Simon Butcher

I'm frequently running into a problem now where I'll see a movie or TV series that I want, but I'm not sure I've bought.

To make my life easier, I've decided to list my collection online. This ensures that where-ever I am, I can check the list and determine what I have in my library and what's missing, similar to how my IMDb addiction has turned my IMDb vote history into a log of what I've seen and what I haven't seen.

I've spent months trying to decide whether to write my own software, or use an "off the shelf" package. I whittled the list down to two free web-based packages, specifically VCD-db and Open Media Collectors Database (OpenDb).

VCD-db is an amazingly clean and well structured piece of code. I appreciate this kind of code, because writing clean and well structured code is something I always strive to do.

Over-all though, OpenDb won because of its flexibility. Its code-bed is no where near as mature as VCD-db but is being actively developed. The reason I chose OpenDb over VCD-db is purely one of flexibility above features. This package allows me to tag items in the database with any attributes I want, however like VCD-db it does not gracefully handle box-sets.

For my own sanity I'm using scans of the original DVD slicks of my versions of the DVDs and this is somewhat time-consuming for the current collection. For now I've scanned and tagged only one shelf worth of DVDs, and I expect it may be a few months before the entire collection has been added to the database. If you're keen to have a look, you can view my full listing of what's presently online.

Naturally the site needs a fair bit of customisation, including a new design, but it's a work in progress for now. Once complete, I'll add a link to the beast on the front page quietly for all to see.