Movies HD for iPad – App Review

By dag | July 19, 2010 | 6 comments

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If you happen to own a large collection of DVDs, a media center Mac/PC, or an Apple TV, you may want to check out Movies HD for iPad. Movies HD is a movie catalog application that helps you keep track of the movies you own. Movies are organized on shelves, similarly to iBooks, and the app lets you quickly add, find and view movies in your library.

Adding movies is simple, as the app will help you find all the info you need by simply looking for the movie title. Movies HD pulls the movie meta-data such as covers, actors and synopsis by dipping into online databases such as IMDb. Movies HD is also able to import databases coming from other similar desktop apps, such as Personal Video Database or DVD Profiler, or even from generic txt or csv files. One caveat though: if you happen to own a lot of movies, and never built your own movie database, the import process will likely be long and a bit painful.

The app also features nice add-ons, such as the use of cover flows in order to browse your movie collection – a great feature if you happen to have friends at home and want to let them pick the movie they want to watch. The app also lets you watch movie trailers, by automatically fetching them on sites like YouTube. Finally, if you don’t know what to watch, simply shake your iPad, and Movies HD will pick a movie for you.

What we liked: Well designed, convenient, and good at looking all the meta-information related to your movies.

What we didn’t like: Painful import process, especially if you do not already own a desktop movie manager. Would be a 5 stars app if the developer could find a way to tap directly into your media center database or Apple TV, without having to involve the user.

To buy or not to buy: If you happen to own tens or even hundreds of movies and are looking for a convenient way to browse your collection, and keep track of it, you should give Movies HD a shot.

App Name: Movies HD
Version Reviewed: 1.5
Category: Productivity
Developer: Netwalk
Price: $4.99
Score:

About dag: Certified geek

Mike

I bought this about a week ago – I have 2000+ movies in my DVDProfiler collection and wanted an easy way to keep track of them on the go. The import process was very odd/time consuming (export, convert, upload, download, import.. and that’s just to get the titles in. For coverart you have to do more searching, deleting, resizing and importing). One big downside is that all these extra files make the backup process VERY time consuming.

Another app, My Movies Rack, lets you just sync with your DVDProfiler collection online (no needing to export/import/convert, etc..), but it’s iPhone only for now.

Movies HD looks nice, does what I want, but the odd import process makes it somewhat disappointing.
http://tric06.student.ipb.ac.id/ utari

wow, awesome app..the best movie catalog
http://ranggaw0636.student.ipb.ac.id ranggaw0636

this app name really confusing, i thought this is an app to wath HD movies
CheeseEater

It needs an iPhone module that let’s you scan barcodes with the phone camera, and then import to the iPad. Then it would be a point and shoot operation, and fast too.
Mels24roses

I agree with CheeseEater, there needs to be a link between the iPad and iPhone for easy input of the 1000 dvd’s one might own!! I would also like to see a function that would allow me to make my own custom Genre’s, because we have lots of kids movies and adult movies I like to sort through the movies as “Adult Comedy” or “Adult Action” so that I know what ones are ok for the kids to watch and what ones are not. I would also like to see on the Filter the Ratings be able to filter out “R” or what ever it is one might wish to filter out…
Lori

I’ve been using this for a couple of weeks and I’ve inputted about 300 of my 4000 movies so far. Tonight when I was entering some more movies, I would add the first one then try to add the next and the iPad turned black and the Apple logo was up. Now I’m stuck on being able to add a movie and then crash. What’s going on?