Fanhattan

Popcorn icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The world is awash with what-to-watch options, from movies to television shows to quirky clips. That makes Home Projectionists happy. The more power of choice is, well, empowering.

To help you navigate what’s available for streaming through Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the rest, another new free service, CanIStreamIt? lets you know with a quick click of button where you can access what you’re looking for.

Other similar services include sites like Filmgopher and Fanhattan. (See the Home Projectionist post, Fanhattan Simplifies the Hunt for Streaming Movies.)

There’s also a new clever marketing campaign from Pop Secret popcorn with its Pop Secret Labs site, which provides a streaming advisor, a what-are-you-looking-for algorithm that even considers your mood — indicate that you’re feeling blue and it’s a gray day, for example, and the site generates some movie suggestions for you.

In addition, the site allows visitors to make an animated movie featuring the Pop Secret kernels. Very clever indeed! See our little homemade Pop Secret movie and then make one yourself.

For more on streaming, go to “Stream This: The Evolution Consumption.”

Image courtesy of Fanhattan.com

First it was big screen projection technology that dramatically changed the way we watch movies in our own abodes. And now we’re cozying up with small-screen tablets for in-home watching like never before. It’s predicted that by next year, “there will be more mobile devices than people” on our lovely planet Earth (source: IBM ad).

My tablet has become a good little friend, like a pet, actually. I can hunker down to watch whatever, wherever, and whenever I want, and the magic is that I don’t even need to find the remote to use it.

Best yet is that if I want to transform my tablet image into something big and cinematic, there are new projectors, like the less-than-three-pound Optoma ML500, which can connect to my tablet and transform the small-screen image into a big one — and for less than $600 too.

All of this innovation is thriving with a little help from the streaming content boom. It seems that every day there is an announcement about expanded content availability on one platform or another. But now, instead of separately searching Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime, or other video content provider to find what we want to watch, Fanhattan lets us search across all of these platforms in one simple app.

And the opportunities to nab huge quantities of streaming content continue to come at us at an extraordinary pace. In addition to its aggregating capability, Fanhattan recently announced a new WatchList feature, which allows users to add a show to a personal watch list and eagerly await a Fanhattan email when the show is available for streaming.

I’ve been stumped sometimes, standing in a drug store or grocery aisle, just staring at the array of toothpaste, olive oil, soup, and organic cereal. Regardless of all the algorithm recommendations that appear on our screens, I can’t help but wonder how all of these content choices will impact our ability to make the final decision on what to watch. But I’m not complaining. Choice is good. A little overwhelming, to be sure, but good.

With big screens, small screens, streaming, and who knows what’s next, in a very short time indeed, everyone in the world will be a Home Projectionist. And in that, you’ll actually have no choice in the matter.