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.
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.
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.
YouTube, or nearly any Social Media.
Being Art and how and why you ingest it is a personal thing, means you will never really get from any particular source good suggestions.
Sometimes you want a dumb action flick, just to relax, you don't want a social commentary on why the movie is so bad, because the horse drawn carriage caught on fire when it crashed.
Sometimes you want something smart, but what people recommend for it, movies that just may be too dull, or what is smart for them is cliche to you.
Social Media, tends to work better because you relate to people who are similar mindset you are in.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Rotten Tomatoes for the fan opinion.
IMDB for the movie studio propaganda.
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.
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.
Why, The Pirates Bay's Top 100 Videos of course. https://thepiratebay.org/top/200/
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
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.
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?
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.
It had never occurred to me to ever actually TRACK what I read, listen to or watch on TV/Movies.
. Why would anyone even want to track it?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
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.
Exactly ... why would I track, my readings, as if I'm to dumb to remember when I read a book the last time? Ire read a book after a few years after I read it last time ... I just go to my library and browse through them, take them in my hand and think about it ...
However I would like it if my eBook readers would know when I bought or downloaded a book and when I read it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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
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 ?
It used to be better before they were bought out, but it is still pretty good.
A lot of series I want to keep up on when new content becomes available, but it's a real pain to figure out when/where without being inundated with other crap. ie: I'd love to know when the next X is coming out, I don't want to wade through every social media post they put out in order to get that info
That or simply trying to figure out where I left off. I might lose track of a show in a mid-season break and get back to it a year or more later and need to figure out what episode I was last on. For TV series, EpGuides.com is great for dates, not so much for episode descriptions.
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.
Social Media, tends to work better because you relate to people who are similar mindset you are in.
Even with differing mindsets, reviews are more meaningful when you're familiar with the source. Similar reviews, depending on the reviewer's preferences, can lead me to entirely different conclusions.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
YouTube is my big research tools for games. A few let's plays let me see if I'll think the game is worth it without spending a dime.
If the "player" presenting the video is annoying, I mute it and just watch.
Most of the time the player has a good sense of what to show and often the right ones will give decent insight on how the various sub-systems of the game work.
For books and movies and the like, I turn to people I know and/or like for tips and advice. Podcasts where the hosts have had a good track record with liking the things I like or at least who have presented a good feel for describing something without spoiling it.
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 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!