I can't speak for him, but I don't bother with that information. I don't want to know how much I've spent. I could see it maybe being useful for insurance purposes (which is probably why they don't allow retail price changes for price drops), but I leave it out.

All I can see is what's gained...and I don't really see anything lost at all.

BTW, for what it's worth, you won't lose any of that when upgrading.

You don't see anything lost? Many, many features that were freely available in 2.4 are now locked in 3.0 unless you pay for it. I can't even click on an actor's name and see what movies I have with that person anymore.

IMO, the free version is far too restricted. They could've loosened it up a bit more, with more basic features being available, and leave the advanced stuff for the purchased version.

There's really no reason not to pay for the program. That's my point.

When I talk about what's "lost," I mean program features and functions, not personal data.

Used to be there was no reason to pay for the program, now it's barely worth using unless you do pay for it.

Well, other than that whole "still functional as ad supported software" for us casual folks who only use the program once every few months etc.

As mentioned, closer to three. And of course, that's three less dvd's in the collection.

Just can't justify it when there are free alternatives around.

Alternatives that don't offer half the features, of course.

I probably only use a fourth to half of the features.

What are the good free alternatives? I'll be happy to switch to one that does what I want.

In trying to get more money by putting out a crippled program, they're going to completely lose people.

Lose people that weren't going to pay for it in the first place? Not a big deal, it would seem. I paid for it about two years ago and couldn't be happier. 3.0 is a huge improvement and I'm glad that Ken fixed the legal issues in a fairly prompt manner.

For all the people that want to catalog their library for free, there's always DVDAfficianado & DVDSpot. I'm not sure if DVD Collectorz or whatever it's called is "crippled" as well.

I like being able to do everything offline for the most part, because I know my catalog is safe, even if the site goes down for whatever reason, what I have inputted is still going to be around, and I can do manual updates for any new releases.

I paid for the software in an early 2.x release because I thought it was worth supporting. I've been happy with it ever since.

You are obviously not their target group. Please move along.

Movie Collector from collectorz.com is the one you're referring to and the free version is pretty crippled with a 50 disc limitation. However, it's the one I paid for and use, since I find the offline component much more customizable than Profiler. I use DVD Spot and my own web page for online cataloguing, though Movie Collector will also export your collection to HTML.

That's too bad. I really enjoyed everything the earlier versions allowed me to do. Guess I'll just make my own database.

I signed up at DVDAfic, and basically wasted time entering my collection into that. Entering titles into that was a pain. It doesn't keep any personal info. And when you enter a DVD, it gives you a bunch to choose from - sometimes not what you're looking for, or it will choose the wrong one when the right one is there - and much of the time I picked the wrong one - like wrong region - because there was no way to tell. Screw that.

Invelos is a business. Seems reasonable that they would charge for a product, especially one as high quality as DVDProfiler.

It seems kind of silly to condemn them as "crippling" their free product. It's designed to get you to want to pay the nominal $30 for full functionality. That's how it works. If you want free, just make a text file.

I'm normally one to love and prefer free over anything but this program was one of the few exceptions to my rule. I felt it was well worth supporting when I purchased it a couple years ago and unlike Trillian who one day decided to issue an upgrade and change their pro version to expire without warning, when they made a big leap in upgrade and quality in this new 3.0 version (not to mention a new company), they didn't try and gouge us all for another 30 bucks.

It also baffles me at the posts complaining that the free version is "too crippled". The people who made this software took a lot of time I'm sure to make it, why not charge for it, they did it as a business after all. The time saved by simply entering a upc code to add stuff to my collection is well worth the one time purchase for me to keep track of my collection instead of having to do my own list manually in something like excel which I do for my record collection.

I honestly doubt that. I've seen numerous reports of people finally paying for 3.0 after years of using the free version. And they seem quite happy with their purchase. I think it's pretty much just you who is unhappy with the situation.

Yeah, just me, only me, I'm the only person in the entire freakin' world who is bothered by this.

Not even I think I am that unique.

How long was DVD Profiler around, with a free program? How were they able to do that? The free version of 3.0 is all but useless. I can't see how using it is going to help anyone decide to pay for the full program, when nearly all of the features are unaccessible until you pay for it.

I walked into 3.0 with almost 200 titles, so from the start it was crippled. I had NO opportunity to even see any of what it supposedly can do. Its site says "certain features" become unavailable after 50 - more like nearly ALL features become unavailable.

Maybe people are paying because they basically have no choice. They've come to depend and rely on it.

How do outfits like Mozilla/Firefox and Opera survive when they give out products for free???

What I'm saying is a few more of the basic features - like being able to print a simple listing report, or clicking on an actor's name and seeing what movies you own with that person - could have been made available for users like me who have smaller collections and don't use the advanced features.

I can't justify spending money on something where I may not use most of what I'm paying for, can't try it out fully to see if I want, need or like it, and where I don't know anything about the reliability or trustworthiness of who I'm giving my money to.

What this says is you were basically happy with the "Free Program" the way it was. So there was no motivation for you to buy and probably would not have if things only progressed with the 2.X version.

Now your given some motivation to buy (let's face it your fairly familiar with the program whether your talking about 2.X or 3.X.) you don't like the fact you have to pay for providing more functionality whether or not you use all the features/functions.

If these features were available to you, you would be a happy clam with no intention of buying the program.

Bottom line is there are many on this thread who paid for the program and feel it was money worth spending. I count myself as one of those happy owners who bought the product a number of years ago (when it was $25) and was able to upgrade without paying again. I wouldn't worry about "the reliability or trustworthiness of who I'm giving my money to" when it's the same developer who started the program and has worked out the legal issues with his partners. Doesn't appear he's going anywhere soon when he has an extremely popular program that really doesn't have anything to match or better what it offers. If this is one of the few times you may buy any software, consider doing it. You'll be supporting a great program.

Here's an idea, just save $1 per day for a month, and then you can buy the program and get full features.

For those who have switched to 3.0, was it pretty seamless? I've heard that a lot of titles did not transfer well. As I have almost 4000 in 2.4, I'm pretty worried I'll have to spend the next month just fixing things.

I had about 1% of titles that I had to fix, but I did my transfer the day it became available. At this point, with most of the users building up the database, I would expect you to do a little better.

Is anyone else having problems signing into the site..I've never had a problem before, but now it's saying; "This feature requires cookies to function properly. Please enable cookies in your browser's settings, then refresh this page and sign in again."

I have cookies enabled, and turned off Adblock Plus on Mozilla for the site. I also tried temporarily turning off Cookie Control and Adblocking completely on ZoneAlarm. I tried refreshing numerous times, and I eventually got logged in, then it logged me out again, and just kept sending me to the main page...Same thing happened on IE7.

Perhaps this has already been discussed in a different thread, but does anyone know what the legal dispute was?

I was going to just keep using 2.4, but it appears that 2.x will no longer get profile updates, correct? I would think that would be another way to herd people towards 3.x.

In any event, I've used the program for years and I decided to pony up the $30. There are certain little things that alone make it worth it, like being able to use your scroll-wheel in the title list, or being able to hit a letter and go right down to that letter in the list. Plus I keep a copy of the database backed up for insurance purposes, so $30 is worth it to me.

Just thought I'd mention a cool php front-end for DVDProfiler web pages, in case (like me) you are a little tired of the standard DVDProfiler online collection view. Of course it has to be hosted on your own webspace.

phpDVDProfiler website with downloads and links to forums is here.

Take a look at my collection using phpDVDProfiler here.

If anyone needs any help setting it up, just let me know..