I'm looking to buy DVDpedia, BUT....

[corowakid]

Perhaps its me, but when I downloaded DVDpedia and tried to trial it before I bought, the first 2 DVDs I entered returned crazy titles. e.g.

I entered "Ray" (no inverted commas) - DVDpedia returned The Dark Knight. Story of Ray Charles, and a new title.

I entered "And Justice For All", I got Captain Horatio Hornblower. An old title, but has Al Pacino, so is a good seller.

I used the Cascade source, then tried Amazon US, but both returned the same info. Am I missing something?

My problem is I've been using Bookpedia for a long while (2400 titles so far) and have got solid, accurate information returned in virtually all cases. Before I shell out for DVDpedia I'd appreciate any comments on anything I've done wrong, or any instructions I'm not following. I assume I can trial a few inquiries before I buy the program (?).

TIA for any help.

[Conor]

By default DVDpedia will search keywords in all the possible fields a very broad search and "Ray" will return many results. When searching for words in the title limit the scope of the search to the title. In the search window look for a "limit to" pop up button, set it to title (right next to where you set cascade). This setup will work very well in almost every case except "Ray", try "And Justice For All" and you will get exactly the results you are looking for. This won't work for "Ray", because it matches "Blu-Ray" – it is a very special case. The actual title of The Dark Knight is "The Dark Knight (+ Digital Copy and BD Live) [Blu-ray]", DVDpedia strips the information from the title and puts it in the appropriate fields such as format and Blu-Ray is not shown in the title of the movie, but for the online search it still matches.

[corowakid]

Many thanks - I can see some problems with movies; often there are a number of them with the same title for instance. I'm happy to enter manually, as I'm only really interested in where the titles are located. Your Bookpedia program has been so good to me that I want to use DVDpedia rather than construct some half-baked spreadsheet or whatever.

Can you tell me if I purchase it from you online (I live in Australia), do I get a whole new program, meaning I'd need to transfer those titles I've entered, or do I merely get a registration at your business, and continue to use the program I downloaded from the 'Net to try.

I'd appreciate your advice.

[Conor]

The demo version is the complete program that without the serial number it's limited to adding 25 DVDs. When purchasing you will immediately receive a serial number that allows you to register the version of the program you already have (use Register under the DVDpedia menu). The movies already added will continue to be there after registering.

Spreadsheets are a great solution, but why go just text when you could have DVDpedia.