Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Apps and Online Services You Use To Discover, Track and Evaluate Movies, TV Shows, Music and Books?
Earlier this week, news blog Engadget had a post in which the author outlined some of the apps that could help people keep track of TV shows, books, and music habits. A reader, who submitted the story, said the list was quite underwhelming. Curious to hear how Slashdot readers tackle these things.
Facebook ftw.
Not sure what Engadget has to say about this.
I google "recommended books on <subject>". Then evaluate the responses carefully for bias, relevance to my needs, cluelessness, etc.
I haven't had actual TV service in over a decade.
I've had my Netflix account so long I can't even remember when I started on the service.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I only use programs.
I don't need anyone to tell me what I'd like to read, listen or watch.
and just watch a movie or tv show and if you don't like it, oh well. not a big deal
MyAnimeList + trackma
If someone needs an app just to keep track of TV shows that they're watching then they really do have too much time on their hands.
One of the best indicators of a show's quality to me has always been the number of people who are downloading/seeding the episodes on torrent trackers, as well as the number of teams that release torrents for that show.
that could help advertisers keep track of your TV shows, books, and music habits
FTFY
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I ask myself, "Is this TV, Music, Movie or Book crap?"
Then I tell myself, "Yes. It's pure crap."
Amazingly I'm right at least 90% of the time
Why would this require an app? Dang, y'all consume a LOT more media than I do. That's not healthy. Sheesh.
I do however recommend Common Sense Media as a way to discover and screen movie, TV shows, and games for children.
IMdB to see if movies are out and then https://rarbg.to/
For TV shows I use https://showrss.info/
Both sites I then use to see if I like what I see and if I do, I have seen something I liked and if I don't, I have seen something I did not like.
Till now I agree 87% with my own opinion. That is more than I will agree with anybody else.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
just air a program on the same day at the same time for the whole fucking season, without breaks or the too-common holiday hiatus...
then if the networks had the brains, they'd also air encores of every airing of scripted series episodes later in the week during the overnight hours so dvr users can avoid any scheduling conflicts, and for those work second shifts and never get to watch 'prime time' tv.
Whenever I encounter a book/movie/album review or mention that seems interesting, then I typically write the title in the notes app on the iphone. Low tech but good enough.
windows 10 dont it track everything
Rotten Tomatoes for the fan opinion.
IMDB for the movie studio propaganda.
I use sonarr for tv
I use goodreads site to track my reading and find some future reading. Quite pleasant way for tracking what you have read, tons of book ratings/reviews and easy way to discover more books by authors you like (especially useful for new releases). Even if I find book somewhere else I tend to check its description and reviews to check if its worth buying.
Next-episode.net has been invaluable for tracking TV to me, and finding new shows and what's playing.
I think they are doing movies now too
Use Slashdot to get movie and TV recommendations:
On Netflix, watch Altered Carbon, Hap & Leonard and Into the Badlands. They're pretty good. Black Mirror is completely overrated. Imagine the Twilight Zone with all the subtlety removed. Each episode is one joke, hammered over and over again because the creators of the show think its viewers are really really stupid. It's a dumb person's idea of what a smart show should be like. Oh yeah, Altered Carbon has some nize tiddies in it, so start there.
On Amazon Prime, Mozart in the Jungle is good, Sneaky Pete is good and you can catch up on all those BBC mystery shows about a big city detective from (London, Glasgow, Dublin) who moved to some small town on the coast of (Scotland, Ireland, Wales) and solves crimes. My wife loves that shit and I confess I enjoy a good rural Scottish accent.
See, you got all those good recommendations for free and I won't sell your personal data to anyone or track you when you pause the movie to go pee.
You are welcome on my lawn.
TV is a libturd propaganda outlet. You can't just stop watching it - that's blasphemy.
The "critics" on RT are completely useless. In some cases, I suspect excessive corporate influence. In some cases they appear want to have it both ways- they right a reasonable review with pluses and minuses and then rate the film a "10".
The audience ratings are useful for now. I suspect some way will be found to corrupt them over time (bots perhaps?)
I also listen to youtube to discover new shows and movies.
I have minimal cable. It literally would be $78 without cable and it's $68 with cable. I actually tune to cable about.. hmm. once per 3-4 months? It's pretty sucky cable except I get a choice of HBO or Showtime. So I watch westworld and game of thrones and then I'm done.
Too many new shows are dystopic and dystopic puts me off.
Too many commercials on network television.
Lately I've been watching old tv shows on youtube. *Very* entertaining. Laugh out loud funny. Saw a very serious dramatic piece with *Milton Berle!!!*. Turns out he was nominated for an emmy for the performance.
But mostly, the TV stays tuned to Netflix. I'll drop into Amazon Prime for specific shows a couple times a year but their service constantly steers me to paid content which is a waste of my time since I will not pay $2 for a tv show and they don't tell me at the top it's a paid show or let me filter to "free only".
So most stuff I watch is on Youtube, then on Netflix.
Oh and i watch british stuff my friend checks out from the library.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I find TV Calendar (https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/) to be invaluable.
Just call Facebook. They track everything.
I just don't watch much TV or movies or read all that many books for entertainment anymore. I do follow a lot of blogs and YouTube channels around my interests (music and gardening, mostly). If I do watch a TV show or movie or read something, it's typically because a friend or family member has recommended it or it's something I've already been interested in for a long time (like the Marvel universe stuff). *shrug*
Music on the other hand... I take suggestions from Last.fm, from Spotify, from blogs I read and YouTube channels I watch, from YouTube itself sometimes, and sometimes I just listen to something because the album name sounds cool or the album art looks cool or something. I look at a lot of new releases lists every week just to see if something new catches my eye. It might be nice to have an app that culled all of those various new releases together into one place for me, filtered out duplicates, with an option to filter out re-releases and live albums and greatest hits collections and such.
Why, The Pirates Bay's Top 100 Videos of course. https://thepiratebay.org/top/200/
i do not use any "services" for these things.
In fact, the usage of word "service" itself is a huge red flag in this context.
I have however done a few "ratings adjustments" using botnets on review sites and is of the opinion that anyone using these sites for information is a retarded moron.
A combination of imageboards, tpb etc, and scene release sites are all that anyone needs to make an informed opinion about the media landscape.
I rely a lot on word-of-mouth but some things I'm not sure I'm gonna like so I test the waters first by torrenting them, if they look alright at first blush I get into it.
Books, music, movies, tv-shows you name it. I've spent thousands of dollars in the last year alone thanks to BitTorrent as a way of exploring content
When they had actual numeric ratings, it was much easier to determine how bad a movie was (kind of like the moderation here.
Turds up or turds down would be ok, if they showed the count. Netflix does seem to have a reasonably good notification system via email or recommended for you categories.
For curating my collections, I have a couple different programs I use on different systems.
Kodi does a good job scraping shows, movies and music data.
Calibre does a good job with eBooks.
I was using a program called Shelves on my phone so I didn't buy copies of paper books I already owned.
For new releases of books or movies, social media will usually let you know when something of interest I also have some publishing houses that send me emails regarding new releases.
My go-to app for discovering new TV shows and movies is called “friends and coworkers”. There’s often enough information to be found there which makes it easier for me to decide whether or not a show sounds interesting.
If I can’t find it there, though, I generally go to the “extended family” app. I’ve discovered a few gems thanks to that service.
#DeleteChrome
Books -- GoodReads
Movies -- icheckmovies.com, imdb.com
TV -- followmy.tv
For TV shows, I record the season number, episode number, total number of episodes in this season and day of the week (or next season's premiere start date if it's not airing yet) in, shock horror, a text file. It's then a question of finding the next episode online (pick your favourite, ahem, download site that lists TV shows) and incrementing the episode number when you've downloaded it.
For movies and music, I just find "recent downloads" for the media category on my favourite download listing sites (used to use a curated site until recently when it just stopped updating in a broken state too :-( ) and I might use that site or others to download the media.
I'll occasionally go to one of those "what's coming in fall"-type TV show preview sites (tv.com or whatever) to scoop up new TV show premiere dates. I'll also give a shout out to TV Calendar which can be handy for this.
For TV and movies: mainly just various media websites who have film/tv reviewers. Also, reddit. And then some other services for obtaining the files. I always make sure to pirate this stuff and never pay, unless they sell files comparable to what pirates offer -- which has turned out to be extremely rare (I have enough fingers to count all the vidoes that the one person who was in the video sales business, Louis C.K., sold me).
For music it's a vastly wider net, though I guess you could say it starts with Google and often ends at Youtube. Also, reddit. Word-of-mouth from other humans, face-to-face. Then it ends at Amazon or bandcamp or sometimes somewhere else (or right after the live show), where I buy CDs. (Yes, I prefer to get CDs rather than download.) And as long as DRM-free media is available in some form (even if CDs go away), I'll continue buying instead of pirating. If they switch to anything proprietary, I'll switch to piracy and start saving a couple hundred dollars a month.
Books are handled similarly to music, except less researchy and more dependent on word-of-mouth. They are always physical, paper books.
I socialize with other humans and consider the recommendations of my friends. I know, totally weird not using some sort of app to do that.
I use the WOM 'app', Word Of Mouth it has not artificial, but natural intelligence.
Are you saying that you subscribe to Netflix but don't really use it? Like, it's just some monthly payment that you haven't gotten around to cancelling?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Am I the only one who thinks this so-called 'story' looks like an infomercial?
There's too many distractions these days especially Youtube. So Feedbro and other RSS Chrome plugins are good to reduce distraction.
I already have so many different shows queued up in Netflix, that I can't even keep up with them all... so I'm not so much interested in finding new shows/movies to watch, right now. There are, however, quite a few movies (not available on Netflix) which I wouldn't mind picking up, but I'm not so much interested in paying top dollar for them... so the only thing I'm really interested in tracking is sales on those movies. So towards that end, I happened upon an app called CheapCharts*, which tracks sales on iTunes. The default behavior drives you towards their list of all movies that are on sale... but it also gives you the option to shut off tracking of media types that you don't care about, which reduces the cruft a bit, and it gives you an option to create a "wishlist" of movies/shows/music that you're specifically hoping to buy, so that you know when they go on sale.
Since downloading CheapCharts months ago, I've only seen sales for four of the multitude of movies from my wishlist, so the sales I'm looking for aren't exactly frequent... but at least I'll have a chance at catching them, when they finally do go on sale.
* Addendum: The app is also available for Android -- and logically enough, the Android version also tracks media sales on Amazon -- though, it seems to me that Movies Anywhere makes the source of your purchases a bit of a moot point, at least where movies are concerned.
I am a member of Goodreads and it's really bad at showing me stuff I like based on what I liked before.
But that's kinda to be expected... most of these systems seem to be based in tags and usually not very good ones at that.
Same thing with porn. Amazon is sometimes able to actually make worthwhile connections based on my browsing habits and previous purchases...
But all in all I have yet to encounter ONE SINGLE algorithm that is actually makes my live somewhat consistently easier.
Most seem to be no better than a placebo.
I use a web browser app (e.g. Firefox, Chromium) to get recommendations; there are tons of websites where critics and laymen discuss media. I've even picked up a pointer or two from comments here on /.
The app in astronomically-distant second place would be my mail reader, where maybe every few years a friend might say something like "Dude, have you checked out ___?" or something like that.
A lot of communication and recommendations from other people don't involve an app at all. Maybe indirectly. Every couple weeks I have drinks with people I play Clash of Clans with, and sometimes someone mentions a TV show. So I guess you could credit CoC as another exception to it being exclusive web browsers? *shrug*
The web browser also features prominantly in acquisition, though deluge-gtk sees a little use too. And I think I have used Google Maps a couple times when in other cities, to find a used bookstore. Ancient paperbacks are somehow The way to read sci-fi, don't ask me why. ;-)
Silly, he is not watching TV but Netflix ... so simple, isn't it?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Is this just a trolling question to sample this population and find out what people are doing, then advertise to that? I'm not intending to troll myself here, but this is the first thought that came to mind when I saw the title.
I don't know what an app is but i use duckduckgo and search this "summer movie releases 2018" and i get a list of all the movies to be released this summer. Oh they are called programs,not apps. amazing how so many fall for tech marketing gimmick names Apps ,cloud...ok im done :}
Jack of all trades,master of none
Discogs is amazing, to bad they never acknowledge their contributors and development is so slow. As well, sadly the incredible useful last.fm is still making itself less useful monthly, even for subscribers.
I have a kindle e-reader and it links very nicely to GoodReads. It tracks the books I've read and my ratings. In addition it has a circle of friends option that lets you follow authors or friends and what they are reading. I find it easy to use and a great resource to find new reads. Many authors also use the service and it is kind of cool to see what Stephen King or George Martin is reader as well as the newest authors on Amazon that only publish in e-book format. Michael Anderle and the Kutherian Gambit series is my current line, there are at least 21 of those.
https://www.goodreads.com/
For Movies there is always Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDB.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I sure don't.
It used to be better before they were bought out, but it is still pretty good.
I use this thing called: "Hmm, do I want to see this movie or not?" Works every time.
The top 100 from each category is the best rating system I've found. I would never download the torrents though, that would be *NOT THEFT*
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
sometimes mobilism.org
Why are so many of the comments about how you find things to watch or listen to? This article is about something much more inane.
From TFA:
"So how do we remember everything we've listened to lately? How do we show off what we've read? Indeed, there are quite a few apps dedicated to showcasing the media experiences we've "collected." We've gathered some of the better ones so you can easily keep track of -- and brag about -- what you're watching, listening to, playing and reading in this digital age."
This summary is ALL you need to know about this nugget of "news".
Ugh. How do we remember what we've read? Show off? Showcasing? Brag about? FFS.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I use my wiki to track nearly every substantial piece of media I consume, going back about five years now (Trump-era political comedy excluded, because there's simply too much of it, and I mostly use it as background noise).
My motto is: if it's too much bother to record, it's not worth my mental energy to consume (recording takes about 2% of the total time). I've already recorded 23 items in March 2018 (nine days).
An interesting side effect is that my ability to rapidly select the best content has substantially improved as a result.
I also have my browser set up so I rarely see any advertising at all.
I really believe that you are what you think.
https://christiananswers.net/s...
I discover movies by periodically checking iTunes trailers and the movies section of iTunes to look at new trailers that seem interesting to me. I also check out recommendations from friends and family.
For TV shows itâ(TM)s checking whatâ(TM)s new on Netflix and iTunes (I have an Apple TV).
For music I listen to samples of top songs and new songs from iTunes. Sometimes I checkout related artists. Sometimes I listen to record labels channels on YouTube or preview whole songs there. I use Shazam in my gym to find out the name of a cool song I heard. I listen to some online music stations (ah.fm, Di.fm, Raw Fm). I also listen to some radio stations in my car but Iâ(TM)m annoyed by the amount of talking and ads. Now and then I listen to friend recommendations.
For books I look on the amazon kindle store at what is rated highly in the section or on the topic I want and checkout reviews and samples. I might checkout recommendations from Redditâ(TM)s I read too.
As I buy everything legit I can just check my kindle and iTunes library to track what Iâ(TM)ve watched and read. Not really into tracking though. My life should be more than, hereâ(TM)s when I watched happy Gilmore.
Games is looking at steam, watching YouTube videos of people reviewing and playing.
I evaluate stuff before buying by checking out free samples (trailers, music, kindle whatâ(TM)s inside). I donâ(TM)t really evaluate stuff and post reviews after buying it.
I don't use "apps" but there are recommender websites that allow you to rate books, movies, TV shows, etc., and then suggest similar ones you would enjoy on the basis of your similarity to other users.
For video, I think Criticker is very good. You rate films and TV shows you've seen on a scale of 0 to 100, and it then predicts your rating of unseen media (and fairly accurately, I must say). It also allows you to write capsule reviews, and to read those left by others. I find these really helpful when trying to choose between similarly ranked films. You can also filter recommendations by genre, country, year, etc.
For books, everyone seems to use Goodreads. I think its recommendation system is terrible, though it does feature community reviews which are pretty decent.
I maintain a multi-stream account.
My brother uses one (he's living with me).
My parents use one.
When I feel like watching something, I use one.
It's getting used. Just, I'm not the one who's using it the majority of the time.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I used to get movie and TV show listings from the Sunday newspaper, nowadays newspapers are heavily biased and not worth the paper they're printed on.
For movies I use the Fandango app to check movie showtimes at my local theater(s). I do not bother with reading reviews of movies that I plan on watching myself, however, for movies that I have no intention to see I read critic and audience reviews for a good laugh. It shows how heavily biased the critics were and to see if I was mistaken about how bad the movie would be by reading the audience reviews, which tend to have an air of truth to them.
For TV shows I visit my brother 2-3 times a year and take a look at whatever shows he has been watching lately to find the 1 or 2 decent shows to buy Blu-rays of. There is no TV service worth subscribing to.
To track my Blu-ray collection I use the website: blu-ray.com, to track movies seen in theaters I use the website: Letterboxd. I often write reviews of both Blu-ray and theatrical movies on both sites, although I tend to favor blu-ray.com more than Letterboxd since it allows for easier discussion of all content.
I do not track and review TV shows since I watch so few and only well after they originally aired.
I only have 6 books, no need to track my "collection" with any app: My Side of the Mountain, Chicks in Chainmail, H2G2, Masters of Doom, Guns Germs and Steel, and The Pleasure Model. I've never written a review for a book since years tend to pass before I ever finish reading them.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!