Not sure if this should go in General Questions, Cafe Society, or IMHO, so I picked IMHO because I was already browsing this page.
Anyway, I have some huge number of TV channels because it was cheaper to get the bundle that included them. HBO/ShowTime/Starz/you name it, we got it.
Most of the time, I ignore them. However, every once in a while I get off my butt and go looking for movies that I might want to watch. Today I found a couple that I set up my TiVo to record. Yay me!
However, it’s always a pain in the butt to do that. I have to go search through listings on various pages and maybe if I’m lucky stumble across something I want to see. If I’m looking for a particular movie it’s not too hard to find it, but if I just want something to show me upcoming movies on all the channels, it’s a pain.
Ideally, I’d like a web site to:
let me choose my cable provider so it knows what channels I can get
let me browse ONLY movies
show me movies upcoming over the next couple weeks or so
maybe list them in order of ratings or popularity.
it’d be great if I could specify movies by date released, so if I’m looking for relatively new releases I could say “just movies from 2009-20012” or whatever
If you get an account you can connect it to your Tivo too. That might make the whole process easier, instead of having to manually type in info in the Tivo.
You could use your TiVo to do a wishlist search. I believe it has a category for movies (and you can then specify genres as well.) Then select “View Upcoming Programs” and check off the ones you want to record. You can even make a wishlist record everything it finds, just like a Season Pass.
That’s one method I’ve used, but it shows GAZILLIONS of movies. That’s why I’d like the option to, say, filter by rating or year it came out or whatever.
Plus, I want something web-based, not Tivo-based. Scrolling through Tivo menus takes a long time, and I tend to want to pick out movies when I’m at my computer, not when I’m sitting down on my couch. By the time I’m on my couch, I just want to start a movie and watch it, not scroll through what might be available next week.
Yeah, there is a website. It’s tivo.com. They have a “Find TV Shows” tab. Log into your account and you can browse by several categories. Tivo knows which channels you get, so it only displays the shows you can receive.
When you find a show you want to record, you can click a button and it will tell your Tivo to automatically record it.
only show me movies that were released in certain date ranges?
Sort by ratings and/or popularity
And a new one I forgot to list on the OP:
show me only movies on certain channels. I have no desire to watch a movie on any channel that has commercials or doesn’t show the entire movie (ie, censors it in some way).
That’s the closest so far, and I’ve actually used it before. It’s still rather clunky, though - I don’t particularly like the grid, I’d rather have a listing of movies, since I’m looking to record them, not watch them at a certain time. I’ll play around with it though.
Y’know, I can’t believe I’m the only one who would use a really good TV searcher app. Maybe I need to write one.
Playing around with Zap2It, I found the “Movie Search” on this page that is the closest thing to what I’m looking for.
However, the search is not as full-featured as I’d like (ie, can’t search for movies released over a range of dates, or 3.5 stars and above, etc). But the real bad thing is that once you get the list of movies, that’s it. No place to click to say “Record this showing” or “Take me to the listings so I can record this showing.”
Not exactly what you’re looking for, but you could do it in 2 parts. Use IMDB or Netflix or Amazon etc., to create a list of movies you’re interested in, and then put them on your TiVo wishlist.
