It was recently announced that Discover.film has launched what some news outlets are calling the ‘Netflix for Short Movies’.

The platform is being launched as an OTT short movie platform that is also available as a dedicated app.

It is a spinoff site from the successful Discover.film platform that was set up in 2016 by Sarah Jane Thomson and Steve Harmston.

Since Discover.film has claimed that it is the “first global platform solely devoted to making quality short movies and series available on mobile, TV and web”, we at Sofy.tv feel we need to step in and explain why we are still the premier choice short film on-demand platform in the world.

What Is Discover.film?

Discover.film is a new short movie on-demand platform.

The platform aims to change “the world of entertainment by making the exciting genre of short film mainstream”.

Like Sofy.tv, it offers short moviemakers the chance to get their movies seen by the audiences that want to see them.

The platform’s catalog includes feature short movies, documentaries, horror, and dramas. The vast majority of these shorts are between 5 and 15 minutes in length.

Somewhat confusingly, the Discover.film’s About page claims that “over 2 million viewers in 216 countries watch our films each year”, even though there are only 195 recognized countries in the world today according to The United States.

Discover.film hosts The Discover Film Awards, which is a dedicated short movie festival that has done a great deal to help promote short films.

The company claims that the idea for creating a dedicated short film on-demand platform arose after they noticed that data from their affiliate distributors showed that short movies came in the top 10 % of the most-watched content.

Great to hear that what we have been saying for a long time can finally be backed up with some hard data.

What Is Sofy.tv?

Sofy.tv is a dedicated short movie live streaming site that connects short movie lovers with the films they want to see.

The site was launched during the Cannes Film Festival in 2018.

The creator’s goal was to ignite a short film revolution by solving the two problems that have kept the short movie industry in the gutter for decades.

By providing a way for short movie lovers to finally be able to access all the short films that they want to see, Sofy.tv, in a stroke, solved the biggest problem affecting the industry.

The second problem is the lack of funding for short moviemakers needed to bring their visions to life. Sofy.tv rewards moviemakers financially when their movies are watched.

This not only helps moviemakers raise the money they need for their next projects but also allows them to report earnings on their movies too!

For the first time in over 50 years, short movie makers are now able to talk to prospective movie production companies about how much money their movies have earned.

To date, Sofy.tv has amassed a catalog of over 1,000 short movies, many of which are award-winning.

With thousands of hours of shorts to watch, our members will never find themselves running out of shorts to watch.

Over the last year and a half, Sofy.tv has also undergone several updates that include a snazzy new user interface and the launch of a powerful new movie recommendation engine.

Based on our user feedback, we redesigned the user interface to make it, even more, user-friendly and appealing.

Our revolutionary new movie recommendation engine was developed by some of the leading big data engineers in the world!

Combining the talents of our in-house engineers with the best minds from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne or EPFL, we’ve created an AI engine that is able to dissect a movie into its ‘ingredients’.

By doing this, Sofy.tv can get a much more accurate recipe of what a movie is actually about. By analyzing the kinds of movies that our users watch, Sofy.tv is now able to make incredibly accurate predictions on what other movies a particular user might enjoy.

Our users have called the system uncanny in its accuracy. The great benefit of this system is that Sofy.tv users don’t have to search very far for their next great short.

Discover.film vs. Sofy.tv

User Experience

The most obvious difference between the two platforms is the user interface.

Both Discover.film and Sofy.tv include movies listed by genre to help the user quickly navigate to what they want.

However, Sofy.tv includes more relevant information of each movie listed to help views make the best choice.

Particularly important are three things:

User Ratings

Relevancy To Your Tastes

Awards

By being able to see past reviews as well as how relevant the movie is to your tastes, users can quickly and accurately make a decision on whether to watch it or not.

We have observed that movies with a 70% relevancy or more are likely to suite a viewer.

Since this information is not available on Discover.film, it inevitably means that its members are going to end up watching a lot of shorts that they don’t like.

Save To Watch Later

Though Discover.film does include buttons to share your favorite movies with others, it doesn’t have one to create a watchlist.

Sofy.tv includes this feature for all shorts.

Catalog

It is not known how many short movies Discover.film has in its catalog. The platform only says that it received 5,000 movies per year, though how many it approves is not known.

Sofy.tv has over 1,000 top short movies. The platform has added these all in the last year and a half, meaning, on average, 3 new shorts per day.

That’s plenty for even the most die-hard short movie lovers.

Verdict

Sofy.tv is available in almost every country in the world. Though the platform is currently only available via its website, it can be accessed anytime and anywhere like Discover.film.

The main advantage that Sofy.tv has comes down to user experience.

The platform’s refined user interface is not only more appealing but thanks to its sophisticated movie recommendation engine that is able to recommend the most accurate movie suggestions, finding the best shorts only gets easier with Sofy.tv.

For more information on how to sign up to Sofy.tv, head to the website now.