[pmurgy]

Hi,

I tried out DL1 some time ago when I first got my Macbook Pro, the first Mac I have ever owned. I loved it, but there was one major feature missing that just made it a total pain in the proverbial rear end. That was the total lack of support for those of us unlucky enough to live in Region 4, otherwise known as Australia.
Now, I know DL1 claims to be internationalised, but where is the support for those of us Down Under? We don't have our own Amazon site for a start, but we do have other local retailers that run nice online web sites.

I previously used Collectorz Movie Collector on my PC, and they did release a Mac version (which is pathetic, and they have no serious intentions to develop it). The great thing with Collectorz is that they support retailers that actually sell the Region 4 stock we buy here. Alas, I don't know any Region 4 websites that let you search by UPC, so we are kind of up the creek without a paddle there anyway!

Yes, there is a question in here somewhere! Are we going to see any new Library sources for DL2? Are you guys thinking about setting up your own database for DL2 users?

I am looking forward to the Leopard release so i can get a look at DL2. My wife is begging me for a Mac, but I told her she has to wait for Leopard too - not buying one now with Tiger then having to pay up again in a couple of months!

Paul

[bpnkrtn]

Paul ... Howdy. Just a little info. for you. I also use Collectorz, for books, movies, and music. Agree that their Mac versions are far behind the windows versions. I have also looked at Intelliscanner which is a combined program like DL and has, obviously, scanner support. It started as a Mac product although they do have windows versions now. It's a nice program, not as flexible as collectorz in sorting ability. I have no idea if they support region 4 ... and I just thought Australia was a penal colony Might be worth a look?

Smart scanning devices to simplify getting organized - IntelliScanner

Good luck and take care ... bruce

[Delicious Monster]

Luckily most Australian stuff is in Amazon. Only the movies have trouble because the barcodes themselves are regionally encoded. Luckily the title and creator search works, as does drag and drop from Amazon.

As for direct support, that's a ways off yet. What Delicious Library 2 will have is total AppleScript support so people will be able to write plug-ins for stuff like this.

As for Intelliscanner, I've never thought it looked particularly compelling. Plus, they don't have a free demo, and you have to buy a scanner with the program, so the whole thing just kind of seems fishy to me.

Though they do make an easy pun: Intellispammer.

[Feynman]

Originally Posted by Delicious Monster 

...and you have to buy a scanner with the program, so the whole thing just kind of seems fishy to me...

And how does one buy your scanner without Delicious Library?

[Delicious Monster]

Don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with the scanner. If you want the scanner and were going into the decision completely blind, your decision would simply whether to spend $214.90 for Delicious Library, or to spend $279 for IntelliScanner. Considering we sell the exact same Microvision Flic bluetooth scanner, I'd probably go with Delicious Library just on price.

Actually, that's not entirely true. Even if the prices were reversed, I'd probably pick Delicious Library because the company is dedicated to platform, and I can only think of one company that has ever managed to do both platforms right. I don't know the guys at IntelliScanner, but I'm sure even they would agree they are not Blizzard.

All that aside, my point isn't even the cost of the programs. It's the cost of discovering the programs suck. Since Delicious Library has a free demo mode, if you think it sucks, you're out nothing but your time. If you decide IntelliScanner sucks, you're out $279. I'm not willing to spend almost $300 to find out whether something sucks. Ever.

The underlying point, and the one that has my hackles up, is that I've never heard anyone say anything good about IntelliScanner, ever. Bear in mind, scanning software is what I do for a living, so I know what people have to say, whether I want to or not. I know who our competition is, and I know who likes them and why.

After the whole business with iMediaSpam, when someone comes into my forum and recommends some piece of software on the basis that it might do what you want, that makes me extremely suspicious.

I'm going to err on the side of freedom and not delete the comment, on the off-chance it's just some guy trying to be honestly helpful. However, I reserve the right to point out that, personal biases aside, I would never recommended InteliScanner to anyone because I don't trust software I can't try before I buy.

I also hate SUVs. It's germane to nothing, but I just thought I'd point it out.

[Delicious Monster]

Originally Posted by Feynman 

And how does one buy your scanner without Delicious Library?

I should probably actually answer this.

The scanner we sell is an off-the-shelf Microvision Flic bluetooth scanner. We wrote a driver for it, but there is nothing otherwise special about it any way. It's also not locked in any way. If you bought the scanner with another program, you can use it with Delicious Library.

You can buy it from Microvision themselves, for $249.95. You can buy it from a company called SerialIO, which bundles it with a Mac driver so you can use it all over your system. Weirdly, they sell it for both $239.95 and $249.95, depending on which logo it has. I am not making this up.

You can also find them on eBay, where I'm told the median price is about $90.

We sell them for $174.95, which is the cheapest you can find it, barring eBay. The catch is, we only sell them with Delicious Library. That's because we think the scanner is a cool toy and we want to make it available to our users. Since we can buy it wholesale, we can pass that savings on.

That said, we are not in the scanner business. The scanners are a tremendous pain in the ass. They require fulfillment, shipping, and support. Since they are largely opaque, they also generate a lot of returns. We have boxes of perfectly good scanners that someone got into some mode and gave up on. We send them a new scanner, they send us a scanner that is perfectly good, but now unsalable.

That's why we don't just sell them separately. However, we will let someone who has (the opposite of) buyer's remorse purchase the scanner with a second license and get a refund on the second license—a practice that costs us money in credit card processing and return fees.

This is why it infuriates me when people (not you, Feynman; people on the net) talk **** about our scanner stuff. From a practical standpoint we should sell the things completely separate, but for $300. Or, we could just stop selling them altogether.

But, people love them. Shikata ga nai.

[bpnkrtn]

Howdy. I posted the comments about intelliscanner and collectorz. I assure you that it was just to pass on a little information. I'm very sorry that it has generated some "problems." I am a regestered user of DL ... looking forward to DL2. As a couple of my other posts indicate ... my major use is for books and would like to be able to sort at multiple levels. I understand the tie to iTunes as explained.

To be perfectly clear ... I really like DL ... it was the first software I purchased as I switched from windows to mac.

Beer, or beverage of choice, is on me if I ever get to Seattle.

bruce

[Delicious Monster]

See? That's why it's good to err on the side of freedom.

Bruce, sorry for doubting your intentions. Beer all around.

[pmurgy]

Originally Posted by Delicious Monster 

Luckily most Australian stuff is in Amazon. Only the movies have trouble because the barcodes themselves are regionally encoded. Luckily the title and creator search works, as does drag and drop from Amazon.

As for direct support, that's a ways off yet. What Delicious Library 2 will have is total AppleScript support so people will be able to write plug-ins for stuff like this.

As for Intelliscanner, I've never thought it looked particularly compelling. Plus, they don't have a free demo, and you have to buy a scanner with the program, so the whole thing just kind of seems fishy to me.

Though they do make an easy pun: Intellispammer.

I am not too sure about Australia stuff being in Amazon. The USA has all Region 1 Titles, which aside from being in NTSC, quite often have totally different features on them, have different languages and numbers of discs, and also have different cover art. We are probably closer to Region 2 ( the UK), since they also use PAL. Unfortunately the UK also has some weird censorship rules, so Australia more often than not will get a seperate DVD release entirely.

I look forward to tinkering with Applescript in the new release to see what I can come up with. I think that I may just go and buy myself a new flatbed scanner and start scanning in my DVD covers. At least then everything is consistent, and reflects what I actually have :-)

Cheers,

Paul

[Delicious Monster]

Google's image search is also great for cover art. In fact, it's so good it keeps me from wanting to implement something like using the iSight to capture cover art.

[VideoBeagle]

On the topic of scanners...i rather love the cue:cat usb scanner someone at dealmac.com 's forums gave me that I use with DL. It'll still work with DL2, right?

[Delicious Monster]

As far as I know. I don't have one to test with, but we haven't broken USB scanning or anything.