Thanks Carl!

Well tuckndar, seems to me you should ask for a commission on sales from their new found wealth if they incorporate your ideas 

Just to note, Collectorz.com IS grandfathering their lifetime licence holders. Most people have three main issues with what happened, though: 1. the policy change was not announced in any way to their user base, 2. very little effort was made to change the website and the information on it to reflect the change (like a banner announcing it!) and 3. people who DID deserve a free upgrade to Movie Collector 5 courtesy of having purchased lifetime licences were charged anyway and only found out that they had been eligible by reading the user forums. Users that don't go near the forums are probably still in the dark.

So, it is not so much that collectorz.com "pulled a fast one" as it is that they didn't set things up for the transition very well.

MC 6, which releases tomorrow, will now fetch data exclusively from their own online database. Support for IMDB and every other source has been completely dropped.

v5 users should be OK because even after the one year support (IIRC) ends there's a big (geeky) user-base that should take care of changes to data retrieval scripts but this is a controversial decision to say the least. Lots of pissed off users on their forums - and for good reason! 

Quote from: nosh on December 08, 2008, 05:26 PM

MC 6, which releases tomorrow, will now fetch data exclusively from their own online database. Support for IMDB and every other source has been completely dropped.

I think it's not as bad as that sounds. From an update email they just sent out:

Quote

Now, when you download the DVD details of your specific edition, our system will automatically use Amazon to supply the missing cover image.
The beauty of it is: you won't even notice :-)

Are you using our Flic or CueCat scanner to add your DVDs?
Then version 6 will work out great for you!

You see, now our system will also do automatic Amazon Lookups for all barcode searches that are not recognized by our own database.
Again, you won't notice a thing, apart from getting more hits of course!

And if even Amazon reports: "never heard of that one", we've got a new "last resort" lookup solution (only for Region 1 discs though):

-- The excellent Region 1 DVD List published by hometheaterinfo.com --

It won't give you cover images, but it will at least recognize your barcodes and return basic information like Title, Year, Studio, Genre and Release Date. The list is updated on a daily basis, so it will be a great help keeping our results up-to-date.

Actually, it IS as bad as it sounds - at least until their database gets some teeth. Presently Alwin is trying to boast about how many movies are listed in their own database. Problem that I have experienced, however, is that the movies that are in there have very little detail for almost all movies. Only the front cover art - if any - and a summary of the plot. Not much else. I have mainly used DVDEmpire's database which has a tremendously greater amount of data in it for all movies that I have searched there.

Another issue is that Alwin is claiming that the reason for this change is that new users who download the demo version do not purchase because they are too confused by the Auto-Add dialog; that having multiple data sources is just too tricky for most new users. Sorry but that doesn’t quite go sown easily here. Besides, why not just add a "Simple" auto-add dialog that only searches their database, and keep the existing search dialog there for users who prefer it? Which is almost definitely the majority of existing users. Or, barring that, utilize the two separate versions - Standard and Pro - to differentiate between the multiple database search and the simple, one-database search?

Alwin even posted a thread to gather user suggestions for version 6 about a year ago, and then admittedly ignored all suggestions there in favor of his own - to limit the user data to his own admittedly lacking database.

In cases like mine where I am fortunate to have already built a database of my currently owned DVDs and managed to gather a lot of detailed data, using only the Collectorz.com weak database for new DVDs only is not quite as bad as someone who needs to add several hundred - or thousand - DVDs from scratch. I pity those users, as they will get only a bare minimum of detail for each DVD and will then have to add the remaining detail by searching for it outside of the Collectorz.com software and cut/paste it all into there individual database entries. I would not relish that task.

Jim

It is also somewhat ironic that a European company is only going to utilise Amazon for Region 1 titles!

I think there are two main reasons for this (and neither have anything to do with users):

1) They presumably pay licenses to allow people to access multiple data sources and by moving to a single source model they own they will reduce overheads. There may also have been some issues with the data source providers that users aren't aware of - like the growing amount of data exchange that some stores in particular would not be happy with (after all it doesn't generate income for them beyond licenses that Collectorz have been paying).

2) (And this is probably the primary reason) Multiple data sources take a lot of maintenance. During the lifespan of the Collectorz products these source scripts have had to be updated a number of times because they ceased to work. This has forced users to update and upgrade the software multiple times to maintain access to these sources. Now that they are charging customers for upgrades they are probably getting a lot of grief from customers because there is the potential that people will be forced to pay for upgrades just to maintain a working product. I can't see them updating older version scripts to allow multiple data source access indefinitely - in emails they have already suggested that Movie C. will only be supported for 12 months and even then they don't make it clear that the 12 months will include any updates or if it is just customer support. I think the primary reason is to have a data source that they can control so that they don't have maintain the access script library.

The fact that their own data source is woefully inadequate probably doesn't bother them too much - they never have shown much regard for what their customers want and on more than one occasion when many existing customers have screamed in frustration have simply taken the attitude "like it or lump it - it is what we are doing and we have no interest in what existing customers think". If their stated reason (ie. to simplify the user interface for users) was true then it could very easily be solved to everyone's satisfaction - simply have a default standard user interface with an advanced multi source interface for those who want/need to use it.

As it stands it is still good software but I'd guess for the majority of non-US customers we are stuck with using a scanner and keyboards to manually enter the correct data for items - which will doubtlessly be uploaded to their servers and so we become unpaid providers for their database.

Personally I think they should make the software free if this is the model they propose since I don't particularly want to work for a foreign company and pay them for the privilege. I am afraid I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that even with life time free upgrades I am going to uninstall their software and support an open source alternative that has more respect for users.

Any recommendations, Carol?

Thanks!

Jim

Not at the moment - there were some recommendations in the past for open source programs in these forums but I haven't looked at them recently.


I am also slightly curious about how they maintain their database - all of this artwork (as well as synposes etc) are copyright - how are they getting and paying for permission to use all this information - esp. if it is generated automatically by users? Are the copyright lawyers suddenly going to hit them for a multimillion settlement and wipe them out?