Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Apps and Online Services You Use To Discover, Track and Evaluate Movies, TV Shows, Music and Books? 84
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.
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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 Me
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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.
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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 recor
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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?
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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.
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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 ser
For IT books (Score:2, Interesting)
I google "recommended books on <subject>". Then evaluate the responses carefully for bias, relevance to my needs, cluelessness, etc.
Honestly? I don't... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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Silly, he is not watching TV but Netflix ... so simple, isn't it?
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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.
Apps (Score:4, Funny)
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Nothing (Score:1)
I don't need anyone to tell me what I'd like to read, listen or watch.
sometimes you have to take chaces (Score:5, Insightful)
and just watch a movie or tv show and if you don't like it, oh well. not a big deal
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obvi
where do you go for that?
Anime (Score:1)
MyAnimeList + trackma
Torrent trackers (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
that could help advertisers keep track of your TV shows, books, and music habits
FTFY
Personal word of mouth (Score:1)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [commonsensemedia.org] as a way to discover and screen movie, TV shows, and games for children.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Notes app (Score:4, Insightful)
Two sources (Score:4, Interesting)
Rotten Tomatoes for the fan opinion.
IMDB for the movie studio propaganda.
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https://www.cinesift.com/ [cinesift.com] also since it combines all! Although, its search engine sucks.
goodreads (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
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
Step Right Up (Score:2)
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
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I was really dissapointed in the latest season of Black Mirror. Especially âZDavid Slade's S04E05 which was so bad, I later found out, they turned it to black and white to distract viewers from how bad it was, and to date is also the shortest black mirror episode as well, as they cut out a 20 minute subplot of some greasy nerd controlling the dog on the other end as a sort of game.
TL;DR I've written off Black Mirror forever. Everyone should watch seasons 1 and 2 of black mirror though, pure ar
Youtube and Rotten Tomatos audience scores (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
TV Calendar (Score:5, Informative)
Facebook (Score:2)
The Pirate Bay (Score:4, Informative)
BitTorrent (Score:1)
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
I would have said Netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
A couple apps come to mind (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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I should also mention that both apps include social chat functionality which people often use to compare notes after watching something.
Re: A couple apps come to mind (Score:2)
In my experience the social chat app is often broken, and even when it works it's flooded with nonsense, pointless jabber, and heated but vacuous arguments about politics and conspiracy theories. I deleted my account years ago and have been much happier since then.
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It does seem like the developers lost interest in dealing with bug reports or looking at RFEs shortly after Facebook moved into the space.
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A text file and web search... (Score:2)
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
Friends (Score:2)
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.
WOM (Score:2)
I use the WOM 'app', Word Of Mouth it has not artificial, but natural intelligence.
Infomercial? (Score:2)
Same premise, different objective... (Score:2)
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 [apple.com]*, which tracks sales on
None actually (Score:2)
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 th
To sample this population to find what people use? (Score:2)
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 use a program (Score:2)
Goodreads (Score:2)
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 s
AVClub.com (Score:2)
I use torrent sites.... (Score:2)
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*
Stupid article for stupid people.... (Score:2)
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 sum
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generally I agree with what you are saying, but for books I like to keep track so when I catch up to the current I can move on but keep note of release dates for continuing series. Otherwise I find my self never finishing a series in progress.
I really don't care if anyone else knows or approves of my reading choices.
signal to noise ratio FTW (Score:2)
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 substant
Christian perspective (Score:3)
https://christiananswers.net/s... [christiananswers.net]
Criticker (Score:2)
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 [criticker.com] 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 try
Remember the Sunday paper? (Score:2)
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 mov