[addon] IMDB Movie Ratings (February 10 Update)

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by BasVanDerBrugge

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.

That's also what I was wondering...

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.

It depends, I know that the extra properties I add to the PropertyBag's are making it to the various .xml files... So they might simply be dumping the property names + values from the database to those bags too...

[Kilrsat]

Adding a new column won't work and could possibly break things.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Kilrsat

Adding a new column won't work and could possibly break things.

Ok thanks, so I'll just need to extract the rating from the end of the description instead.

[BasVanDerBrugge]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

Ok thanks, so I'll just need to extract the rating from the end of the description instead.

That's probably the most practical approach. I'll play around a little with property bags to see if I can add a property for a guide entry that way. Anyone have any thoughts on if this is in fact possible?

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by BasVanDerBrugge

That's probably the most practical approach. I'll play around a little with property bags to see if I can add a property for a guide entry that way. Anyone have any thoughts on if this is in fact possible?

Don't worry about it, since kilrsat mention that it could potentially break something, no point in risking it.

[HebrewHammer]

Do you have to keep the program after running it or can i just run it and then delete it?

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by HebrewHammer

Do you have to keep the program after running it or can i just run it and then delete it?

Well, since it updates the database and every Guide updates rewrites that database...

Looking at the instructions, you can read: "3) Automatically refresh the IMDB data after a guide update has occurred", which would be hard to do if you were to delete it...

[HebrewHammer]

This could just me being stupid but, i don't see anything telling you where to install it. Should i put it in the "BeyondTV" folder? or can i just create a folder somewhere and put it in there. Also, I;m assuming the program runs itself after a guide update, it also closes itself too, right? Thanx, i know these are probably stupid questions but i can't exactly figure it out.

[BasVanDerBrugge]

Originally Posted by HebrewHammer

This could just me being stupid but, i don't see anything telling you where to install it. Should i put it in the "BeyondTV" folder? or can i just create a folder somewhere and put it in there. Also, I;m assuming the program runs itself after a guide update, it also closes itself too, right? Thanx, i know these are probably stupid questions but i can't exactly figure it out.

Good questions actually, I should have addressed them in my little write-up.

You can run IMDBUpdater from wherever you want - it finds the appropriate BeyondTV files and folders from wherever it lives.

To have the program run after a guide update (which is optional), the program needs to continue running in the background. This is accomplished by selecting "Hide" or minimizing the application. The program then disappears to the system tray, from where you can open it by either double-clicking the little icon or right-clicking the icon and choosing "Open IMDB Updater".

Note that IMDBUpdater uses extremely few resources when passively running in the background (it's just checking for guide updates eveyr minute or so), though it will eat a fair amount of CPU cycles when an update is in progress (which happens roughly once per day for a few minutes - after each guide update).

If you actually close the program instead of hiding/minimizing, it will not automatically update anymore (you will be prompted if you try a hard close).

[Sonsontv]

Would there be any way you could add more imdb info, like plugins for other systems? I've been dying to see imdb integration, such as view actor's other movies, or view imdb comments on the movie or tv show. I'm glad to see you got this far though, good work!

[BasVanDerBrugge]

Originally Posted by Sonsontv

Would there be any way you could add more imdb info, like plugins for other systems? I've been dying to see imdb integration, such as view actor's other movies, or view imdb comments on the movie or tv show. I'm glad to see you got this far though, good work!

Some of the additions you suggest would be a fairly significant enterprise, requiring mechanics different from the current tool. If anyone here has the skills and time to build on my tool, I'd be happy to provide them with my source code. However, I frankly don't have the time at this point.

Appreciate the feedback though, thank you.

[BasVanDerBrugge]

I got feedback that a user experienced the following error:

Error Finalizing Processing
The database file is locked
database is locked

Did anyone else have this problem? If so, which version of BeyondTV are you using? Are you also running Beyond Media?

Please either post here or respond to imdbupdater@gmail.com.

[RhinoPlasty]

I am really looking forward to using this add-in.

I receive an error when I launch IMDB Updater:

"Unable to logon to BeyondTV Server. Please exit application, start BeyondTV and start application again."

I have:
1. Installed .NET 2.0
2. Installed the .NET 2.0 patches via Windows Update
3. Unzipped IMDBUpdater into C:\IBMDUpdater on my BTV server machine
4. Downloaded the ratings file into this folder.
5. Launched IBMDUpdater.exe
6. I receive this message.

Thinking it might be related to security, I disabled security on my BTV server, no change.

Have I missed a step?

I am runing BTV 4.5 under WinXP. What am I missing?

[RhinoPlasty]

Update:

By ignoring the error message and processing the listing file, it appears to work. The IMDB x.x values appear on my movies.

Howerver, if I exit the program and reload it, I continue to get the error message. This means a reboot would require manual intervention to load the pgm.

I manually updated the tv listings. This did not trigger an automatic update from IMDBUpdater. Should it? Or is this a symptom of my error condition?

[BasVanDerBrugge]

Hi RhinoPlasty,

Those steps look fine. The warning is only supposed to appear if BTV is not running locally, but I assume you had (the full version of) BTV running before you started IMDBUpdater. I had someone else write me with the same problem, and he said he re-ran the BeyondTV setup to fix it - might be worth a shot. I may add some more diagnostic information to the next version to try and narrow down these types of errors.

To the question in your update: IMDBUpdater can automatically update the ratings, assuming it can successfully log into a running version of BTV. If it can't logon, you in fact need to run IMDBUpdater manually every time the guide is updated, since this wipes existing program descriptions.