Not sure how many of you use Film Aficionado (formerly DVD Aficionado) to track your movie collections, but there's a banner at the top of the site announcing that it will be shutting down June 10th. I have most of my collection on Blu-ray.com now, but I actually still have a lot of DVDs that aren't in their database and I'm way too lazy to add them myself.
Wow... I knew nothing lasted forever but this is a sad day all the same. I was there almost 20 years ago when it first was getting started and I was one of the top 5 contributors of DVD submissions and was given the honorary title of "Ombudsman." Back then Ed use to talk a lot more with the community which had an active forum. That's long gone after the major upgrade. While I too have slowed down over the years even today I'm still in the top 30 contributors for the past year's submissions (at the 29 spot ). I literally have my FilmAf.com tab open in my browser all the time because I reference it so much. As soon as I open a fresh browser window that's the first site I visit. The site was marvelous and a tool I constantly used to research editions of movies. Damn I really don't know what I can do and I guess there's nothing I can do. With over 5000 items cataloged under my profile and around 5 data points each that I regularly fill in that's some 25,000 entries I've made there. I know what I bought, when, where, order #, for how much, when it arrived and the last time I watched it. And if it was a gift I know who gave it to me and for what occasion. I've got stacks of DVDs I never shelved because I first wanted to submit them to the database for approval. (Mostly old German hardboard boxes. I only finally got a new scanner recently to do that.) I've even got an old unicorn of a DVD I want to finally track down and submit: A R-Rated cut of 1 Night in Paris (that may or may not have existed). They don't list porn but would accept it IF I found cover art. I've got a UPC for it and I've got an eBay notification slot for 15 or so years now. I don't even want the disc I just get a kick outta submitting something like that for the lulz. I'm even looking forward to Kino's releasing more info on their Billy the Kid vs Dracula release so I could submit it to DVDAf... The world I grew up in now truly is dead. I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall when it started taking over a week before the newly announced Criterions were listed. Those use to come up within minutes or I'm sure 100's of submissions would drown out the moderator in no time flat. I haven't been buying much from Amazon anymore but when I did I usually bought it through their gateway to try to keep their coffers filled (sorry Dave). With what I use to spend I wouldn't be surprised if I accounted for a good chunk of their income.
I never used it, but I do still use DVD Profiler ... however it would not surprise me if that shuts down sometime soon. There's been no software/product update in a couple of years now and the owner/developer/coder has pretty much gone AWOL. And even though contributions and new submissions are still being processed fine, you just kind of feel like perhaps the end is nigh. I hope not (and he has taken short AWOL periods at times before) — but at least I can still use the actual "program" to continue cataloging my collection if the website/database does cease. I have my "Blu-ray" (and UHD) collection also added on Blu-ray.com like Suicide ... but have not used it for cataloging my DVD's.
Wow, that sucks! I never used the site to catalog my collection but it was a great resource I'd often use just to see what editions of a certain title were out there.
As a regular user/sometimes contributor of FilmAF this is a major bummer... Looks like I'll have to seek alternatives or maybe it's just time to catalog everything offline via a spreadsheet.
I've used DVDAF for years now too. It was how I kept inventory of all of the discs I owned and I would always reference my 'Wish List' before placing my monthly Amazon order. Can anyone recommend a replacement site, software, app ?
I’ve used DVD Profiler for a decade now (see link in my sig for how the web layout looks). You have to buy either the desktop or mobile version (I believe, I bought both since mobile didn’t exist when I first got desktop), but the program layout is excellent and I’m always referencing the app when shopping for new discs.
The Blu-ray.com collection feature is pretty useful, but they are missing a lot of DVD entries if you're like me and still have a couple thousand DVDs. There are some cool features, like the statistics page that shows you charts of how your collection is broken down, like this Kinda cool to know how long it will take to watch your movie collection.
DVDProfiler has a lot of graphs similar to that too. It's pretty invaluable to me when I'm checking my ratio of genres, years, studios, ratings, purchase dates, prices paid, etc.. you can even change the type of visible graphs to a bunch of different types: View attachment 9551
It's a Memorial Day Miracle! FilmAf is being taken over by DVDCompare.net! Excellent! I had hoped this would happen but it was a dim hope. A site like FilmAf must draw a lot of bandwidth so making it financially viable can't be easy. Hopefully Sam hasn't bitten off more than he can chew! But since he's been running DVDCompare for about as long as DVDAf's been around I'm guessing he can handle it. Over the last week we had things like the Mondo Macabro announcement that gave me the spark "now I can submit this to DVDAf!" then cold realization hit that it was useless to do so. And I did the usual movements of editing discs from On Order to move to my Categories as they came in and I was saddened. But now I can happily submit Butterfly of Death and Billy the Kidd vs Dracula! And damn there were a few things I was holding in On Order that I was going to submit corrections on and improve cover scans but dumped them into my collection thinking it wasn't worth the effort now and I should just get them slotted for my final pass taking screenshots (or something). Now I gotta remember what those all were... Guess that's what I get for being such a cynic.
Looks like some features have been disabled. Probably to do some overdue maintenance. I think it started in the back end a few days ago because I submitted 5 new titles but they only approved one and the other four are still in limbo. That was a few days ago. Usually they power through them all at once. So maybe they were halted.
I wonder if it had something to do with the change of years. All those features worked just fine yesterday.
I had also submitted some stuff the other day that is still pending approval. Easy guess though as to why the hold up is just the fact that it's the holidays and the mods who usually approve that stuff/update the site are simply enjoying their time off. They should be back to being approved this week now that New Year's is over.
It's just that they were submitted all within the same hour or two. Usually it's all or nothing (although imports and weird stuff can be skipped for more experienced reviewers). But they've all been accepted now. Search function is still limited and still no editing or viewing personal info of individual releases. Could be awhile. Fortunately for me I don't have much coming in and I'm not planning on buying anything any time soon.
From Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/filmafi/posts/2609635639085853 Interesting. I figured they were doing maintenance and/or upgrades. This makes is sound like a failure instead. I wonder if Ed, who did the original site, is involved.
Wow, I'm super late to the party but I just logged in to FilmAf and my collection still looks like it's in-tact.
It's the advanced search functions and "One Pager" mode editing that have been disabled. Everything else seems to be functioning including basic search and submitting new entries. Speaking of which after two weeks two-of-three entries were backed up again for new entries but are now approved. So at least that's back to business. There were a few things I was going to submit simply because I noticed they were missing but I've since forgotten them and I'll just let these guys sort things out for awhile anyways.
I wasn't able to login this morning so I checked their Facebook page, not good: https://www.facebook.com/filmafi/posts/2710522358997180 I know the previous owner Ed built the entire site from scratch but I don't know how involved he is now and how up-to-date his coding is (it's been a long time since the last major revision). I wonder if they updated the server's PHP or something and that's broken it. I know a few people who's web host providers essentially forced them to upgrade their PHP or they'd have to pay hefty monthly costs for "support." Hopefully they can get this fixed. I not only enjoy the site but come to rely on it to manage my collection.
Yeah, I noticed that I can't log in anymore. When I try, it just takes me back and asks me to log in again. It's an endless loop.
