International Cinema Listings plugin version 6.0 BETA - comments

[kayak4ever]

Note that the comments below include everything I noticed that someone might want improved. Some points are minor and it may be that "fixing" them creates bigger problems. I list everything so you can decide what's important. My list of theatres are displayed in the cinema list on the screen in the following order which matches the listing on the config panel. I think that some of the errors are dependent on where the theatre is listed in the config panel (For example, if there is going to be a problem with one of your codes and you don't want it to be for aaneh, then list aaneh before aacir in the config panel and any problems that do arise because of ordering will show up in the listings for aacir).

hoyts.ninemsn.com.au (6CIT) Cinema City, Perth
Film times run on. It would be easier to read if each day had a separate line. Otherwise, no problems which may be because it it the first theatre in the list.

cineman.ch (345) aboton, Zurich [:o This really needs someone who understands German to check it out. It looks good other than the fact that some letters, like the "U" in Zurich, which probably needs an umlaht, shows up as box with the character set used on my computer. Also there is a no name theatre that seems to be called CineCard Night, the synopsis of which is for the Bourne Identity. While I didn't take a full list of the movies playing, note that several movies below have a German synopses, even though this is the only movie source that normally provides German (or Swiss for all I know) text. For the purposes of the comments below, this theatre is showing the following films with English titles:The Bourne Ultimatum, Surf's Up, 1408, Shoot Em Up, A Mighty Heart, Hot Fuzz and Rush Hour3 (the synopsis of these films as shown in the source listings below are also in German even if German is not an official language of that country).

hoytsnz.ninemsn.com.au (1lht) Lower Hutt, Wellington
Film times run on in the same manner as hoyts.ninemsn.com.au. Otherwise, no problems

rialto.co.nz (R04) Rialto Christland
Here, as in the comments below for selected sources, the film times are all displayed on one (or two if needed) lines per day except Monday! It doesn't seem to matter if Monday is the 4th day of the list or the 5th day of the list (i.e., if the listings start on Thursday or Friday), it is only the Monday times that follow directly after the previous day's listings. Note as well that, where in my previous post, this theatre showed the wrong cast for certain shows, at this time, it has no information for those same shows. See comments below under Rainbow theatre. The movies with no cast may well be documentaries that don't provide cast information. One exception was that I found 1 listing with no cast for Harry Potter (not a documentary)

skycitycinemas.co.nz (B03) Skycity Broadway. Two problems: the synopsis of the Bourne Identity is in German (but not the synopsis the other films) and in the film times, the Monday listing runs on after Sunday (except for 2 movies where the Sunday listings just happen to fill a whole line).

fandango.com (aacir) Orleans Town Cinema and (aaneh) Silver city, Gloucester. The synopsis for the Bourne Identity, Shoot em up, and Rush Hour 3 are in German. I think this may also be happening in English- that is if I have a fandango listing for aacir and a zap2it listing for aaneh, the synopsis for aaneh will be the one picked up from fandango. However, when I look at the listings by film, I have several listings for the same film where the synopses are different. At first, I thought it was only occurring if the titles were different: "THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM" is different from "The Bourne Ultimatum" but I did see a couple that seemed to have identical titles and different synopses. Note that, as long as a person isn't picking up listings for movies in other countries, the fact that the synopsis is from the first theatre showing the film in the list as set out in the config panel shouldn't be a problem as most people will likely only be picking one choice for source of listings (except in New Zealand). If the synopsis from one listing is more complete than another, you may get people asking for one source to be moved up in the config panel. For me in Canada, I like the order since the Fandango synopses are more complete than the zap2it synopses. However, I did read a post from someone who said that the IMBD listings were the only listings that were really complete and needed two pages. If IMBD makes it to the top of US listings, I could put in a code for a theatre in the US, and all the synopsis for the same movie listed on the fandango or zap2it site would have the more complete synopsis (hmm)

imdb.com (13446) Columbia City, Seattle No films found. I checked several other zipcodes and got the same result. I then tried one more code, checking on imbd first to make sure that they had many movies listed for that code and settled on the CarMike theatre in St. Paul, TN (8773). I got films listed and the information was displayed correctly and nicely.

zap2it.com (aacis) Rainbow Theatre.
For this particular "refresh" of the listings, this is my first zap2it listing in the order of cinemas listed so the list of movies appears to be solely the list of movies actually showing at this theatre. The synopsis of Knocked Up and No Reservations are in German and the Monday film times run on after Sunday. The film, the 11th Hour, which previously showed the wrong cast, now shows no cast. Again, I suspect that this is because there is no information about the cast and this was confirmed when I checked the zap2it website. In IMBD, I found out that the cast of this documentary includes many people playing themselves.

zap2it.com (aaojn) Bytown. The listings for this theatre include all the listings for the Rainbow Theatre above followed by the actual listings for Bytown. Otherwise, no problem other than the Monday film times following Sunday's times. Likewise, (aaojb) Imax and (aatjm) Canadian Film Institute each show the listings for all the movies taken from a previously listed zap2it source (but not the other sources) followed at the end by the actual listing for that particular theatre.

cityline.com (14) UA megaBox The synopsis for 1408 is in German. See previous post for the formatting issue. Because each time also includes month, the day of the week and the time, the listing is very long.

filmladder.nl (bios=310&city=44) Filmhuis Movie W. :o My inability to understand Dutch precludes me from offering any comment but I think it looks fine. I had trouble entering this code, as indicated in the previous post, but that was just me being stupid.


I had a couple of other strange errors that weren't reproduced when I refreshed a second time and I don't have any idea how to describe them. If they occur again, I will report them.

[McBainUK]

The synopsis for the Bourne Identity, Shoot em up, and Rush Hour 3 are in German.

Did you refresh the listings with all the cinema ID's entered? I say this because that is how the details would be in German for some films as you have a cineman.ch code entered.

This is how the scraper works:
1. Look for all the details of the cinemas (name, address, phone number)
2. Look for all showings at the cinemas
3. Make a big list of film titles by working through all the showings
4. Scrape the film info for each film in the list only if it hasn't been looked up before.

So for example if cinema.ch has an entry for Rush Hour 3 then it will use it's info for ALL sources. Obviously this breaks down if you have lots of sources and multiple language but this wouldn't happen in the 'real world'

edit: just saw this part

At first, I thought it was only occurring if the titles were different: "THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM" is different from "The Bourne Ultimatum" but I did see a couple that seemed to have identical titles and different synopses. Note that, as long as a person isn't picking up listings for movies in other countries, the fact that the synopsis is from the first theatre showing the film in the list as set out in the config panel shouldn't be a problem as most people will likely only be picking one choice for source of listings (except in New Zealand). If the synopsis from one listing is more complete than another, you may get people asking for one source to be moved up in the config panel. For me in Canada, I like the order since the Fandango synopses are more complete than the zap2it synopses. However, I did read a post from someone who said that the IMBD listings were the only listings that were really complete and needed two pages. If IMBD makes it to the top of US listings, I could put in a code for a theatre in the US, and all the synopsis for the same movie listed on the fandango or zap2it site would have the more complete synopsis (hmm)

Will have a think about this, although I believe that most people use just a single source.

You can change the order of the sources in plugins/InternationalCinemaListings/source.xml but this is not something I would like to shout about.

[McBainUK]

film times running on for monday

Fixed for next release.

rialto.co.nz - showed the wrong cast for certain shows, at this time, it has no information for those same shows

I checked this a few days ago and it seems to be the source is missing cast info in certain cases - mostly the smaller film productions like "OIL CRASH : A CRUDE AWAKENING" for example.

Will look into the other issues with formatting and cinema showings mergeing in zap2it.

[McBainUK]

filmladder.nl I had trouble entering this code, as indicated in the previous post, but that was just me being stupid.

This may be a candidate for the FAQ section I'm thinking of adding to the wiki page (along with a note about trailer download & playback).

[kayak4ever]

quote: "You can change the order of the sources in plugins/InternationalCinemaListings/source.xml but this is not something I would like to shout about." Response: That would presumably be the equivalent of the French word "on" as I am pretty sure that "I" can't , although some could. I also agree that most people would use a single source (let's ask someone from New Zealand because they have the greatest number of possible sources)

Missing cast: My guess, as supported by what I saw, is that in most cases, the film doesn't come with cast list and that it is empty on the website on purpose.

[kayak4ever]

The formatting looked good on all the theatres tested, even the one from Hong Kong. There is still one stray ">" in the Hong Kong listings but otherwise it is very readable. I really like the addition of the posters but there is small annoyance for non-English readers: no poster for "Die Simpsons" or "zimmer 1408" although there is a poster for the same theatre for "1408" and most other English titles. This could be a website problem as I did get posters for theatre AAOJB in French, but that is likely because the theatre is the Canadian Museum of Civilization IMAX theatre and they would have been very careful to make sure that the French titles popups had equivalent information as for the popups for English titles. Although the lack of posters where the information isn't linked to the non-English title is understandable and a minor annoyance, I only raise it because non-English speaking programmers might be in a better position to think of a solution.

Note that I am now having problems adding or subtracting codes from the config panel as I stated in my message to you.

i am still have a few problems with IMDB listings for US theatres. On a seemingly random basis, I get "no films found". I am guessing this is a website problem.

As far as the new features go, I like the fact that you can review all trailers from the trailer page (as well as from the particular film popup page). As I looked at this page, it occurred to me that while the program updater adds trailers, it probably doesn't delete them. While I could always go to the computer and delete them from the directory directly, it would be nice to delete the unwanted trailers from the trailers page. I would like to do it manually (and not from an automated process) because there may be some movies I can't get out to see where I would want to keep the trailer, as a reminder to watch it on DVD. If it is too complicated to add a delete button (because it is likely that you only want to delete trailers and not cinemas or films), it would be nice to be able to program the remote to delete trailers with one of the coloured buttons or the delete key on the keyboard.

I like the tab for supplementing information from IMDB: however, the WIKI needs to have a cautionary comment on this. When I checked all the boxes in "use IMDB for certain sources of information", I found that I was missing information (synopses or cast members) in some rare cases (mostly independent films but it could also affect feature films where IMDB calls the film "The Brave One" and the website you are using calls it "THE BRAVE ONE") where the information had previously been available directly from the website. It is good to have the option between always use "IMDB" data and simply supplementing the data from the website used to list the theatres but caution should be used in checking all the IMDB boxes.

I also like the "license feature" in the config panel. I hope everyone pushes this button. For a non-programmer like me, it is easy to assume that if a program takes information from a webpage, it must be ethical and legal to do so in all countries and all cultures. For example, when Fandango didn't list the Empire or Rainbow theatres, I wrote to them to ask whyince it wouldn't have occurred to me that they would object to using the information in a plugin, I could just as easily caused problems by mentioning it. Pushing the button made me think about what my answer is (and I think it is important for each user to do so). I have decided that I think that this is an acceptable use of the information on the webpages and not much different from viewing it directly because the information is being converted to a usable or different form and there is no statement on the website precluding such use. I can understand that some website owners might not approve and some might not care - time will tell. I know that when I was trying to get information on the Canadian laws concerning parodies of a song, it seemed as if the laws of Canada effectively prohibit a parody (even for personal purposes) because you have to get the songwriter's written permission to modify the lyrics. Because this is impractical (particularly for personal purposes), the law is likely to be ignored. (sorry for the non sequitor)

[McBainUK]

I really like the addition of the posters but there is small annoyance for non-English readers

The posters comes from IMDB.com which seems to be a US/Europe centred endeavour so not much I can do about this.

having problems adding or subtracting codes from the config panel as I stated in my message to you.

Looked into this and fixed it.

i am still have a few problems with IMDB listings for US theatres. On a seemingly random basis, I get "no films found". I am guessing this is a website problem.

If you can post the file InternationalCinemaListingsPlugIn2.exe.log next time this happens I will take a look.

As I looked at this page, it occurred to me that while the program updater adds trailers, it probably doesn't delete them.

Actually it automatically deletes unreferenced trailers.

It is good to have the option between always use "IMDB" data and simply supplementing the data from the website used to list the theatres but caution should be used in checking all the IMDB boxes.

Yes, this is how it is intended. The individual data boxes should only be checked if you want to override the data found locally - the default functionality is to 'fill in the gaps'.

I have decided that I think that this is an acceptable use of the information on the webpages and not much different from viewing it directly because the information is being converted to a usable or different form and there is no statement on the website precluding such use.

Yes, I agree. The web scraper now uses caching to avoid overuse of the source server. To be honest this project is probably too small to be noticed, unlike zap2it TV listings scraping for example.