Case study · Consumer / Entertainment
FilmgharA free, ad-free film and TV guide with free classics and where to watch the rest
Filmghar is a free, ad-free film and TV guide built by DanixSoft: it lists trending and top-rated films and series, shows where each one is streaming in the viewer's country, keeps a watchlist and watch history across devices, and plays public-domain classics and official free uploads right in the browser.
Browse and search every film and series, see where each title is streaming in your region, keep a list and pick up where you left off, and watch verified public-domain classics without ads.
What problem does Filmghar solve?
Finding something to watch means hopping between streaming apps, and free movie sites are full of popups, redirects and pirated copies. Viewers in Pakistan also rarely see which service actually carries a title in their country.
How does Filmghar work?
A server-rendered catalog built on TMDB data with JustWatch availability for the viewer's region, and a player that only plays curated sources Filmghar has the right to show: public-domain films through the Internet Archive's official player, official uploads, and owned or licensed videos. Every source records its licence basis; everything else links to where it legally streams.
What we built
- Home and TV pages with a featured carousel and rows for trending, genres, Bollywood, Pakistani dramas, K-dramas, anime and region-specific streaming services
- Search with live results, filters by type, genre, service and rating, and infinite scroll
- Title pages with cast, trailer, seasons and episodes, similar titles and where to watch (stream, free, rent, buy)
- A player with a source menu, automatic failover, resume, next episode and quality, audio and subtitle selection for HLS
- My List, history and continue watching that work without an account and sync with a DanixSoft account
- Lucky Roll, a region setting, data export and account deletion
What is Filmghar built with?
- Application
- Next.js 16 (App Router, Server Actions), React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS v4
- Playback
- hls.js for owned and licensed HLS, official Internet Archive, YouTube and Bunny Stream embeds
- Data
- Supabase Postgres with row-level security and Auth (shared DanixSoft sign-in)
- Integrations
- TMDB API (catalog, artwork, trailers), JustWatch availability via TMDB
- Quality
- Vitest unit tests and a database check script
Engineering challenges
- The TMDB key stays on the server; responses go through Next.js's data cache so a popular page costs one upstream request per window
- A curated sources table with a licence basis per row and database checks that only accept official embed ids or https media
- Third-party players in a sandboxed iframe without popups
- Row-level security on every table, and Vitest tests for catalog mapping, failover, sync merging and slugs
