How to watch F1 with friends in another country
Different countries, different broadcasters, different time zones. One F1 watch party where the picture stays together and the chat runs beside it.
Somebody always moves. A job in another city, a partner in another country, a group that used to meet every other Sunday and now meets in a chat thread with twenty messages and no shared picture.
The thing that breaks
It is never the will to watch together. It is the forty seconds. One person is on a satellite box, another on an app with a long buffer and a third on a stream that lags behind both. Someone types safety car and ruins it for two people who are still on the lap before.
A group chat cannot fix that because the delay is in the players, not in the people.
Viaplay
6 watching
What the room does about it
The host position goes out to the room every three seconds and every player corrects itself against it. A small gap is closed by nudging the speed by five percent, which nobody notices. A big gap is closed by a seek. Ad breaks hold the whole room until the last person is back.
The result is simple. When someone types anything, everybody is on the same corner.
Time zones and the Sunday problem
Half the calendar starts at an hour that suits nobody. A room can be created on a replay just as well as on a live feed and on a replay the sync is to the exact timestamp, so a party at ten in the evening on a race that ran at six in the morning works exactly the same.
What happens in the room
The chat runs beside the video with reactions that float over the picture, so a first lap move gets the same reaction it would get on a sofa.
The room carries the live order, the gaps and who is in the party. At the end you score the race out of five and name your driver of the day and the room sees the vote break down live.
During the weekend the host can drop a poll or a question into the chat and the answers show up as a bar in the feed. It is the part people stay for once the race goes quiet.
Frequently asked questions
Can we watch a race together from different countries?
Yes. Everyone watches on the broadcaster available where they live and CoViewer syncs the playback position between the players, so the pictures stay together.
What if we cannot watch live?
Create the room on a replay. On a recorded session the room syncs to the exact timestamp, so a late party works the same as a live one.
Does everyone need the same language commentary?
No. Each person keeps their own broadcast and their own commentary team.
CoViewer is free, it takes about a minute to set up and it runs on the broadcast you already pay for.
CoViewer is made by BoxBoxd, the motorsport social network where fans rate every Grand Prix. The extension keeps playback in sync between people who each watch on their own subscription. It never rebroadcasts a stream. Questions at partnerships@boxboxd.fun.