toddly6666

Here's a decent aesthetically pleasing one:

www.chasingthefrog.com

If someone can figure out how to add a DVD or photo of a DVD that's not in their database, please tell me...I can't figure it out.

I think it's an Amazon site. I'm guessing one has to update info on amazon to update current data on this website...

Here's how some of my DVDs look on this site: http://www.chasingthefrog.com/catalo...ame=toddly6666

ZoomBoy

This is garbage. I don't know how many odd DVD's I've added to the site spending hours of my own time collecting data, being yelled at by admins, etc, etc for it to shut down.

I'm going to use DVD Profiler now, I don't care that it costs $30 - it seems pretty decent and I've even added 2 R2 DVD's to the system just this morning.

Star Wars Guy

Or has anyone used Media Man ($40). I've looked at the screenshots for both it and Libra, but didn't see if it'll allow you to enter where you got it and for how much like Spot did.

Krelyan

I always preferred DVDAf because of the simplicity, it's a LOT quicker to add titles, and had a more varied database (I've only had to contribute 1 title). I haven't updated Spot in quite some time and I'll miss its more robust filters and easier star-rating setup, but talk about melodrama. :P

GreenVulture

I've been using DVDAF for many years now. It tells me what DVDs I own and keeps a list of discs I will eventually purchase or sell off. Pretty sure that's what a catalog site does.

bunkaroo

I just looked at it after that mention of improvements, and I think it still looks lousy. To each their own.

man*machine

I agree completely. I wasn't thrilled when dvdaf changed their look, but I've become used to it - and now I even think it looks a lot less cluttered than some of the other sites. Yep, it's actually quite eye-pleasing to me now - maybe self-hypnosis, who knows?

DVDAF also brought back the 'view 200' at a time format as well as the "who's got it" feature, which is great. The submission page is simpler to use than before as well. It may not be the end-all perfect site out there for each individual person, but it is free and appears to be one of the only free options left. I'm glad they offer this free service - there really isn't much free stuff left in this world.

matome

Very sad news. My own personal local cataloging was done with Collectorz Movie Collector, which is indispensible to me, but for online listings DVDSpot couldn't be beat. Looks like I'll head back to DVDAF where I still have 2/3 of my collection already up before I abandoned it for Spot, but it's not the same.

Numes

Wow. I know a LOT of people used it as their primary collection tracker and there was a lot of love for DVDSpot. I'm sorry to see it go.

This isn't really the place to say why I only used DVDSpot as my secondary tracker, but I would highly suggest DVDProfiler. Everything is input by UPC. It will be a lot of manual entry from your DVDSpot export, but if you buy a lot of things from the same location, it keeps that filled in for each entry. Also, if you buy a lot of items on the same day, just change your computer date to that day and it will carry it over from entry to entry (I wish it would carry the date over), then all you have to do is insert the price you paid.

kaze0

They should open source it and provide the databases.

Mr.Briggs

Fuck, this sucks. Took me forever when Guzzlefish tanked to put everything into dvdspot. This just blows big time.

Trevor

While I absolutely loved DVDspot, I more wanted a movie database, as many of my films are on other media (hard drive, VHS, burned from cable to DVD-Rs, DVRs, etc). So I'm taking this opportunity to consider other options. UPC-centric has it's advantages, but I'm looking for something a bit more flexible. That Mac only option looks nice, but while I love my iPhone, I'm not quite ready to make the jump.

applesandrice

This is awful, awful news. I love DVDSpot.

Oh, unhappy day of foul pestilent woe,
Besmirch not my soul as my eyes overflow!
For my heart -- it has broke from pure grief at this news:
DVDSpot is closing! I am flush with the blues!!

Dark clouds of villainous hateful debris
O'er-shadow my faithful devotion to thee.
How I've loved all thy fancy customizable features,
Such as filters, wishlists and -- crap -- what rhymes with "features"?

Blessed Spot, thine existence has long brought great joy
To movie collectors: man, woman, girl, boy.
And though you are closing and going away,
There's a Spot in my heart which will be there to stay.

Drexl

Well, I kind of want to use a spreadsheet so I could customize it more. I want to set it up so that I could show a list of units (where a boxed set would be one unit) and a list of titles. I would just include IMDB links for most of the info. This is where I need separate titles, since there's no IMDB page for a movie series. I don't care to track stuff like when and where I bought something and how much I paid anyway. With a spreadsheet I could start with a list and gradually add whatever data I want.

chrisbluedevil

i never heard of dvd spot and i have always just settled with dvdaf. it sounds like i have been missing out for quite a while. is there a way to export the dvd's in dvdaf to a word document or offline other than copy and paste? thanks. . .

Salo

Ha ha! Wow, that's great!

DeputyDave

*sniff*

klandersen

I first found DVDAF thought it was OK, but not great.
then found Guzzlefish and thought it was much better and liked that it had VHS and music.Never got much more than 20-50 of my titles over there.
Then found Spot, from a recomendation I think on IMDB boards. Loved it, made sure that what I had at AF was on the Spot and eventually got my entire collection up there and only had to update stuff when I bought new discs.

Well lately it's been ages since I've updated at AF because I hated their re-design, but kept it for a semi backup. I thought AF would die before the spot ever did.

I will probably try profiler, looked at it years ago and didn't really like it for a few reasons. now I don't like the idea of the $30 upgrade fee but may have to do it (if they do paypal or checks by mail).

If you like a cheap facebook type look there is listal.com that has music, books and movies.

NOTHING is as smooth looking and as simple as DVDSpot was.

Also one of the great things about DVDSpot was as others have mentioned the listings of variations of each title. DVDAF doesn't do that if it does it sucks at it. I really hate online sites that are totally dependant on what is on at amazon.com, some of us own older titles that are out of print, or an older version of a disc that has had a drastic package change.

DeputyDave

The founder of LibraryThing said in the new bulletpointreview.com forum (basicly the DVDSpot refugee forum) that he was trying to see if he could take DVDSpot over. I don't know how realistic that is or what kind of help he might need, but it could be a (small, dim) ray of hope.

http://http://www.bulletpointreview.....php?f=2&t=136

gotrice487

I spent all last night transferring to DVDAf but still it just does not feel the same

rmick

I updated my DVDAf, but really hate the lack of custom organization that puts things in quite a different order than I have them on the shelf. Two Towers should not be after Return of the King. Damn you alphabet!

Salo

Maybe somebody at CNET will read this thread (and others) and say "Oh sh*t. We really got something here!" and keep the servers running past Oct 15th.

kefrank

I downloaded Libra and played around with it last night. It has some quirks, but it's decent.

It uses Amazon as its database, so it pulls in Amazon images, which unfortunately, are not uniform (sometimes it's a 3d view of the case, sometimes the 2d front cover, sometimes there are discs coming out...etc). On the upside, it's easy to manually change the cover art that is displayed for an entry in your library.

The import function isn't perfect - I exported my DVDSpot collection to .csv and imported into Libra as plain text and it got about 180 of my ~200 titles. I think most of the ones it missed didn't have a UPC, are pretty rare, or are from region 2. I got started adding each title that the import missed and it went pretty smoothly. The region 2 titles are easy enough to add by selecting the Amazon UK database instead of Amazon US and I haven't run into any titles yet that don't exist in the database.

The included skins are all ugly in my opinion. Thankfully, the .xml files that define the skins are well-commented, making it extremely easy to make your own skin and customize the look. I like that a lot.

I really like the other modularity that they put into the program too...you can create tags and filter by the tags, you can enter free text custom information for each DVD, zoom the view of your library, etc. I haven't explored every one of the features, but I'm impressed with what I've seen so far.

The program crashed on me once, when I added the 300 HD DVD to my library, so stability might be an issue, but that's not too surprising, as I don't think it is even to version 1.0 yet.

All-in-all, this is a great application with a lot of potential that will only get better as the kinks get worked out.

Trevor

How much do you think it cost them in bandwidth fees each month? I have no idea how much $ it costs to keep a site like that running, but I imagine its thousands per month.

Salo

Yeah, I have no idea either. I just remember when Ford was going to nix the Mustang, a bunch of people raised a stink and Ford revived the program.