bobafred

I’ve been using DVD Aficionado (DVDAF from hereon) since 2002. For the longest time, it did exactly what I wanted it to do: catalog my DVD collection while offering zero headaches. Recently that has changed.

They’ve been working on DVDAF 2.0 for a long time and recently launched it. The new version SUCKS hard. There’s a crappy JavaScript menu thing on the left that follows you as you scroll up and down. It’s horrible AND annoying. Also, there used to be a way to view all of my DVDs, up to 200, on a single page. This no longer exists. And, honestly, it just got ugly with shitty buttons and things all over the place.

But, here’s the best part. They switched to the new version and stopped accepting requests to the old links. So, pre-2.0 links were dead. There’s a simple migration process, but they never emailed their users to alert them to the change. At least, they never emailed me. I’ve since migrated my collection, but I just don’t like what they have to offer me anymore.

So, today I decided that I was tired of crap and I took my (free) business elsewhere to DVDSpot. To kick the tires a bit, I thought I’d search for what I felt were my most least known DVDs. Surprisingly they already had 3 of the 4 in their db. For the one disc they did not have, I was able to add it to a queue to be looked over by a moderator and then added. It should be noted that DVDAF offers this as well, at least they did at one point.

I spent some time entering my 160 or so DVDs today. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that there’s no export function on DVDAF. I made sure this feature existed on DVDSpot before I did anything. Thankfully, it does to a CSV file. DVDSpot also has a pretty cool statistics page that shows my top actors, directors, genres, etc. Another feature I’ll probably use is Movie Night, where you can pick a title from your collection and create an invite to a group of email addresses with time, date, movie name, etc. Tonight we’ll be watching Cabin Boy at my place. Stop by if you’re free! (Note: We’re not actually watching that. But, I do own it).

Is DVDSpot perfect? No. Is it better than DVDAF? Shit yes, most definitely. So, from now on, DVDSpot is the way to go. Unless I find something better.