Thread: Movie Listings... Coming to an RR near you!

Originally Posted by JohnWPB

I was just reading the past few posts.... and have an idea / suggestion:

Trying to scrape the information from IMDB is problematic at best, especially if the site changes in any way, as it ALWAYS does since Amazon took it over (Not to mention they strictly forbid people using their information, legally at least....)

It would probably be better to use a program such as DVD profiler to manage the movie collection. After you catalog your movies, it has an export to XML feature. This file contains all the actors, your notes, ratings, album art link ect. It will also be alot better than the 100 pixel wide DVD covers from IMDB

It would be as simple as selecting a movie in your list in Road Runner, pressing say an "Info" button, that would look through the XML and get all the info for that movie.

There are many advantages to doing it this way:

- Never worry about the website changing and the screen scraping breaking.
- High quality album art (both front and back)
- Very simple to parse an XML file
- It's all done locally and no Internet connection is needed
- A LOT more information is available to use (Aspect ratio, Audio Format, Genre, Easter Eggs, Studio, DVD Features and a lot more....)

DVD Profiler is a free download, and I bet many of you use it already.. I know I have for years. It is as easy as entering a movie title or UPC to add a movie to the database. It then gets the coverart and all information about the movie for you automatically.

i just downloaded dvd profiler and one of the first things it mentions is the requirement of internet connection. Soon after install it says its downloading an online profile list. Should i be looking for an older version or something? I do like the fact that they have a database query plugin that should make it easier to use than parsing the .xml file

No, you have the correct version. You do need an internet connection to get the movie information, (Unless you want to add actors, Cover art all manually).... heck you need a connection for that as well

This can, however, be done on a desktop system. Then all you need to do is transfer / sync the images and XML with the CarPC.

I have DVD Profiler here on my desktop. All movies are entered and done. If the plugin existed, it would just be a matter of exporting the XML file, and putting it on the CarPC.

The advantage is that an Internet connection is not needed every time you browse your videos, and wait for each one to load the information and images from the net.

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering are MOVIETIMESLAT and MOVIETIMESLONG still valid variables. No matter how I try to use them they come up blank.

Originally Posted by Twinsen

I still can't even figure out how to run this in Road Runner. Assistance please? Thanks.

read the readme.txt for instructions. Then get back to me with specifically what the problem is.

Originally Posted by GizmoQ

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering are MOVIETIMESLAT and MOVIETIMESLONG still valid variables. No matter how I try to use them they come up blank.

yes they are still in there.. but at what point are you trying to obtain the variables? The only time the variables are populated is during the "MOVIENAVIGATE" command is run. This command only works if the webservice i use can successfully convert the movie theater address to a lat and lon... and some of the theaters i've tested it with i cant find a lat/lon for. I asked if anyone knew a better geocaching site to use but noone came up with anything.

Originally Posted by Twinsen

There's nothing in the readme about how to "install" it or embed it to a skin. Only patch notes and where to place the files, which is in Road Runner dir, and to register the dll...

thats all you need to do to install it.. put the skin files in your skin folder, register the .dll and and X,Movietimes to your skins menu.skin. Thats it. Have u completed all of these steps? If so .. what happens when u run the MOVIETIMES command?