Managing your DVD collection...
Someone asked so…
Yes, I’m insanely fascinated with movie making in general and just plain love to watch movies and certain television series. I started collecting DVDs immediately after they started becoming available several years ago and have pretty much been buying a few every week since then. I’ve currently have five DVD jukebox-type changers (two 300 disc and 3 400 disc units) that are pretty close to full.
I did some searching for some software that was already written to help manage my collection (prior to potentially writing my own) and settled on InterVocative Softwares DVD Profiler. Although it currently doesn’t do everything that I would like it to, specifically in regards to managing DVDs that are located in DVD changers (Note: The developer has assured me that he’s working on adding such a feature. It looks like that may be part of the next release (which is currently in beta and just downloading right at this very moment.), this software does just about everything you can think of in regards to managing your DVD collection.
One of the cool features that is included with this software is the ability to publish your DVD collection to their website and provide a link to those interested in browsing your collection. Although I forget to publish regularly my collection, I’ve just recently done so and if your interested in taking a peek at some of the movies that are in my collection, you can do so here. You may be asking, so did you spend all this time populating this information… ummmm… no. The developer has also taken it upon himself as part of the product to offer something that I would compare to CDDB but for movies. Just put the UPC code into the software to add a new DVD and the information along with DVD covers is added to your collection. It took me around a day to 10 key all the UPC codes into the software to initially populate the collection… now every couple of weeks I add the new DVDs and my collection stays current. Looking to buy DVDs? This software will also allow you to create a local wish list of DVDs that you intend to purchase… from there it will provide you with a price matching feature where it gathers the current pricing from several major online retailers.
Overall I’m happy with the product and it’s definitely got a few features that I’ve not even touched as yet. For a full list of features, be sure to check out InterVocative’s website.
Also, for those interested, this is a great example of a “Smart Client” application (although the application is not written in .NET, at the website is :-)).