Throwing the Remote Movie Night of Your Dreams

My Friday nights used to consist of movies, games and YouTube marathons. Despite social distancing, my weekends these days aren’t actually all that different. Thanks to a few helpful online tools, I’ve been hosting game and movie nights with my close group of friends that make it feel like they’re right in my living room.

It started about a month ago when we all jumped on a Discord call and played Animal Crossing: New Horizons together, some of us even using the Island Name Generator. Just last week, I hosted a virtual board game night with a combination of Discord’s screen sharing and Jackbox Games—it was seamless.

My friends and I have movie nights once or twice a week and have been working our way down a diverse list of reality television, prestige films, anime and cult classics. All of us are pretty indecisive so once or twice a week we run the Name Randomizer to decide who will be in charge of choosing the movie.

But the way that all nine of us watch movies together is the coolest part. I get to use a tool called TwoSeven, which helps you synchronize your viewing of a movie, TV show or YouTube video. One person creates the chatroom, acts as a host and then invites all of their friends to join. According to TwoSeven’s FAQ, they’ve successfully tested with up to 400 people. The host can choose to watch a file from their computer, a YouTube video or a title from any of the major streaming services. One person controls the virtual remote and is able to press play, pause or rewind for the whole room. No more counting down.

The one complicated part is that sites like Netflix require users to each have accounts to those platforms. Because of that, I’ve found the best luck with YouTube videos or downloading movies and sending them to my friends ahead of time. We all load up the same file locally in TwoSeven and don’t have to worry about streaming issues.

Even outside of our current situation, I have friends, family and a boyfriend who don’t live near me. This is a site that I’ll be using for a long time to come and the type of tool that I think will be popping up more and more as our world gets more remote.

If you’re interested in a whole new way to host movies, check out [TwoSeven](https://twoseven.xyz/jUKMXzu7Jb).