Which group streaming video app works best?

Group streaming is a massive priority right now, with plenty of folks still stuck at home for the time being. Scener and Netflix Party are two of the most recognizable group streaming video apps, but it can be tough to know which is best for your social distancing needs. 

On one side, you have Netflix Party. Its breezy setup and self-explanatory name make it an appealing option for anyone who just wants to watch The Office with their friends, at least until that show leaves Netflix. Across the arena, stands Scener, an app with an official HBO partnership, more versatility, but also a little bit more of a setup hassle.

So, which one is better for a watch party? That’s not a question with an easy or straightforward answer, but that’s why we’re going to break down how Netflix Party and Scener stack up in the group streaming game.

How do I get this “party” started?

First, you’ll need a laptop or desktop computer with Google Chrome installed. Both of these services are Chrome extensions right now, and that’s the only way to use them. That means no watching on your smart TV, gaming console, smartphone, or streaming device. Scener can be downloaded here and Netflix Party here. 

If you’re not familiar with Chrome extensions, any that you have installed will show up in the upper-right corner of your browser window, to the left of the icon denoting which user is logged in at the moment. You’ll want to familiarize yourself with this setup because clicking those icons is an important part of using both apps.

Lastly, it should go without saying that you need login credentials for Netflix or HBO, depending on which app you’re using. It’s tough to watch Netflix without a Netflix account.

Okay, so how does it work?

Got everything installed? Good! The setup processes for both apps are slightly different, but not too difficult to understand.

Netflix Party is strikingly simple to set up. The first thing you have to do is make sure you and everyone else you plan to watch Netflix with has the Chrome extension installed. Also, everyone involved needs to also have a working Netflix login.

Once that’s taken care of, figure out what you want to watch on Netflix and click through to the point where you’re actually on that show or movie’s watch page. Then, pause the content before it starts in earnest, click on the red “NP” icon in the upper-right corner of your browser window, and send the link to your friends.

Clicking on that link will take your friends to the Netflix Party room, where they’ll need to click the Netflix Party icon in the upper right. As soon as they do, a chat bar will pop up on the right side of the screen and everyone’s video will sync up. By default, everyone can pause or play whenever they want, but the person who starts the party can choose to be the only one in control, if they so desire. 

That’s pretty much it! You can’t really browse Netflix while engaged in a Netflix Party. Once you exit playback, the chat window closes and people can only re-convene when a new party has started. It’s relatively bare-bones, but putting together a watch party and getting all of your friends in the chat only takes a few minutes.

Scener is a slightly bigger ordeal. Like Netflix Party, everyone needs to have the Chrome extension installed. Unlike Netflix Party, you can get a room going at any time. Click the Scener extension icon in the upper right to open the app in two separate Chrome windows, one for playback and one for chat. Similar to its Netflix counterpart, the easiest way to spread Scener around is with a URL to send to your friends. 

Assuming everyone gets in the room with the extension installed, they’ll have the option to turn on their mics and cameras, or just text in chat. Only one user can be in control at a time, as signaled by a small remote icon in the chat window. Whoever is in control can freely browse Netflix, HBO, or Disney+, but once playback starts, it’ll automatically sync up for everyone. That is, once everyone manually hits play after the host hits play. 

It’s a little weird, but in practice, Scener’s pretty easy to figure out. The only other major usability difference between the two apps is that Netflix Party lets you go fullscreen without any trouble, while Scener makes it marginally more difficult. You have to use the control+up (Mac) or alt+tab (Windows) view to manually drag the chat window into the fullscreen playback window, or else you’ll just be stuck watching a video with no chat to read.

Netflix Party edges out Scener in this category because it requires just two or three fewer steps to make everyone comfortable. Neither of them are difficult to use, but Netflix Party makes the process a tiny bit easier.

The winner: Netflix Party

What can I do with the chat features?

Moving onto a more cut-and-dry category, Netflix Party and Scener’s differences are magnified even more when you compare their chat features. 

Netflix Party allows for up to 50 people to enter a room at once, but with just text chat. That’s it — no video chat. You can set your own nickname (by clicking a small icon in the upper-right part of the chat bar), type out jokes about whatever you’re watching, and… little else. Frankly, that’s fine! I’ve only tested out Netflix Party for one feature-length film viewing, but I didn’t ever feel like I was missing anything. 

That said, Scener provides all of that and more. The same 50-person limit applies to private Scener rooms. You can just text chat if you want, but Scener also supports audio and video chats. Once you give the app permission to use your camera and mic, video chat works pretty seamlessly. You can turn the camera and mic on and off by clicking icons in the chat window, so if you want to mute for a while, there’s no trouble in that.

Scener also offers public theaters which allow millions of folks to watch along with something chosen by the host. The company first debuted this new feature with a viewing of The Disaster Artist with The Room co-star, Greg Sestero. 

While Scener clearly wins this category, Netflix Party’s deficiencies here aren’t necessarily dealbreakers. When I watch things on Scener with my friends, we usually end up muting ourselves and text chatting throughout the entire movie anyway. But if you feel like yammering out loud while watching Uncut Gems, Scener is there for you and Netflix Party is not.

The winner: Scener

Is the video streaming quality any good?

Netflix Party and Scener work a little differently from older group streaming sites like Rabbit or contemporary solutions like Google Meet or Discord in that you aren’t watching a recording of another person’s screen. Instead, everyone in the call is watching their own stream, but the Chrome extension is doing work behind the scenes to keep everyone in sync.

As such, in my experiences with both apps, I haven’t noticed any dips in video streaming quality at all. Everything looks roughly as sharp and runs as smoothly as it would if I were watching it in a browser window by myself. That’s the best news you could hope for, really. The addition of a chat bar on the side of the window does limit the amount of screen real estate the actual video can use, but there isn’t a clear advantage either way in this regard. 

All of that is to say that streams look good in both Scener and Netflix Party, and I haven’t noticed any reason to declare an obvious winner in this category. We should be grateful for that.

The winner: Tied

Do they work with other streaming services?

Netflix Party is a group streaming app for Netflix and Netflix alone. It would have to get a different name if it offered anything else. On the plus side, it’s impossible to be disappointed by Netflix Party. You know exactly what you’re getting as soon as you walk through that door.

Scener supports Netflix, HBO Now, Vimeo, and Disney+ at the time of publication. I have to note that when I say HBO Now, I mean HBO Now. You should be able to use your HBO Max login to watch HBO Now content on Scener, but Max exclusives like Studio Ghibli films and Friends aren’t available. A quality group streaming service for HBO content is still great, but you have to understand going in that the new HBO-branded service isn’t supported yet.

After spelling it all out like that, there can only be one winner in this category. Scener has everything Netflix Party has, plus multiple other services on top of that. 

The winner: Scener

The Verdict

Netflix Party is a perfectly adequate and enjoyable way to stream Netflix with your buds while staying at home is still the safest thing to do. As soon as everyone in the group is on the same page and knows what to do, you can get a group watch of one of those terrible Adam Sandler Netflix exclusives going in a jiffy. You could also watch something good, but what’s the fun in that?

It doesn’t aspire to much, but it doesn’t have to. Netflix Party accomplishes everything it sets out to accomplish. It just doesn’t do that quite as well as Scener.

Even though Scener has a more involved setup process, the end product is capable of so much more. Voice and video chatting add a ton of value, even if I don’t personally use either of them during playback. Scener can also act as more of a casual hangout space, since you don’t have to watch something to sit around and chat with your pals. Plus, and I can’t stress this enough, it’s got HBO. And Vimeo, I guess. That’s cool, too.

While we like Netflix Party, we have to give the crown to the app with more chat features and more supported services. It’s really no contest.

The winner: Scener