PC Scanner for DVD Profiler?
 

Do they make a scanner you can hook up to your PC to scan the UPC's of DVDs to enter in to DVD Profiler? I only have a measly 150 dvd's...but I still dont feel like entering in a million numbers.

Yes, the CueCat that was given away (Radio Shack, and others) would interface with dvdprofiler. I don't think they give them away anymore, but you could probably grab one from eBay for about $5.

If you happen to have one of those great "failures in advertising", the CueCat, those can work with DVD Profiler. Also, if you have a DVD-ROM drive, you are supposed to be able to put in the disc and Profiler would automatically add the title...it never quite worked that way for me (It would continually pull up the region 2 or 3 version of region 1 titles when I tried it).

And hey, look on the bright side...150 DVDs is only 1500 numbers (UPC codes), not a million! ;)

lol..thanks for the correction on my computation error...I still dont want to enter 1500 numbers in..but thats better then a million!

Ill have to try out the dvd-rom drive thing...but the CueCat sounds like a nice deal...thought it would be more expensive then 5 or so dollars!

What do you mean the CueCat's were "given away"? RS just gave them out? why?

As TREX1993 mentioned they were an advertising tool. With the software installed you were supposed to be able to scan CueCat barcodes in advertisements and go to websites with more information on the products. The software would track you though as each CC had a unique id, so no one used them. Although they found ways to hack them for use on standard barcodes. RS used the CC barcodes in one of their catalogs and therefore gave them away in the stores. They were also given out with a couple magazines if I remember correctly.

There are two different versions a PS2 & USB one. I had a PS2 one that died on me, I assume since it was always on. The USB ones go to "sleep" if you leave them plugged in and pulse every so often to see if you need to scan something, if so then they wake up.

thanks for the info.

I see ebay has the USB one for 7.99 plus 4.99 shipping but then you see the PS2 ones that have a start bid of 1.00 plus 5.00 for shipping. But then they also have "modified" Cue Cats for around 2.99-3.50.

Any suggestions?

Give me your TV and I'll enter them all in by hand!

well if there was a TV TRADE section...then MAYBE!

I use DVD Profiler and a cuecat, get a unmodified one and it will work with the plugin or there is a little program called CatNip that will work, but to use it has to be a unmodified cuecat.

I think i'm gonna just save myself 15.00 and enter by hand...its only about 150 dvds. Now if I had like 500-1000 dvd's...then it would be a differnt story.

Only thing I dont like is that it numbers the dvd when you enter it...even if your in alphabetical order...it still doesn't change the number of the dvd as you entered it.

I hacked a PS2 CueCat to work as a regular scanner. The ease of hacking it depends on which model you have.

It still isn't the greatest thing though. You don't have to type in the numbers, but you keep getting interrupted with dialog boxes asking if this is the Canadian or Hong Kong version of the movie. You have to do a mouse click or two and then it kicks you out of the scanning routine. Then you have to do a few mouse clicks to get back into it.

Finally, a use for that CueCat I've had sitting in the basement for so long. Picked up a few from Radio Shack way back in the day, never even took it out of the bag. Thanks for the heads-up.

I have the USB version. It cost a little more than the PS2 version, but it works great.

Darkflounder...you learn something new everyday!!!

I already started entering them in by hand...its going pretty quickly!

I entered almost 1000 of them by hand a couple months ago. Went a lot faster than I thought. I spent more time trying to locate all of them in my house than it took me to enter them all into DVD Profiler.

The file by name function i thought was cool until I saw multiple versions of a DVD...i could have taken the easy way out and just picked the WS version but then it would be correct for sure.