[plugin] Movie Showtimes (August 4 Update)

[Kilrsat]

I have a version of this that gets movie posters, trailers from apple.com, has a functioning "Opening this week", and has a few menu navigation improvements.

I'm doing a lot of testing and fixing the last little things with it, and as soon as its done I'll get it distributed.

[timeri]

The New version sounds great. Post it ASAP!!!

[Kilrsat]

Originally Posted by timeri

The New version sounds great. Post it ASAP!!!

I'm working through some of the issues with the current plugin at the moment (such as all the showtimes not actually being saved to the xml file, see the Development Discussion board if you want to take a peek).

I just happen to have a possible solution to it scribbled in my notebook, and I'll explore it more when I get home tonight. My testing last night was focused on the new things (posters/trailers/navigation), and tonight the target is fixing any outstanding issues.

One last addition I'd like to make is to give it an actual entry in the Settings list, and provide options to the user for what quality trailer, if any, to download, etc. Right now it just snags the high quality version. I really want to make sure whatever I release is as bug free and as easy to use as possible, since I doubt I'll have much time over the coming month to fix it. Maybe by the end of the week, really depends on my free time.

[damonbrodie]

Where does the plugin get it's data? I'm wondering if it will work in Canada?

[79DieselRabbit]

Originally Posted by damonbrodie

Where does the plugin get it's data? I'm wondering if it will work in Canada?

Yahoo

[vogelap]

Since you're working on a new version, I'd love to see an "UPDATING..." or "WORKING..." window displayed while information is downloaded, etc.

[SSDNAdmin]

Updated to v1.1.

Check out the first post for all new features, but it includes movie trailers!

-Brett

[Kilrsat]

A few more notes about some of the new stuff:
-Quicktime Alternative is essential for playback of trailers. The standard Quicktime install from Apple.com will not work.

-Movies and Theaters are alphabetized correctly now

-The IP banning by yahoo lasts around a little over an hour (the good thing is since I was banned for awhile I added some extra code in case this happens)

-You can bounce back and forth between Theater Details and Movie Details by selecting an item in each list. (If you're viewing Theater Details, selecting a movie takes you to the movie details screen for that movie and vice versa.)

-Theater Deatils and Movie Details both keep a sort of "History" so if you're on Theater A, go to Movie B, then go to Theater C, then Movie Q, and finally Theater Y. The escape key will take you back to Movie Q, then Theater C, then Movie B, then Theater A.

-It currently only handles US zip codes, sorry.

-Posters & Trailers are saved inside the plugin folder, which is inside the Beyond Media folder under the Docs & Settings\All Users. Posters are typically 7KB- 20KB, while high quality trailers are 15-30MB each. Trailers and Posters are automatically deleted 7 days after their creation.

-Showtimes should all be correct now

-All showtimes should appear when loading from the disk cache.

[roryboy]

Any chance that support for non-US (canadian) users will be added to this plug-in?

Rory

[vogelap]

Questions about the new 1.1 release (which is awesome, by the way!):

* Couldn't the trailers be STREAMED instead of downloading them?
* If I set DOWNLOAD TRAILERS to "False", can I view trailers at all?
* Can you give us scrolling options for movie descriptions? They're getting cut off for me (I cannot view the whole description).

[Kilrsat]

Originally Posted by vogelap

Questions about the new 1.1 release (which is awesome, by the way!):

* Couldn't the trailers be STREAMED instead of downloading them?

No, or at least, it didn't work when I tried.

* If I set DOWNLOAD TRAILERS to "False", can I view trailers at all?

If the movie already has a trailer downloaded, the View Trailers option will still be present. If there are no trailers for a movie (such as when apple.com doesn't have one, or you have not downloaded one) then the View Trailers option will not be present. The only use of the flag is in the DownloadTrailers function, which looks a little like this:

void DownloadTrailers() {
if (DownloadTrailersFlag == false) {
return;
}
....

So basically, setting it to false will prevent new trailers from being added, but current ones should still stick around. Also note, when its downloading trailers, it checks the filename of what it wants to get against the list of files already downloaded. If it finds a match, it doesn't download it again.

* Can you give us scrolling options for movie descriptions? They're getting cut off for me (I cannot view the whole description).

As I learn more about the widgets made available from BeyondMedia, this is on the list of things to correct.

[geoffstewart]

Originally Posted by roryboy

Any chance that support for non-US (canadian) users will be added to this plug-in?

Rory

I just installed this plugin. I had to do it manually since I got the same runtime excpetion as mentioned earlier in this thread. It was complaining about not having a method defined in shell32.dll. Could this be a XP vs. win2k thing? I have win2k. Anyways, once installed, it works great!

And I live in Ottawa, ON, Canada. I just put in my postal code and it worked great... take a look at yahoo.com to see you can get listings for your area first. If so, then you might just get them in the plugin too.

Cheers.

Geoff

[dequire]

Do the trailers auto expire after so long? Or can XXXGB HD space be allocated for them? It wouldn't take long for drives to fill up @ 30Mb / movie for every release...

[Kilrsat]

Originally Posted by dequire

Do the trailers auto expire after so long? Or can XXXGB HD space be allocated for them? It wouldn't take long for drives to fill up @ 30Mb / movie for every release...

Right now:
A poster/trailer downloaded will be auto-deleted 7 days after creation.

Everytime it does the update, it checks the existing files for items to purge. So anything that was created 7 days ago gets deleted.

And while I'm typing this I just realized there is a small issue with how the purging was done, its a little overaggressive. Not a showstopper, but after a week a few trailers may be unavailable until the next time it does its update.

[aperry]

Instead of deleting after 7 days, may I suggest that the trailer be deleted only when the movie no longer shows in the listings? Otherwise, for a movie that is out for a long time, you would be downloading the same trailer every 7 days.