Launching today
Put on your Quest headset and step into a real cinema with a real audience, watching the same film at the same moment together. Nobody pauses and nobody skips ahead. When the credits roll, you vote on what screens next. This is what going to the movies used to feel like. This is Virtual Cinema.
Hey Product Hunt 👋
I built CONTRABAND because I enjoy watching movies, and lately have been enjoying some of the old movies on my VR headset. And it is amazing how close the experience is, to going to a real theatre.
CONTRABAND is a scheduled, ticketed VR cinema running inside a Meta Quest headset. You walk into a lobby, find your seat, and watch a film with a real audience at a set time. Nobody pauses. Nobody skips ahead. When the film ends, you vote on what screens next.
Two problems we are trying to solve:
For audiences - streaming gave us convenience and took away the ritual. The shared moment of watching something together, in the dark, at the same time, is what made cinema special. CONTRABAND brings that back, and makes it possible with people who are not even in the same city as you.
For filmmakers - independent and AI-made films have no real distribution home. Distributors won't touch them, theatres won't book them, and YouTube pays $30 for a thousand views. CONTRABAND gives them a scheduled screening, a real audience, and direct ticket revenue via Stripe.
We just launched. The Quest app is live and our first public screenings are coming up.
Would love your feedback, your votes, and your honest questions. Happy to answer everything.
@vijayanands This is very cool, futuristic like a black mirror eposide coming alive. Love the ticket pricing as well. Very budget friendly.
Limiting it to premium headsets, limits the TAM. Any plans on running it on Mobile devices and let it play via affordable headets?
@roopesh_donde The display does set the experience though. Even on a 2, the display is okay. What sort of headset do you have?
Mobile devices would take away the whole theaterical experience thing right? If you have a Quest 2 or Quest 3 device, you can check it out and play some of the trailers to see what it feels like.
I've got an Xreal Air and a basic mobile VR headset. I'll try this on a Quest..
@roopesh_donde I've been thinking about the Xreal Air. we'll get support for Pico done and then look into that for sure. That's definitely in the plans.
Do check it out and let me know.
"nobody pauses and nobody skips ahead" is such a small detail but it's actually the whole point - most watch-party apps let everyone pause whenever which kills the shared-event feeling entirely. the vote-on-what-screens-next bit after credits is a nice touch too, feels like an actual midnight-movie crowd instead of a Zoom call with a movie playing. does the audience reaction (laughing, talking) carry over between people or is it just the movie audio?
@omri_ben_shoham1 the audience reaction carries over - and you can choose to mute in two levels. You can mute everyone, or mute everyone who isnt your friend / companion - so you can decide if you want to watch the movie with everyone (i love watching horror movies or comedies this way), but if you want it to be with friends and just hear them, you can mute everyone else.
The shared screening idea is genuinely cool, love that voting mechanic. One thing that would make it feel even more like a real cinema is letting a small group of friends lock a private room so you can pick a film ahead of time and watch together, while the open rooms keep the public schedule. Would help on nights when nothing in the vote matches what your crew wants to see.
@berkehallokdww So while you are watching - you don't see faces or avatars. You only see glows of other people in the room - the empty theatre environments always made it a bit depressing for me. And you have two ambient audio modes - listen to everyone, or listen to only friends. So if you click on listen to friends only mode, you wont hear any of the others, so its almost like being in a private room with friends - or even on a date.
the filmmaker distribution angle is actually the more interesting problem to me than the audience experience, since the audience side has been solved-ish by watch parties before, just badly. for an indie or AI-made film getting a slot, what determines the audience size at a screening - is it just whoever happens to buy a ticket for that timeslot, or is there some discovery/marketing layer helping a first-time filmmaker actually fill the room instead of screening to three people?
I can relate to missing the feeling of actually going to the cinema. How do you keep the social experience feeling natural inside VR?