How can we sync playback across devices so we can watch together with dialogue?

[William80]

I finally got my family to agree on a show, but now we're stuck because my teenager wants to watch on their laptop, my spouse is on the living room TV, and I’m on my tablet. How do you actually get everyone synced up so we can watch together and hear the dialogue at the same time?

[Noah_H]

We did this last Friday. We set up a group watch on Netflix using the Party/Teleparty extension on the laptop hosting, then the others joined from their tablets and the TV. It stayed in sync for the whole episode and we could see chat in a side panel, which helped when someone missed a line.

[Benjamin92]

On the living room TV we used Disney+'s GroupWatch for that service; the spouse started it from the TV app and sent the invite to the others. The teen stayed on the laptop with headphones. We muted extra speakers so we weren’t fighting the audio.

[Abigail_G]

Do you think the real issue is not the sync but that someone wants to pause or change volume and it throws off everyone else?

[Riley38]

One time I wandered off topic trying to fix it by buying a cheap soundbar and wiring the laptop to it, and it kinda worked until someone paused to take a call. It made things messier. Still, picking one platform and keeping everyone in it felt like the least painful path.