I think we’re all aware at this point that cord-cutting hasn’t simplified our lives the way some of us were hoping. The initial promise seemed to be that we could subscribe to one or two services and get plenty of movies and TV shows. As the number of services has multiplied, however, content has become ever more fractured, and businesses have embraced the idea of platform exclusives as a hook. You’ll only ever be able to watch Foundation on Apple TV Plus, for example, or The Witcher on Netflix.
When shows and movies aren’t exclusive, they can still be maddeningly hard to track down. I like to watch movies while weightlifting, which means going through upwards of a dozen movies per month, and finding specific titles that pump me up — Conan the Barbarian or Rocky IV, for example. But a movie that’s available on one service can move to another without warning, or sometimes disappear entirely in a futile attempt to make me pay for a rental or purchase. JustWatch has helped keep my lifting nights on track, not to mention parties, and movie nights with my wife.