I’ve been in on the beta-testing of a new tv streaming site, hulu.com, for a few months now and have had nothing but good stuff to say about it. It’s a joint venture with NBC and Fox, and they have been adding new content to it almost constantly for the last couple months.

A number of new shows are added shortly after broadcast, like the new Terminator series, Simpsons, Family Guy, House, Bones and more. On top of that, there has been a steady stream of “classic” TV shows being added, a few of the more recent ones are Adam 12, Emergency, A-Team, and the original S.W.A.T. And yea, some of these shows are not quite the great shows I remember them as, but they are still fun to watch.

Now with the public release, there are a lot of movies available as well… over 70 full length movies at this point. Movies like Ice Age, Master & Commander, The Jerk and the newer version of Planet of the Apes. I haven’t watched any of the movies yet, so not sure of the quality, but I’m sure it wouldn’t match an actual DVD. But…. now if I’m going somewhere that I know I have net access, I don’t have to bring a DVD along to play on my laptop if I decide I want to watch a movie.

They also have a TON of clips. Some are from select scenes of different shows and movies, and yea… they have some that seem to be done as a way to promote upcoming movies and TV shows. I dunno, I haven’t watched many of the clips myself though.

The one downside is yes, they have commercials. BUT, in the shows I’ve seen to this point, they are limited in number, and usually only about 20 seconds worth at a time. That means less than three minutes of commercials in your average hour long show. Much better than regular TV.

My main hope is that the servers can handle things now that they’re open to the public. Oh yea, and they are testing HD content as well.

Ok, moving from one computer to another is proving painless so far. Downloaded Griffith, if yer running Ubuntu 7.10 you have to grab 0.9.5, the repository has 0.9.4 which doesn’t like Gutsy. There were some dependency issues, so I ended up installing 0.9.4 from the repository first, then upgraded using the DEB file for 0.9.5.

Then, I copied the .griffith folder from the old computer to the new one, and when I started Griffith on the new, voila, everything was there including the half-dozen new movies I just added today.

Then I started up Evolution on the old computer and after it was done checking for new messages. A simple File - Backup Settings and everything was dumped to a tar file on my SD card. Popped it in the new computer and started Evolution on the new one. One of the first things it did was ask if I wanted to restore settings from a backup.

Still trying to get the Centro to sync, it’s having trouble seeing the phone, but I need to get my other cable… I was having issues with this cable before.

Ok, I have been looking and looking for a movie database program to help me keep track of my DVD collection. I have.. 250 or so. I know, a bit on the small side. Ideally, I have wanted one that is web based, but haven’t found one I really like yet. Originally I used a spreadsheet, then started using a windows based program that was ok - imported from IMDB and moodb.com - it has some quirks I don’t care for.

With the switch to Ubuntu, I looked at a few of the available options and decided to give Griffith a shot. So far… well, back up. First impression was good. You click the Add button, enter a title, search online if you want (default is IMDB, but there seems to be a couple dozen others to try), it brings up possible matches, you pick one and it fills in the blanks including downloading cover art. You can still tweek it from there checking a “seen it” box for example, choose medium, condition, and probably lots of other stuff I will probably never use.

It was going great for the first 40 or so entries.. then suddenly the add button stopped working.

Checked the forums and it seems to be a known - the application repository has 0.9.4 - the latest version is 0.9.5 - installed that and I’m back in business.

It also has a feature where you can enter in friends and such to keep track of who you borrow movies too… (and email them reminders when they forget to bring it back). You can view your movies by all, those lent out, those you haven’t seen, ask the program to suggest a movie you haven’t seen, and the standard backup and restore your data.

One thing I may check in to eventually is switching form SQLite it mySQL, maybe putting the DB online, and if I get around to learning enough create a simple list of my movies online. (This is so when I’m out shopping I can check to make sure I’m not buying a movie I already have a copy of… of course.)

So…. for now, this one does get a good recommendation. I’ll post again if I run in to any issues.

Griffith - A Film Collection Manager [berliOS.de]