14 DAY TRIAL // Keeping track of all the DVDs in your collection may be a tough job considering that the price of an original is not that high. Or, let's face it: you like downloading them off a public or private tracker as much as anyone else does.
Fortunately, there are myriads of applications that can store your entire database with just a few clicks. Some of them are even free and provide direct access to IMDB for retrieving all the information about this or that movie.
Here's another one. Fox Movie Manager is an $18.99 DVD catalog application designed to store all your DVDs. There is nothing unusual up to now, but check out the glossy interface in the pictures below. That shiny black is definitely appealing. The 30-day trial period is more than sufficient to take a peek in all of its corners and decide if it suits your needs.
During the trial period, every time you launch the application a nag screen showing how much of the evaluation you have left will inform you on the aspect. A downside of the software is that it will always start maximized, which is a bit uncomfortable sometimes.
The center of the main application window is occupied by the Genres panel which displays all the movie categories in the database. Of course, at the beginning, this area will be empty. On the left flank, there are the quick links to New Releases, New arrivals, Unwatched, Unrated and Top 100 areas. Again, these all depend on the items in the database.
The right flank is taken over by the movies on loan (pretty useful option, and right in your face, also). The lower part of the main application window is destined to shelter all the movies in your collection. Actually, there will be all the covers and posters for your movies. The movie strip is split in two, left side for new releases and right side for new arrivals. The great part is that you set the strip to slide-show the covers. Of course, you can manually browse them, but activating the slide-show function is quite a neat feature.
If you hover the mouse over one of the movie posters, you'll get the synopsis of the movie together with your rating, duration and year of release. The information comes in handy if you are undecided whether to watch the movie or not and the title does not quite convince you.
The sides of the application window are not all Quick Links and Movies on Loan. If you take a closer look, there is more than meets the eye at a first glance. The left side contains two collapsible panels while on the right there is only one. In case you are unsure of which movie to watch, these panels will surely help. Random Picks on the left is exactly what it sounds like: it will randomly pick two movies each time you deploy the application.
Beneath it there is the Quick Stats window showing a diagram of the purchased movies. This way you'll know which months you invested more in your collection and which ones were lighter from this point of view. The right hand side collapsible panel contains all your queued movies. That is the DVDs you planned to watch at an ulterior time at the moment you appended them to the database.
Although the window may seem a bit too crowded with options, fields and collapsible panels, adding a movie is not that difficult. You can do this manually by typing every detail by yourself or appeal to the Internet and download all the information from the Big Database. During testing, I picked the easy way and then corrected it to fit my reality.
Don't hurry to type in the title of the movie unless you are planning to add the details manually. Press the big green download button in the upper left side of the screen. The new window that just popped up is divided into two sections. These are the Web locations for the movie details and, as you can see, IMDb download is available. Now feel free to type in the title of the movie and search it. Follow the on-screen instructions in order to get the most of the results.
The information downloaded from the Internet includes details like runtime, year of the release, rating, studio producing it, number of discs, media type, release date, the date you append it to the list, synopsis and genre. All these details can be modified by the user to fit reality. I mean you may download details for a DVD Special Edition, but you only have the regular one, specific to your region. Then you can edit the information to fit what you have purchased.
At the bottom of the window, you can rate the movie and the Fox Movie Manager will automatically mark it as "watched". The movie editing window is the place to add unwatched videos to queue for later view.
A more advanced statistics window can be accessed from Tools menu. The window is showing all the movies by categories and details in your database and their percentage. You can view movie maps according to genre, length, rating, collection size, production year, loan, media type etc. Who knows, maybe you want to keep a balance of all that and take an easier decision upon the next DVD you purchase.
The Good
Once you get the hang of it, the application is quite easy to handle. It downloads all the details from the Internet and you can trim them a bit afterwards.
Cover pictures can be replaced with any JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG or TIF you have on the computer and practically everything can be modified, from features, subtitles, audio and video details to the list of actors, director(s), writers and producers.
The Bad
First of all, there is no identification number for the items in the database. That's a big minus as most users number the discs for easy finding.
The interface, as good as it might look, is not quite functional, especially in maximized mode. The movie cover strip is pretty nice looking and the idea is great, but there is too little space in there (it shows only eight DVDs, four new releases and four new arrivals). I would have liked a more pervasive look at the collection without having to export it (the covers are displayed only by IE based web browsers).
The Truth
All in all, the application comes packed with all you need for storing your DVD movie database, but there are some slips here and there. The options are OK, but it takes a while to adjust to the environment (lots of windows popping up).
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
