Trakt is a service I began using at the end of last year in order to keep track of the TV shows and movies that I watch. I have previously reviewed Watcht, an app that uses Trakt as it’s backend, however I haven’t actually looked at the Trakt service online. It allows you to search a huge database of movies and TV shows, and add them to your watched playlist, track episode releases, rate them, and so much more.
If you watch any amount of TV shows or movies, and have trouble remembering where you left off, Trakt is an amazing choice. If you watch a lot of airing shows, Trakt is also great – you can view a calendar to see what’s coming up and where. And best of all, it’s all completely free, with an optional VIP tier that lets you support Trakt and unlock a few cool features.
The most important page on Trakt is the dashboard. This is where you can view what you need to watch next, what’s on your schedule for shows you have begun watching and shows on your watch list, a brief summary of your last thirty days of viewing habits, and what you recently watched and your genres that you watched. In addition to this, if you have any friends on Trakt, you can also view their activity. Finally, Trakt will recommend Movies and TV Shows that you should watch based on your viewing history. The Dashboard is a great place to view where you are in a show, and also to look at the schedule for your shows that you have began to watch or want to. The schedule shows what channel, and time, the show will air on.
I really like the what’s next view – it lets me view roughly where I am through a show, and the red bar below the show gives me an indication of where I am in the shows released episodes. A really nice touch of Trakt is that it only shows released episodes here. For example, if I am watching a show that has an episode coming out in a day, it won’t show on my whats next view (it shows in my schedule view). When the show is out, it shows up in my whats next view. The useful thing about this is that it doesn’t clutter your up next feed with unreleased shows, and I think this is a really nice touch.
Trakt also offers you calendars. Here, anything you have on your watchlist, or your currently watching, are shown. This lets you see what’s coming up, and watch it when it’s out. Trakt will tell you the channel the show is airing on, as well as what time. You can set up email notifications to get notified before it airs, or subscribe to an iCal feed so you can see it in your calendar app. Or, you can use an app like Watcht, that syncs with Trakt.
Powerful sorting features are also included – you can select if you want to see all your shows, or just certain types, as well as choosing the genre, languages, networks, and much more. The calendar is an awesome tool if you watch a lot of airing shows, as it ensures that you won’t miss them.
With Trakt, you can search through the database for any TV show or movie you want. This has worked well for me, and I have yet to find one show that isn’t on the database. When you click on a show, you can select various options such as seasons, or look at your next episode that you need to watch. It also shows the latest shows, and you can view comments and ratings that people have given the shows.
When you click on a season, you can view a list of shows in that season, and clicking on a show will give you a brief introduction to the episode, along with controls to add it to various lists such as your watch list and add it to your played shows. You can also ‘Check In’, which adds you to a list of people currently watching the episode and sets your watched status as watched in + whatever the show length is. If you use an app such as Infuse 5 to watch your shows, and you connect it to Trakt, this will happen automatically. This is also available for Plex, VLC, and many other third party apps.
One of the nice features of Trakt is the social side. You can add comments and ratings to shows, and also interact with other viewers that have commented on a show, and have discussions about the content. Of course, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, however it’s always nice to have the ability to talk about a show with other fans of it. You can also see what the user rated the show, and give comments a like.
Speaking of the social side of Trakt, you can also view other users profiles (unless they make them private) and see what they have been viewing (here’s mine). You can also see the users watch time for all time and for the past week. You can see their last watched movies and shows, and also see a graph of their ratings. A list of their favourite shows and movies also comes up, and this is based on the ratings that they gave them. Favourite genres are also shown, along with their featured list (for example watch list), and a few other items of interest.
Trakt also offers a premium service called VIP for those who want to support the service, and want a few more perks. Subscribers will be able to view in-depth all time stats and a year in review, to see what their watching habits where in a certain year. For those who want to know when their shows are coming up, Trakt VIP also features iCal feeds that allow you to add your schedule into your calendar to be able to easily see when, and what channel, a show is airing on. If you often re watch shows, VIP allows you to reset a shows progress so you can keep track of where you are up to in your re watch. You can view ratings on each show, and if you have VIP, enable Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB ratings on them too. VIP also offers many more features, so if you are interested, make sure that you view the full offerings of Trakt VIP here.
I am really impressed with Trakt – it’s a great tool to keep track of where you are up to in various shows, know when new shows are out, and also discover new ones and find out more about them. For those who watch TV and movies, Trakt is a must.
You can find out more about Trakt.tv here. If you sign up using my code, you get to try out 1 month free of Trakt.
