December 8, 2001

3:20 PM

IMDBProJust in case you need more information than the Internet Movie Database provides, there's now a subscription version with advanced features like STARmeter and MOVIEmaker (billed as proprietary algorithms). Is Amazon about to take on Variety? Or is IMDB not selling enough videos with the click throughs?
posted by samuelad (24 comments total)

Subscription? HA! More often than not the information I'm interested in is wrong or absent.
posted by fleener at 3:39 PM on December 8, 2001

I like imdb, spend a lot of time on it, but this subscription service seems to only offer better film box office totals information or how much actors got, and such. Not very useful. The price is also too high.
posted by tiaka at 3:43 PM on December 8, 2001

IMDB sucks royal ass.

Why? I looked up something there today and was pasted with not one, not two, not three, but four popups. Ain't gonna go back there again.
posted by zeb vance at 4:12 PM on December 8, 2001

I think it's really more for the industry-types (or those who keep real close tabs on the industry) than for regular users. Variety online is only $59, or it is free if you subscribe to the print daily or weekly. So for $40 more per year, I can get the Weekly Variety.
posted by benjh at 4:33 PM on December 8, 2001

I looked up something there today and was pasted with not one, not two, not three, but four popups...

Y'know, people gotta eat. I despise pop-ups, but whatever imdb's faults, it's a pretty impressive database that's available for free.
posted by jpoulos at 4:40 PM on December 8, 2001

Good call, jpoulos.

I'd much rather spend the 20ms required to close a popup window than have to pay a subscription fee.
(begin sarcasm mode)

Not that I never click on a popup ad, mind you. Hell no! I click them all the time! Popups provide revenue for my favorite sites, so I click, click, click like a madman!

(end sarcasm mode)
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:54 PM on December 8, 2001

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
I hope that I wasn't the only one to catch this gaff. $12.95 a month, indeed.
posted by Bag Man at 5:04 PM on December 8, 2001

Bag Man:

It depends on which country you're living in.
posted by Dirjy at 5:12 PM on December 8, 2001

Bag Man, if you're alluding to that not being the "correct" title, it is... in England.
posted by geoff. at 5:13 PM on December 8, 2001

My bad...sorry
posted by Bag Man at 5:17 PM on December 8, 2001

I generally seem to find better results at All Movie Guide. Most of the IMDB entries always seem to be empty or incomplete.
posted by willnot at 5:29 PM on December 8, 2001

For those wanting to get rid of pop-ups and other irritations, http://proxomitron.org/ is very good, powerful, and highly configurable. Not related, just a fan.
posted by cps at 6:13 PM on December 8, 2001

I've been surfing around IMDb and I haven't had one popup. I don't have anything installed to stop them, so who knows what that's all about.
posted by animoller at 6:29 PM on December 8, 2001

zeb: Maybe I'm sticking my foot in my mouth here, but do you by any chance have Kazaa installed on your system? Kazaa can cause an annoying amount of pop-ups even when it's not running; it's how they support their software. I've never known the IMBD to use that many popups, so that'd be my guess as to the problem.

If Kazaa turns out to be your problem, use ad-aware to rid yourself of all the ad software, then install morpheus instead (same p2p network, but no popup ads).
posted by gd779 at 7:00 PM on December 8, 2001

Why? I looked up something there today and was pasted with not one, not two, not three, but four popups. Ain't gonna go back there again.

I've never had a popup in the two or three years I've been visiting the IMDB - until this afternoon. When I visited again after reading this thread, no popups. Go figure.
posted by ljromanoff at 7:00 PM on December 8, 2001

I've never had a popup either.

I think the subscription idea is great. The extra features, like detailed box office results, are the sort of things industry junkies would gladly pay for.

The fact that the IMDb is still around and kicking is amazing to me. This isn't some huge corporate IGN-type site, so I think tiny typos are forgivable.

...(I never understood the "A mistake! I'M NEVER VISITING THIS USEFUL TOOL!" mentality anyway)...
posted by kevspace at 7:51 PM on December 8, 2001

Thinking about all this alleged Wrong And Absent information, it also occurs to me that much of the site's content is submitted by its dedicated users. It's always been that way. Just food for thought.
posted by kevspace at 7:52 PM on December 8, 2001

Yeah, right. The IMDB footer says it is "An Amazon.com company." Look at their contact list. I count about 31 people. That's a big staff for a volunteer-driven web site, eh?

When a web site goes corporate, my expectations for quality and service go up.
posted by fleener at 8:06 PM on December 8, 2001

A big staff? I don't think it is, for what that site provides. I'd hardly call them "corporate." I'm sure even I am somehow affiliated with Amazon by now.

And, corporate or no, how much are you paying for those expectations anyway, fleener? This isn't like Salon, where you can't do anything if you don't subscribe. Would you rather there was no site at all?

And wait-- when something goes corporate, your expectations for quality goes UP? That's not very "hip" of you. Heh.
posted by kevspace at 8:43 PM on December 8, 2001

Hmmm, so if Amazon.com is not corporate, what is? Please do tell.

Whether I pay for the site is not even remotely the point. It's an issue of "a guy working at home for the love of it" vs. a corporate-owned service with a staff of 30+ people that now wants to charge fees for expanded service. Well, if the "free" service sucks ass, why would we pay?

I'm sorry if I'm not hip enough for you. IMDB starting sucking about the time it changed hands.
posted by fleener at 11:11 PM on December 8, 2001

The only way I'd consider subscribing would be if they incorporated the Bare Facts database into their info system.
posted by HTuttle at 11:52 PM on December 8, 2001

IMDb does have a lot of mistakes and omissions, particularly in the area of film formats and aspect ratios. Just as one example, they list Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" as being 2.35:1 Panavision, even though it was actually 1.85:1. I sent in a correction a while back (and I probably wasn't the only one), but they still have not fixed it. I've heard they used to be more responsive about fixing that sort of mistake before the Amazon.com buyout.
posted by Potsy at 6:52 AM on December 9, 2001

I'd hardly call them "corporate."

well, and even tough the IMDb was already a LTD company in 1996, it is still one of the most useful and comprehensive sites on the net. corporate, or not. amazon, or not.
posted by HeikoH at 7:39 AM on December 9, 2001

The IMDB pre-dates the web. The database was made up of information submitted by volunteers. It was very much a collaborative, for-the-good-of-it effort. You used to be able to download all their data as files. Various command-line Unix programs were used to query the database. (I think clients for other platforms were available too.)

See "A brief history of The IMDB" (the earliest version available at web.archive.org). This was written before the sell-out was complete.

Sometime around 1995 the few people who "owned" the data sold it to Amazon. (Does anyone know what they got for it?)

One consequence of this, well, sell-out is that people are now less willing to submit information than they once were--if Amazon owns it and is making from it, Amazon can do the damn typing I figure--so newer movies are not as well provided for as older ones.
posted by mstillwell at 8:27 PM on December 9, 2001