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Mac OS X  |  iPod / iTunes  |  iPod Utilities  |  DVD Database X  |  Suggestions to further improve application

DVD Database X

DVD Database X

DVD collection database software

Version:  1.7.2

   [ Views: 539 ]

Suggestions to further improve application

Feedback Type:  Commentary

Contributed by: Pluis Thursday, February 10 2005 @ 02:32 PM PST

Product Platform: MacOSX

Used Product For: Less than a month

Recommend Product: YES

Having written a review-type posting before, I'll add some 'request' comments. I am encouraged to do this as I had two requests in the review, written at time of version 1.5.1, one of which has been granted with 1.5.2, which came out within six days of my previous posting(!).

I am fond of the merger option that allows me to 'fuse' information found at amazon.com and IMDb. You can set from which site you want the title/picture/cast and some other fields which both sites offer, and have the unique fields from the site that offers them (e.g. plot by IMDb, studio by amazon.com). Your DVD information can hardly be more complete.

Two comments I still have though. One concerns the fact that it will only accept (look for) amazon.com, and not, at the user's request, amazon.co.uk or other amazon sites, as is generally offered by competing DVD library programs (share- and freeware). The information might be fairly similar, but I want, for example, a link to a DVD in the region code that is mine, and not 'per forza' an amazon.com link.

Secondly, I was hoping that under 'Amazon reviews' it would actually load 'Amazon.co.uk[or others] Review'. I don't know if this is offered in the same way all the other information is, but I am MUCH more interested in the less partial review offered by amazon than the latest guy who watched the film with his mother and didn't like it because the plot was too difficult.

In 1.5.2 you can now export your database information in a list (one column) in a html-format you can determine yourself. You can use all of the tags offered, or select just a couple etc., in a very straightfoward and easy way. But it is what it is: a list.

The table format (you can determine number of columns and rows yourself, and consequently the number of clickable html pages generated) I find more attactive myself as it more information is can be presented on a single page in the browser. Again you can decide what kind of information should be printed on the page. Just an image with year, title, your rating, and plot, or more, or less, and there you have it.

But there is one thing you can't change, and that is the order of the films. This is done alphabetically, according to film title. But I think of several other attractive ways of ordering my films to be presented on an html-page. Personally I order my films according to director (and for this I have to modify the director name so that the downloaded 'Woody Allen' becomes 'Allen, Woody' and I get my list alphabetically according to director). But listing them according to year, or rating might be equally attractive.

What would be a step forward, in my opinion, is that the order of the content in the html-table would be determined by the order you have in the database yourself. E.g. when I have ordered according to year, or rating, or director, it will also export the database in this order to html, and not force the alphabetical film-title order upon me (side-note: the program has no memory for the order you like, it always opens by presenting the mentioned film-title order, but this can be changed with a single click on the field you prefer (and the order of the fields can be changed too, and whether you want the field to begin with etc. etc.)).

And while the developer is at it, why not allow the user to play with the export-html table-template as well? Based on the 'Detailed info.txt' template the table can be made real pretty.

So much from an exited and near-complete-satisfied user that wants to stress that this program has been running for weeks without loosing one single bit of information or getting stuck in a search. Recommended.   

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