Dec 19, 2005

Just a quick post to tell ya all about an AMAZING piece of software that every confirmed movie junkie should know about. Its made by Collectorz, and is simply called Movie Collector.

From their website, here is a quick list of features:

Catalog DVDs automatically
Just type the movie titles or scan the barcodes to add DVDs to your personal movie database

Download all movie & DVD data
Including cover image, cast and crew plus all DVD details (region, audiotracks, subtitles, etc…)

Browse your DVD covers
Use the Thumbnail View to browse your collection by cover image

Instantly sort your lists
On any field, e.g. alphabetically by title, director or genre, or by year

Search your movie database
E.g. find a movie by title or all movies that Arnie plays in

Print movie lists

Export to HTML, XML, CSV - XML Export! What more could you ask for?

Track your loans - WOW! I’ve been looking for something like this!

I just bought it today, and I’ve put in about 145 movies so far. Its SO EASY! With the barcode lookup and several sites to download the info it takes only about a minute a movie. They even sell a little barcode scanner for those of you with bigger collections. I’m just typing the barcode in - it really doesn’t take that long with the keypad. It finds 99% of them right away…

I’ve been thinking about writing a piece of software like this for quite some time - in fact, I’ve already put coded the framework in ASP.NET. I was mostly interested in a way to publish the collection for friends to search on and then keep track of the movies that I would loan out.

While there is no dynamic way of taking your Movie Collector collection and publishing to the web, exporting to HTML or XML is a simple click away. Its not too large a task to just re-upload the HTML, or for that matter, put together your own XSL to markup the exported XML. Its not automated, but its darn close…

Once I’ve got all my DVD’s in the system, I’m going to use the XML output to create a small ASP.NET mobile control to query the system from my Treo 650 internet browser. This way, when shopping the bargain bins at WalMart, I’ll never re-buy a movie I already own by accident!

Not bad for $35!