Sites

Internet Movie Database

Everybody probably knows this site already. The wealth of information at IMDB on movies and all personnel involved in movies and TV is unbelievable. Be sure to include this site in any research in this area.
The site also can be used for current and upcoming movie reviews. Their search engine is one good place to start: all you need is part of a name or title. Some will enjoy checking out who shares your birthday.

You Tube

Everybody probably knows this site. I am not interested in all the personal videos. I go there to see the performances of well-known singers and comedians. This is great. And it's not just recent performances. I guess people have videotaped performances from several years ago, or even TV. Thanks everyone.

Besides for visiting You Tube, you may want to get the files to your PC. You used to be able to get the video from your browser's cache, but these days the downloads are broken up into small files so you can't do that anymore.

There are programs to download the videos and to extract the music and convert to other formats, like MP3. Unfortunately, YouTube often changes something so that the programs no longer work, although many keep being updated to work again. The separate programs I've tried have been unusable recenlty. What I am still using is the add-on for Firefox Flash Video Downloader . This site also has a place to download videos from You Tube by entering the URL. Unfortunately, even these continue to find videos they cannot download. The files that are downloaded are inthe FLV format. 1 Click You Tube To MP3 Converter is a program that I use to download just the MP3 of the video or the video. There is also the href="http://anything2mp3.com/"> Anything to MP3 . In this case I didn't even have to download the video. Enter the address of the video and click 'convert'. After the conversion, you have to click where they tell you to download the mp3 file and then save it.
Recently I've had trouble with all of these not being able to get the file, but You Tube in MP4 worked for the video and You Tube in MP3 worked to get the music in MP3.

You can play the video with an FLV player (I use the free FLV Media .


nFLV Player is the first FLV player I used. If you want to use this one, here's a note on trying to use the FLV Player: you might get an error in starting it, that you need to get flash software from Adobe. If you already have flash, and still get this error, you might have to fake it out. Go to your system32 directory in your windows directory and then into the macromed and then flash directory (C:\windows\system32\macromed\flash). In there is a flash?.ocx file. For instance, mine is flash9d.ocx. Make a copy of it, and rename the copy to flash8.ocx. Now you should not have that error any more.

On the other hand, I also want to extract the sound (music, comedy) to an MP3 file. Then I can burn those files to a CD (or iPod). If you have the FLV video, then use a converter program. There are many. I use FLV to MP3 Converter . It can batch them so that you do not have to convert each one separately. But then, some of the files it would not convert. I then found FLV Converter. I use it to do the ones FLV to MP3 Converter would not convert. It also has a portable version, so you don't have to install it.

TV Tome

TV Tome has really grown into something nice. This site has guides (episode, cast,etc.) to many of the shows that have been on TV, a section on the new TV shows of the past season - cancelled and returning, a section on the new shows of the new season, and much more. Of course I don't agree with much of the commentary on last year's new shows, so why should I listen to what they say about the new shows. But that goes with most critics.
I'm still calling it TV Tome, even though they have changed it to just TV.com.

Titan TV

I used to use zap2it for my TV guide and more info on TV. But someone bought them and it's no longer worthwhile to go there. Titan TV has almost everything that zap2it had as far as a TV guide goes, and that's my new guide. It's not as easy in the setup to pick just the TV channels I want but, in using it, it does stay on the same section of the guide when you go forward and backward over time, and that's an improvement.        

The Encyclopedia of Television

As the site name implies, this is an encyclopedia. For someone who has been watching TV since it started, I really can enjoy reading and reminiscing about all the old TV shows. There's an essay about each show it has, with loads of information.

Tim's TV Showcase

Tim has quite a site on TV. Plenty of information on what he says is 788 TV shows. Plus a section for some Emmy winners and commercials, and a list of links to many other sites about TV. How did he collect all this stuff?

Box-Office Results

Here's a place where you can find which are the top grossing films of the weekend, the week, the month, etc. For each of these films, find their total gross, number of theaters they are currently in, and the number of weeks they have beem released. You can check the results of each year since 1980, and the top grossing films of all time. That's pretty neat.

Crazy About TV

This site lists the TV shows from each decade and provides info on each show. You also can look at the list of shows by genre, e.g. comedy, action. Unfortunately, it's not a complete list, as you can see by comparing the 50s with 1950s Television, but you get a lot of info on the shows.

Movie Reviews

Meta Critic

This site not only provides you with reviews of different movies, but provides a rating from 1 to 10 from different critics, so that you can easily compare the reviews. You could learn more easily which critics you agree with and which ones don't. Good service on film reviews.

Rotten Tomatoes

Similar in concept to Meta Critic, but there is not a common rating system by the reviewers, although they give you the final score. So, it's a distant second review site.