Group streaming for all of your favorite services

The search for the perfect group streaming service for the age of social distancing isn’t over, but TwoSeven is an intriguing pitstop along the way.

Funded by Patreon donations, TwoSeven is a gradually expanding group streaming site with accompanying Chrome and Firefox extensions that let you, theoretically, do quite a bit more than Netflix Party, Scener, or Hulu Watch Party. TwoSeven supports several different streaming services from Netflix to Hulu, and even personal video files, but its execution doesn’t always match its ambition.

The Good: Versatile streaming options, intuitive chat features, playback quality

Image: screenshot / twoseven

First things first, TwoSeven works similarly to the other group streaming services I mentioned above. One person goes to the TwoSeven site, starts a room, and either invites people through an app like Gmail or just sends the URL around to their friends. The Chrome and Firefox extensions handle playback synchronization in the background, so you should definitely take some time to install those in advance. TwoSeven’s FAQ doesn’t list a hard user limit for a single session, but apparently the company’s successfully tested rooms with as many as 400 participants.

Most of these group streaming sites have a pretty limited roster of services you can use. Netflix Party only works with Netflix, Scener includes Netflix, as well as HBO Now and Disney+, and so on. Of all the services we’ve looked at recently, TwoSeven has the most robust selection of compatible streaming providers. When you load up a TwoSeven room, the playback area sits underneath several tabs for different streaming options:

• YouTube

• Netflix

• Amazon

• HBO

• Vimeo

• Personal

• Web

And that’s just the free version! If you pay TwoSeven $3 per month on Patreon, you’ll also get access to Hulu and Disney+, bringing the total number of streaming options up to nine. Only one person in the session needs to be a patron to share those services with others, by the way. And, in case you were wondering, “Personal” means you can share personal video files from your computer, and “Web” means you can import videos from other websites with their own video players.

Those last two options require a bit more work than the others. YouTube and Vimeo simply ask you to copy and paste a URL, while paid services like Netflix open small, nested versions of their web browser interfaces within the TwoSeven window. Personal videos can be uploaded directly and streamed to everyone else, or you can have everyone download them manually and just ask TwoSeven to sync them within the window. 

Web videos, on the other hand, require you to click the extension icon in the upper right corner of Chrome while looking at the external website you want to take a video from and telling TwoSeven to load said video into the session you’re hosting.

I’ll address how that worked out for me later on, but there’s a reason these options aren’t included in our list of pros.

I tested TwoSeven out with a friend of mine and the most immediate value came from its YouTube playback. It doesn’t require a login of any kind (paid services require users to supply their own login) and anyone in the room can paste a YouTube URL into a text field, hit play, and share something they like with their friends. 

This, of course, turned into a session where my buddy and I watched clips from On Cinema at the Cinema that we’d both already seen a million times. (This is one of life’s simple pleasures and I won’t let you judge me for it.)

Image: screenshot / twoseven

Netflix worked equally well for us. I started up Space Force because it was the first thing I saw on the home screen and, once my friend manually went over to the Netflix tab on his screen, his video synced up with mine. We got about five minutes in before jettisoning ourselves out of the airlock because Space Force isn’t very good. Still, regardless of which streaming service we used, playback quality was consistent with other apps like Netflix Party and Scener. These videos looked as good as they would if I watched them by myself.

Of course, none of this matters if you can’t talk to your buds while watching your favorite Netflix shows or YouTube comedy compilations. TwoSeven supports basic text chat as well as rudimentary video chatting. I never had to hunt down my browser’s site permissions to get video calls working either — as soon as I pressed the camera and microphone buttons, everything just worked. 

You can drag and resize everyone’s video windows to your liking, as well as adjust everyone’s volume levels. If your friend is too loud, just lower that volume slider and you’re good to go. None of this is revolutionary, but what I like about TwoSeven’s chat features is that I didn’t have to fumble around with anything to make them work. If I tried to do something with the chat, it usually worked as I expected. That’s all I can ask for.

The Bad: Uneven performance, browser differences

Unfortunately, TwoSeven feels like it’s flying a little too close to the sun when you try to switch between too many services in one session. While I don’t imagine most people are going to switch from YouTube to Netflix to Amazon to HBO, and all the way to personal videos in a short time period, doing that during my testing made the site’s performance get pretty wonky.

When my friend and I tried to load personal or web videos, we ran into numerous loading loops. Nothing would play on either one or both ends of the room. Sometimes, the playback window would load, but then pressing play wouldn’t do anything. We finally got an external web video to work by refreshing our browser windows, but it’s a bummer that it came to that at all. Streaming a short, 30-second MP4 file from my laptop to the other end of the line didn’t work for us at all.

Image: screenshot / twoseven

There’s so much more you can do with TwoSeven that it’s not a massive problem for this one aspect of it to be messy. You’re probably better off using Plex Watch Together to stream your personal files with friends. Still, it’s a feature of TwoSeven and, as such, its underperformance needs to be noted.

There was one other major issue we encountered: After 20 to 30 minutes, video and audio signals would get choppy on my friend’s end. At first, his video would lag a bit behind his audio, which was a little annoying, but not a huge hindrance. Eventually, his voice would then also periodically cut out. Browser refreshes seemed to fix this at least temporarily, but it’s a problem we’ve never had on multiple Zoom calls or Scener sessions.

Last but not least, TwoSeven doesn’t have total browser parity across Chrome and Firefox, which are the only two browsers the site recommends using. It’s awesome that a service as new as HBO Max is included in TwoSeven’s group streaming portfolio, but you’ll get an error message telling you to wait until the Chrome extension is updated if you try it in Google’s browser. I was able to get to the point of pressing play on HBO Max content in Chrome, but it didn’t actually do anything.

The Verdict

I like the cut of TwoSeven’s jib. Its UI isn’t as slick or polished as something like Scener, but it can do many of the same things while offering some of its own tricks in the form of YouTube or external web streaming. If you just plan on watching Netflix or the like with your pals, it’s a totally respectable venue for that. Plus, $3 per month for Hulu access is a better value than the $12 per month it costs to use Hulu Watch Party. 

That said, it’s still very much a work in progress. I had a tough time getting the personal file streaming to work, and streaming from external websites took some more tinkering than I would have liked. You’re also better off using Firefox for the moment if you want to get the full suite of features since HBO Max wasn’t working in Chrome during my testing. Also, don’t be surprised if you need to occasionally refresh the page because of playback or video chat bugs, either.

Even with its issues, TwoSeven is worthwhile as a YouTube-sharing mechanism that can admirably do the same for streaming services like Netflix and Amazon without the need for additional costs. Just understand going in that you might have to do some troubleshooting to make it work for you.