See immediately if your favorite show is airing today, along with the info on  the airing time and network.

TV, Anime, Movies Catalog: Browse and filter Simkl's huge catalog collection by genre or various other filters. You can also share your own private catalog with others.

Premiers: Learn about premiers before they air. Simkl™ TV Tracker has  one of the biggest premier databases. Add new shows and movies to "Plan to watch" and you will get notified when it airs or is available online to watch.

Calendar: Get organized with the calendar for TV schedule listings. Add and manage your favorite TV shows in your own personal calendar. Keep Track - remember what comes next. Check off episodes after you watch them or install TV Tracker app to check off episodes automatically.

Stay Notified: Receive emails and mobile notifications when your shows air.

TV, Anime, Movie score:  You can always get additional info like TV, Movie or Anime rank (position). How many people dropped the show (stopped watching) and see scores from multiple sites (IMDB, MAL, Rotten Tomatoes) in one place.

Binge watch: Netflix, HBO Go and Showtime Anytime offer enough catnip to make potential TV bingers of us all. Simkl™ TV Tracker has an easy to use list of all episodes and their numbers, indicating the ones you have and have not seen, conveniently showing the number of the last episode watched. It's never been easier to pick up where you left off.

Easy setup

1. Sign in
2. Install Simkl™ TV Tracker
3. Watch TV Shows

That is all you have to do. Simkl™ TV Tracker will mark as seen all TV and Anime episodes that you've watched. Any time you want to see what episode to watch next, simply open your profile on the website, and instantly find out the episode number of the next unwatched episode, and whether it's available online.

Developer-friendly, open API

The abilities of the Simkl™ TV Tracker will expand vastly in the future. Due to its open System, App developers can create incredible applications to use with the Simkl™ TV Tracker API. 

• Mark as watched right from your application or website. 
• Get watched or not status through the API.
• Simple, file based\source detection API available to scan user's library.
• Expandable API by request through community forum.

Using Simkl™ TV Tracker

Simkl™ TV Tracker does not only give you lots of information, such as episode guides, summaries, and more about your favorite shows and movies. It can actually alert you of an upcoming episode so you can make sure you never forget to watch it or set your DVR to record. In addition to that, it has a great interface that's easy to navigate and use to and add new shows, anime and movies.

The main profile page automatically organizes itself by what shows you've missed and which ones are airing next, making it easy to pick out what to watch next. 

You can start using Simkl™ Tracker in few simple steps:

• Install Tracker app on your computer or media storage server (Currenty alpha version supports Windows computers)
• Watch your favorite TV Show, Anime or Movie. Simkl™ will automatically mark your episode or movie as watched.
• Receive notifications of new releases or Check the website if you miss any episodes
• Find new TV Shows and Movies based on your watch history. It's that simple and fun!

We've Done It Before

Our team has been successful in creating different products, including a unique Skype recording solution, featured multiple times on TechCrunch, Mashable, CNET, TheNextWeb, CHIP.de, 3DNews and other's with online chat history database handling over 100,000,000 conversations and hundreds of thousands hours of recorded voice conversations. We've learned a lot when it comes to developing software, building large databases and websites with user interfaces that are cutting edge, simple and easy to use. We will most definitely face some challenges, and we don't want to toot our own horn too much, but we're very likely to finish the TV tracking project on time. (Fingers crossed.)

We’re confident we can figure out solutions to problems required for automatic TV tracking because we’re a team of nerds that has successfully completed multiple projects on time and on spec in the past.

More About the Rewards (Reward Tiers)

Your backing will make this project possible. Backers get early access!

• A beautiful limited edition Kickstarter badge on your profile
• VIP subscription
• All your TV, Anime, Movies lists and stats to brag about it to friends on your personal website profile
• A beta tester account to access your media collection in your profile, lists, friends
• An exclusive access to tracking apps before public release 

• Given the opportunity to have their say in how the true TV website should look like and what features it has to have
• Able to see what their friends are watching and enjoying the most
•  Listed in a “thank you” section of Simkl™ website, regardless of pledge amount

• Profile with personal recommendations what to watch, and notifications what favorite show is airing next or they've missed
• Access to “backers only” updates 
• Exclusive “backer” bragging rights 
• A special thank you note from Simkl™ team

What we have achieved so far

It may look like we've already made a lot of progress with Simkl™ TV Tracker. Well, we did. But there are still some things to be done before we can bring this product to the market. Your continued support can make a difference how we watch and discover new TV Shows and Movies.

Global Availability

We guarantee first access to the beta service to all our backers starting with VIP subscription pledges. Backers will be able to invite to beta limited amount of their friends. Global product availability will be made possible after all beta tests are successfully complete. We guarantee a fast, hassle-free delivery of all perks. 

Prototype

At the moment, our prototype Alpha version for PC has the ability to demonstrate how the application is already capable of detecting almost any TV show or Anime that can be downloaded from the internet and played through most popular video players. Alpha version does not yet transmit information to your online profile about stuff that you have watched.

You can download the alpha version from: http://simkl.com/SimklSetup_kickstarter.exe 
With the help of the prototype you can detect most TV or Anime episodes downloaded from the internet or downloaded through iTunes.

Instructions: Install alpha version of TV Tracker, open any TV episode video file. In 7-15 seconds (it may take longer times for detecting rare Anime) you will see a small popup at the bottom right corner with the name of the TV show and its episode number that you're watching.

PS: Alpha version is for demonstration purposes only, for Windows 7\8 PC, may contain bugs and should be uninstalled after testing.

Currently Alpha version works with such popular media players as:
VLC, KMPlayer, GOM, iTunes, MPlayer, RealPlayer, DivX Plus Player, Windows Media Player, PowerDVD, BSPlayer, Winamp, MPC-HC, ehshell, AVS Media Player, FLVPlayer4Free, XBMC

Supported file types:
avi, mkv, mp4, m4v

Supported partially downloaded video files:
crdownload, part, ts

Stretch Goals

We are very excited to share our stretch goals! More backers means more developers working on the project and more features for our Kickstarter backers getting the release ready in the fastest time possible.

$20,000 - Develop Chrome plugin for automatic tracking of most popular online streaming websites like Netflix, Hulu...

$28,000 - Add "Watch Now" for popular streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu. You will be able to select TV show then select what episode you would like to watch and then presented with a choice where this TV episode is available with a direct link to streaming website.

$33,000 - Develop open source XMBC plugin integrated with Simkl™ TV Tracker API.

$50,000 - iOS app.

$70,000 - Android app.

$90,000 - Mac tracker app.

$120,000 - Start Integration process for Live TV Content Recognition from leading ACR partners into iOS and Android app. Now you will be able to open an app while you watch your TV to recognize what you're currently watching.

$140,000 - Import tool for importing your watchlist data from major manual watchlist\tv guide websites.

$250,000 - More content licenses to get even more interesting content and photos, trivia about your favorite TV shows and Movies.

What if the crowd-funding campaign does not get you as much as you ask for?

In this case, it depends on the public reaction. If there are enough people that are as excited about this as we are, we can still bring it in a functional state and launch it, but it will take a lot longer, and we may have to give up on some features. If, however, there is no successful crowd-funding campaign and are no significant amount of fans, we will just build it for ourselves in our spare time, and move on professionally to other projects.

Where does the money go?

It goes into development (salaries, software licenses, web presence - in short: operating costs) and TV\Movie\Anime content licences. We are not a money-hungry corporation that has to generate revenue for shareholders, we just want to build awesome stuff that everyone can enjoy, and do so in a sustainable manner, in accordance to the law. In addition, we do not have large administrative overhead costs, as we are all developers (even those that have gained business administration knowledge, are still directly involved in the development).

What platforms will be supported?

Current automatic tracker prototype app is fully compatible with Windows 7\8 PC. Manual tracking is achieved using the website. Browser plugins for detecting what you watch online and Mac version are planned in additional Stretch Goals. iOS and Android apps are planned in additional Stretch Goals as well.

Of course, we will hold community polls and if it turns out, more people want Android rather than iOS for instance, we will switch the order.