[addon] IMDB Movie Ratings (February 10 Update)

[SSDNAdmin]

Author: basvanderbrugge@gmail.com

Short Description: Adds IMDB movie ratings to BeyondTV guide
Long Description: IMDB Updater is a simply utility for BeyondTV that helps separate good movies from the bad, based on ratings from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). The program does a couple of things: 1) Add IMDB ratings to the movie descriptions in the electronic program guide. 2) If selected, add a “Top-rated” sub-category to the BeyondTV movies section, which displays all movies with a rating above a certain threshold value. 3) If selected, adds a "No Rating" sub-category to the BeyondTV movies section, which displays all movies for which IMDB Updater could not find a rating in the IMDB database. 4) If selected, automatically refreshes the IMDB data after a guide update has occurred.
Version Number: 1.3
Status: Beta
Last Updated: 2/10/2008
Homepage:
Installation Instructions: Extract and run IMDBUpdater.exe

Release Notes:

What it does:

IMDB Updater is a simply utility for BeyondTV that helps separate the good movies from the bad, based on ratings from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). The program does a couple of things:

1) Adds IMDB ratings to the movie descriptions in the electronic program guide.
2) If selected, adds a "Top-rated" sub-category to the BeyondTV movies section, which displays all movies with a rating above a certain threshold value.
3) If selected, adds a "No Rating" sub-category to the BeyondTV movies section, which displays all movies for which IMDB Updater could not find a rating in the IMDB database.
4) If selected, automatically refreshes the IMDB data after a guide update has occurred. Click here for some sample screen shots.

Requirements:

IMDB Updater needs to be executed on a computer that has the full version of BeyondTV running. The program also requires a copy of the file "ratings.list" (a text file with IMDB ratings data), a current version of which can be downloaded at any of the locations listed below (it needs to be unzipped with a utility such as WinZIP or WinRAR before it can be used by IMDB Updater).
- ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/misc/movi...atings.list.gz
- ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.i...atings.list.gz
- ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/tv+movies/imdb/ratings.list.gz

Additionally, the program requires .NET 2.0, which can be downloaded here.

Disclaimer:

You use this tool at your own risk. While I tried to make this tool safe and easy to use, I take no responsibility for any damage, inconvenience or ill-effects caused directly or indirectly by this program. If it works for you: great. If it does not work as you had hoped, crashes your computer, causes you to miss your favorite movie, breaks your BeyondTV installation or does anything else you consider undesirable: too bad. For any questions or comments, reach me at basvanderbrugge@gmail.com

What's new in 1.2?
- Prompt for providing BeyondTV password when starting IMDBUpdater, so that it can operate in secured BeyondTV environments.
- Optional "No rating" category that contains all movies for which no IMDB rating was found.
- Allow user to specify a tolerance (in years) for matching the movie year in the guide data and the IMDB database. Setting this to zero indicates that the movie year will not be checked (i.e. it just takes the first match based on title), which may be useful for imported guide data that does not have movie years.
- Somewhat improved movie title matching logic.
- May now work on 64-bit systems (not tested).

What's new in 1.3?
- Optional automatic logon when IMDBUpdater starts
- Guide updates now done "offline" to prevent occasional database conflict errors

License: Free
Requirements: BeyondTV (full version)

Download IMDPUpdater v1.3.zip

[cfaslave]

Very nice.

[vogelap]

VERY COOL. I like this a lot -- it should be integrated into BTV!

THANKS!

EDIT: Note that the correct URL where you can download ratings.list is ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/misc/movies/database/ .

[vogelap]

It's really cool, but BOY, when it's running (processing), eat absolutely EATS the CPU cycles. My Firefly stopped responding, my BTV was sluggish as anything (I finally had to terminate the BTV process).

I hope a future version will eliminate this issue.

[BasVanDerBrugge]

Originally Posted by vogelap

It's really cool, but BOY, when it's running (processing), eat absolutely EATS the CPU cycles. My Firefly stopped responding, my BTV was sluggish as anything (I finally had to terminate the BTV process).

I hope a future version will eliminate this issue.

I use a standard BackgroundWorker component, which does not let you change thread priority. I'll see if I can create a custom thread with lower priority when I have time. I may also try throwing some "sleeps" in the loop, which may improve responsiveness for other threads. It should not run more than once a day, and then only for a few minutes, so hopefully it is not too disruptive.

Also thank you for pointing out my ftp link was not complete. I'll send an update request with updated links and some other changes to the SnapStream folks in a bit.

[BasVanDerBrugge]

Originally Posted by BasVanDerBrugge

I use a standard BackgroundWorker component, which does not let you change thread priority. I'll see if I can create a custom thread with lower priority when I have time. I may also try throwing some "sleeps" in the loop, which may improve responsiveness for other threads. It should not run more than once a day, and then only for a few minutes, so hopefully it is not too disruptive.

Also thank you for pointing out my ftp link was not complete. I'll send an update request with updated links and some other changes to the SnapStream folks in a bit.

Alright, an updated version is available at www.imdbupdater.com. This version is a little less CPU hungry (and as a consequence takes a little longer to update). Also fixed a couple of minor things, most notably the fact that the last update time was not displayed in local time.

I sent an update form to the SnapStream folks, so this forum page should have the new version in the near term.

[Fonceur]

Just wondering, as far as BTV is concerned, does it simply appears as an extra property labeled IMDB in the database?

[geoffstewart]

I've tried this out (v1.01) and I like it a lot, but I can't seem to get the Top Rated category to show up in my FSUI... are there any tricks other than running this app and having the checkbox checked?

Geoff

Edit:
Nevermind... I found it... I wasn't going under the Movies category to see it. Thanks for your work on this.

[Clive Gordon]

I like idea of this program and it appears that the program runs fine.
But It does not update any thing in my guide. I am not getting anything rated. I am using xmltv data that is imported into BTV by an importer program.

Any ideas why it does not work for me??

[geoffstewart]

When imdb updater runs, do you see the progress bar at the bottom that shows how many movies it's updating? For example, when it runs on my machine, it shows xxx/2034 where xxx is the movie it's currently working on.

It might be that your xmltv importer does not mark shows as movies so the imdb updater does not find any to update.

[BasVanDerBrugge]

Originally Posted by geoffstewart

When imdb updater runs, do you see the progress bar at the bottom that shows how many movies it's updating? For example, when it runs on my machine, it shows xxx/2034 where xxx is the movie it's currently working on.

It might be that your xmltv importer does not mark shows as movies so the imdb updater does not find any to update.

That seems like a likely explanation to me - the tool needs the movies to be correctly categorized in the database as 'movie'. I'm not familiar with importing guide data, so I can't provide much more help here, sorry. If you want, try sending me your "guide.db" file (search your windows drive) at imdbupdater@gmail.com, and I'll try and poke around a bit.

Also, make sure you check the descriptions of a couple of different movies: it may not find a rating for all movies. The tool works by matching the movie title and the movie year, so sometimes it won't be able to find a rating because the IMDB and BeyondTV data don't exactly match (or because the movie is not in IMDB).

Btw, to answer an earlier question: the tool works by adding the IMDB rating at the end of the movie description (no new fields added to the data base).

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by BasVanDerBrugge

Btw, to answer an earlier question: the tool works by adding the IMDB rating at the end of the movie description (no new fields added to the data base).

Ok thanks, so that does explain why BTV is displaying it. Would that make the process longer if you were to also add a new IMDB field with its value? I could use that as an extra column to sort on, or an extra filter in the searches in my addon...

[Clive Gordon]

The movies in btv show up under the movies category. My guide does not seem to include the movie year. I am guessing it just can't match them up. I will email the guide.db for you to look at.

Originally Posted by BasVanDerBrugge

That seems like a likely explanation to me - the tool needs the movies to be correctly categorized in the database as 'movie'. I'm not familiar with importing guide data, so I can't provide much more help here, sorry. If you want, try sending me your "guide.db" file (search your windows drive) at imdbupdater@gmail.com, and I'll try and poke around a bit.

Also, make sure you check the descriptions of a couple of different movies: it may not find a rating for all movies. The tool works by matching the movie title and the movie year, so sometimes it won't be able to find a rating because the IMDB and BeyondTV data don't exactly match (or because the movie is not in IMDB).

Btw, to answer an earlier question: the tool works by adding the IMDB rating at the end of the movie description (no new fields added to the data base).

[Kilrsat]

Updated

[BasVanDerBrugge]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

Ok thanks, so that does explain why BTV is displaying it. Would that make the process longer if you were to also add a new IMDB field with its value? I could use that as an extra column to sort on, or an extra filter in the searches in my addon...

I'm not sure about the mechanics of adding a new field. I guess I could add a new column to the underlying guide database, though I'm not sure if that would break anything. More importantly, I'm pretty sure the new field would not be available through the API. Since I assume you use the API for Negociator (and not direct database access), it would not be of much help to you.