With the number of free streaming video sites proliferating almost by the day, it’s hard to envision a relatively obscure offering like the new Fancast.com making much of a splash.
But the site does have one cool feature that could be a major draw for hardcore movie and TV watchers, a tool dubbed “Six Degrees.”
Like the popular game of who-has-worked-with-Kevin-Bacon, Six Degrees lets you explore the various connections to a movie, for example.
So let’s say you click on the listing for Fight Club. A little floating menu pops up that lets you click on the other movies that Helena Bonham Carter has starred in, or browse other films with similar themes as Fight Club, and so forth.
It’s a nifty way for fans of particular movies or shows to find similar programs they’ve never heard about but might enjoy. It’s also a fun sort of Trivial Pursuit.
The site — which is still in beta — does have some drawbacks that I noticed, though.
While there are lots of free, instantly-watchable shows, the video quality is kind of spotty. And the TV episodes seem rather randomly selected and poorly organized.
For example, there are currently 10 episodes of the show 24 available for viewing on Fancast. But the episodes are from different seasons, and placed in random order. Kind of pointless, since that show only makes sense if you watch each episode in order.
Like I said, though, it’s a beta site. And the Six Degrees feature is so convenient that it could easily become a standard tool on every video site.
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