Flixster relaunched its website on Tuesday, hoping to transform the service into the best tool for finding, watching and owning new movies.
In its old version, users could find films by searching for titles or crew; the new site — still in its beta version — offers all sorts of filters such as a film’s rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the year it was released.
“The problem we are trying to solve is that with video-on-demand, you spend 15 minutes paging through possibilities — you can’t fine a good movie,” Steve Polsky, preisdent and COO of Flixster, told TheWrap. “You have the same problem on iTunes, Amazon and Netflix.”
“This is a consumer-centric, simple, intuitive way for you as a consumer to find the movies you want to see and manage the movies you own.”
Polsky said the best comparison for the new Flixster is travel service Kayak, which lets users search for flights across multiple airlines and websites.
Whereas on Netflix you can only stream films or rent films and on Fanhattan you can only search, the new Flixter combines both services.
Once you select a movie you can either tag it for later viewing, or choose to rent, stream or buy it across services such as Netflix, Amazon and iTunes.
Warner Bros., which owns Flixster, is also hoping this relaunch provides a much-needed shot in the arm to UltraViolet, the industry-backed cloud movie service.
Though streaming and renting are options through UltraVIolet, declining ownership is what worries movie executives.
“We are pushing forward UltraViolet,” Polsky said. “The goal behind this relaunch is that when people create a locker, there’s a mass of movies in their locker. We want them to think about it differently. Flixster becomes a place to collect and manage movies and we want to get as many consumers over the hurdle as we can.”
