By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
These days, it’s easier to watch movies than ever before. With a single click of your remote, you can check out one of the hundreds of titles available on your various streaming services. In terms of convenience, this just can’t be beaten. Nonetheless, older movie lovers are often nostalgic for the good old days when you had to walk into a video store, wander the aisles, and find something good to watch. It was a great way to discover new movies, and there was something downright magical about holding the VHS box in your hand and admiring the bonkers box art.
Now, the inevitable has happened: a suitably nostalgic creative team created a website that interfaces with the various streaming libraries you subscribe to. Once it’s set up, you can browse available titles through a virtual video store that looks almost exactly like a Blockbuster video. Best of all, the site recreates the feeling of wandering over to an interesting-looking title and reading what it’s about, all while adding quality-of-life features like trailers. The site is known as Bingebuster, and it’s here to change the way you watch movies.
The Dream Of The ’90s Is Alive
Setting up Bingebuster is surprisingly easy. It automatically knew what I subscribed to as soon as I pulled up the site. All I had to do was tweak how I wanted the various movie titles to be organized in the store. After you do that, you can enter your virtual video store. It’s okay if you’ve never played a VR video game; navigation is as easy as clicking on sections to move through the store and then examining what’s available. Fair warning, though: if your browser doesn’t remember your passwords, you may still need to manually log into a streamer the first time you try to play a movie.
One of the best parts of Bingebuster is that the titles are displayed with their original DVD or VHS covers. That may sound like a minor thing, but I personally hate how streaming platforms such as Netflix will show you different feature images for movies based on the vagaries of your algorithm. Here, movies are presented with their original box art (which is often a thing of beauty), and when you click on a title, you can hold and turn a virtual DVD case. Flip it to the back, and you can read the movie’s synopsis; alternatively, you can just read the synopsis in a separate display on the left. On the right, you can watch the trailer or start the movie.
Don’t Let Your Streams Be Dreams
The presentation of the videos is clean, and I enjoyed how it put movies in a single category. Another streaming pet peeve I have is when platforms act as if they have a robust list of subgenres and then put the same movie in every single one of them. With Bingebuster, what you see is what you get: the movies on the shelves are what you can stream, and unlike Netflix, they won’t put the same title in a million categories to make it look like your selection is bigger than it actually is.
Right now, Bingebuster integrates with several major streamers, including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Prime Video, Paramount+, Peacock, Tubi, and Apple TV. But what if you prefer to fly the Jolly Roger and stream those “digital backups” you’ve downloaded into your private media server? The site has you covered: there is currently beta functionality for Plex and Jellyfin, though you’ll need to join the Bingebuster Discord in order to try it out.
Overall, Bingebuster is a nostalgic godsend to anyone who grew up renting way too many movies from way too many places. You get the fun of wandering aisles to discover something new, and you can even recreate the tactile feeling of holding a killer title in your hot little hands while your eyes devour the box art. Best of all, no need to worry about late fees! But with the money you save, definitely consider donating to creators Oliver and Patrick Evans so they can do what almost nobody else is doing: keeping your childhood alive.
