I'm really pissed. I'm a huge movie buff, but after cataloging about 300 VHS movies on guzzlefish years ago and now with DVDSpot closing on 15 October, I'm wondering why I even spent the time with this shit. DVDSpot claims it cares and you can export your data to a file, but not the important data. You can't export all the fucking UPC codes which you'd need somewhere else, value tracking, photos, media type and the like. With all the people on that site, I have no fucking clue why they can't make it work.

Sigh.

I would love a DVD tracking site I can believe in, without having to pay for it. I never thought Spot was the greatest site or profiler in the world, but it was nice to track what I did and didn't have, especially for my friends and family looking for gift ideas without wanting to buy something I already had.

Any recommendations?

Besides the 5 or 10 already listed in this thread?

= J

UPC is the first item exported

People want everything except for the fair price needed.

Sorry, I started a new thread in Tech, since I didn't see this one and since under the Tech tab it said it was for all Internet-related discussions. Therefore, I was unaware of the recommendations.

You're right about UPC, which is awesome. Mine started out with a smaller grid box and I thought it was the item code or something...didn't see the UPC at top. Must have been the irritation.

See, price is not needed for internet-related products. DVDSpot had enough of a fan base they could have easily sold advertising and made more than enough to keep running AND pocket cash. Why not sell the site to one of their members? I'm sure they have enough that someone may have just taken over their site, if they didn't want to do it. Truth is they don't give a shit about their users. Less than a shit.

A list of what movies I own online, while handy, is about as handy as my individual Excel Spreadsheets separated by HD and Blu-Ray. The biggest benefit to DVDSpot was the stats, and their stats were not nearly as badass as Profiler and other pay sites. Problem is, as 'neat' as knowing who my lead actor is, it's not worth twenty bucks. Five, maybe, and even then I still maintain it should be free. That's the beauty of the internet, you not being supposed to pay for anything.

Some people are working on a plug-in to allow better transfer of Spot collections into Profiler. link

dvdspot was the only one i like. unless a very similar site comes along i guess i won't have an online listing of my dvds.

A DVD Profiler user, mediadogg, has created a plug-in to allow migration of DVD Spot data to DVD Profiler.

Just scroll down to the 7th post

Thanks for the info xrad and trevor

This completely sucks! Completely. Sucks.

Guess, I have to crawl back to DVDAF. I have a shitload to do now, I must have gotten over 150 new titles since I left DVDAF last year.

I've tried Libra and have to say for a free program, it works pretty good. I like that you can switch out the cover if amazon has one you dont like. I would recommend it only thing I hate is that it's not online.

I started uploading everything into chasing the frog, I got about 40 of them in which is about 5% of my collection and said forget it. Im hoping this uploader for profiler works. If not Im just keeping it in an excel sheet. I use these things for a checklist so I dont accidentally double dip and purchase the same movie twice, the pretty little pictures and stats are just the gravy.

Well, doesn't dvdaf offer at least that?

I personally just want a checklist of what I own and DVDAF does that quite well. I don't need a site that tells me when exactly I watched a certain DVD or how much I paid for it and on what particular date. If others really need or want all of that kind of information, I'm sorry for them and I guess it's hard to get now, at least for free. DVDAF remains the best catalog site on-line, at least for free, and even with some of their recent layout changes that some people don't like (I didn't care for it at first, but don't mind it all now), I don't really understand all the hate generated against them. It's an excellent inventory site and it costs nothing. Maybe DVD-Spot had some better features and some people are upset about that and these users can't see if they watched a DVD or not anymore, but look what DVD-Spot did to everybody - they are shutting down and are dropping everybody in less than a month's warning and couldn't care less about it. So who is the bad guy here?

Do you have to enter one title at a time on DVDaf? I remember on the old site you could do multiple... I just don't see that anywhere on the new site.

Luckily my collection was still on their 1.0 version of the site form a couple years ago, so I just spent an hour updating it and it is all good. I don't mind the look personally. It is still free and helps me track what I have. I'm bummed DVDSpot is going to be gone soon, but at least there was one left.

This is just devastating! Absolutely gut-punching in sadness. I haven't felt this bad since I heard Warner Brothers was stabbing HD DVD in the back.

I came to DVD Spot from DVDAF almost a year ago when I got sick and tired of that guy's arrogant attitude. The 2.0 downgrade eliminated the most crucial feature - PDA support - and when you've got 1000+ titles stored in two locations and a lousy memory, it's the only thing preventing constant duplicate purchases. I'd offered to send him an old Handspring PDA so he could test the site, but he was more interested in badgering members to make donations if they wanted him to consider restoring what he'd torn out.

After spending two arm-numbing days C&Ping my collection from DVDAF, I was quite happy with DVD Spot, especially liking the viewing tracking feature. I submitted a few obscure Asian cult cinema titles and thought life was good. For a while, I was entering purchases in both lists, but after picking up 60 DVDs at a Hollywood Video closing, I just stuck with the one that could provide what I needed: DVD Spot.

It was a little bit of a hassle to format the exported collection for PDA use - if can't (couldn't) tell if it's a regular DVD, multi-disc special edition, director's cut, HD, BD, etc. - but it worked out OK. I'd looked at DVD Profiler, but it seemed more oriented to people who want big pretty pages of blah-blah-woof-woof. I just want an efficient list of my 1400+ disc collection and a means to take them on the road. Doesn't DVD Profiler require a second application to be purchased to do that?

If DVD Profiler could import my DVD Spot collection and then kick out a PDA version for the $30 ticket, I'd be cool with it. I'd always wondered how DVD Spot could stay up without advertising - A: They couldn't! - but I need a means to move that won't require another bunch of hours to set up things. That or a tutorial on how to maintain an Excel database.

Man, I'm a sad panda.

This is terrible news. I left DVDAF for DVD Spot a couple months ago after DVDAF wouldn't let me upload a listing for the Clint Eastwood Firefox/The Gauntlet/The Rookie triple feature (the site administrator gave me some bullshit response like "the picture is too small" or something like that. It looked fine to me). Looks like I'll be keeping track of my collection in an Excel spreadsheet until something else comes along.

i got that too and instead of just putting the listing in without pic or at least a small pic, the whole thing gets rejected. i mean they have listings for DVDs that don't come out for months and there isn't even correct art for them yet. sheesh!

I'm assuming this is to avoid the blurry cover art and pic-less entries that plagued DVDSpot and made it a real eyesore. Does your printer have a scanner? That's how I've uploaded all of the cover art on my DVDAf submissions.

Exactly, in dvdaf's "one-pager" mode the large pics are 300 x 425 pixels.



This is what a small thumbnail picture looks like when enlarged for the "one pager" mode.

God, DVDAf is ugly as shit. I'm sitting here at the computer considering the conversion of my collection (I can't do DVDProf because I need it to be "online only") and I have only one question before I begin this: Can DVDAf be displayed in a custom sort mode?

The link to DVDSpot shows my collection exactly as it is on the shelves (sequels with diferent names linked together -i.e. Dirty Harry, Rambo, etc -and TV shows listed alphabeticly but grouped last). Can I have DVDAf "locked" in that order as well?

It wouldn't be online-only, but a spreadsheet can do this well. Wherever the new title goes, you can just insert a new row and bump the rest down. It's difficult to rearrange them later though.

Yeah, I've been exporting to Excel every month and I've been using that as a hard copy (and to double check that one my son's friends hasn't run off with a DVD).

Just playing around with DVDAf is giving me a headache. I am a heartbeat away from sticking to spread sheet only.

^Dave, yes they can although I haven't done it myself. If you search the FAQ or the forum, you should find more details.

I've always found DVDSpot to look ugly and cluttered but I think it's all based on familiarity more than anything.

About the cover art sizes/minimum pixel requirement - the requirement was recently lowered so they should be accepting lower quality images for foreign/obscure DVDs (as most new releases are already entered at HQ). I'm not sure if it in place yet but there has been talks about "tagging" a lower quality image; that is, to let people know that the image is below recommended quality although it's been accepted. Not only does that allow the process of submitting and accepting easier and faster, but it also allows others to note the difference and submit a better picture in its place if possible.

I take part in semi-regular Skype chats with the owner and a few other members of Film Talk. We're constantly talking about ways to improve the site although he is the sole person that runs it and updates it. That's a pretty big task, especially considering he's a full-time firefighter. There's a site in place (located in the upper-right screen at DVDAF) where people can report bugs and recommend changes as well, called Bud's Bugs. I know for a fact that a lot of the recommendations in the past have already been implemented. That's the only way to have your voice heard really...complaining usually doesn't work if it isn't directed towards someone who can actually answer and rectify the situation.

Thought I would chime in with my experience...

I took the plunge this weekend and bought my registration for DVD Profiler and I have to say, while I'm not in full-blown love mode yet I'm developing a serious case of "like."

I'm still disappointed in Profiler's online version but the version that sits on your hard drive is pretty remarkable. It's going to take a few weeks to get comfortable with it but I predict full-blown love is coming.

I imported 1,500 DVDs from my DVDSpot CSV file and only had 40 of them not listed in the Profiler database. Most of them were ones I had to submit for the Spot database anyway, so that seemed to make sense.

And now that a Profler member has created a plug-in to specifically work with the Spot CSV file, I'm going to see if I can use it to re-import so more of my Spot data can make the switch.

Luckily, I only had to enter about 15-20 new titles to DVDProfiler so I did it manually. I'll probably upgrade to the $30 version in a few weeks.

Blu-ray.com has now introduced a DVDspot alternative, except that it's only for bluray discs. Oh well.