IMDB Ratings "Plugin"

[roygon]

New version is ready! Check the bottom of page 3 for the link and instructions.

RG

[roygon]

Forgot to mention a couple of things

1) the Snapstream database is usually located at:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SnapStream\Beyond TV

2) This app requires the VB6 runtimes and ADO 2.5. I figure most people already have these and they are very big so why include them. If anyone needs help finding these let me know and I'll find a link.

RG

[James]

nifty idea... nice to see people really jumping into the spirit of things and writing various extensions to the broad functionality of the applications..

Given the active community, once official support for 3rd party development is ushered in with 3.5, things should definitely get rather interesting..

[vogelap]

This tool looks awesome!

I wonder if there would be a way to provide a link to the IMDB page for a movie. Some previous versions of BTV had such a link, but it was taken out for some reason.

[Eric3a]

Great program. Thanks a lot.

The next step: From the Program Guide select a movie, and an additional choice comes up on the Menu to view details. Select and we have the current info, imdb rating and poster if possible.

Drooling...
Eric

[roygon]

Good suggestions but they will need to wait until version 3.5... Right now we're limited in what we can do as far as customization but I can't wait to get access to that API!

Thanks for the feedback,

RG

[pukka_parker]

Can't see anything...

I think my descriptions are too long, so the IMDB bit is dropping off the bottom of the FSUI. Any chance of it (optionally) truncating the description to a customizable length before adding the IMDB bit?

Cheers.
Nigel

[roygon]

Nigel,

When the program ran did it show something like:

Initializing Shows...
Database has been initialized
Retrieving show listings...
12377 listings being checked for ratings
Matches Found: 797
Updating SnapStream Database...
Updated 797 records
Update Complete

If it did not then there is a different problem but if it did and you still can't see the full description then that is very strange... Do your descriptions normally get cutoff? Are you running in a very low resolution?

I could change where the rating appears (at the beginning of the description for example) or cutoff part of the description as an optional parameter when running the program but I just want to make sure that I understand what is happening.

Thanks,

RG

[vogelap]

Originally posted by roygon
Are you running in a very low resolution?

I haven't tried the 'plugin' yet, but I run at 800x600. Is that considered a "very low" resolution?

[roygon]

I was thinking that 640x480 may cause descriptions to be clipped if font sizes weren't adjusted appropriately - 800x600 or above would definately not have an issue.

My gut tells me that something else went wrong here (maybe he didn't have the VB runtimes?) and the DB was not updated.

RG

[ticklemeozmo]

As a standard disclaimer for people writing apps which reference websites, please take a look at the website's robots.txt file in the webserver root.

For example, IMDB.com has a few rules for their server regarding programs which fetch their URLs and what ones they would like you not to view.

Please respect robots.txt

http://www.imdb.com/robots.txt

[roygon]

ticklemeozmo,

I wasn't aware of that robots.txt file. I did check and found that I did not access any folders in the list to generate the data for this program but thanks for pointing that out.

Another thing to note is that the IMDBRate app never hits their server (or any server) when it is run. All of the data is stored in the .DAT file which is included in the .ZIP file.

Thanks,

RG

[pukka_parker]

Originally posted by roygon
When the program ran did it show something like:
Initializing Shows...
Database has been initialized
Retrieving show listings...
12377 listings being checked for ratings
Matches Found: 797
Updating SnapStream Database...
Updated 797 records
Update Complete

Yep. It appeared to run fine.

Originally posted by roygon
Do your descriptions normally get cutoff? Are you running in a very low resolution?

Actually my descriptions do tend to get cut off although I am running on a fairly high resolution (something like 1280x768). I think it's because I am using a listings fetch program (Digiguide2XML) rather than snapstream.net and the descriptions are probably longer than BTV expects...

Originally posted by roygon
I could change where the rating appears (at the beginning of the description for example) or cutoff part of the description as an optional parameter when running the program but I just want to make sure that I understand what is happening.

Both of these options would be nice if it isn't too much work, and either would certainly solve my problem.

Thanks.
Nigel

[parkerbink]

Thanks

[roygon]

pukka_parker,

I had never seen the descriptions get cutoff on my own box but your explanation made sense. I'll put out an update in the next few days that allows you to set command line parameters to do the following:

-SHOWFIRST
Have the rating appear at the front of the description

-CLIPxxx (for example -CLIP200)
Clip the description to a specified number of characters (note that this option can not be reverted - after clipping the description is will be gone)

-UNDO
Undo all IMDB changes to the Database

I will also make changes to the IMDB.log file to make it more nicely formatted and create a new file BestBets.Log which will show the highest rated moving and channels / showtimes.

RG