The apps that keep my tv and movie life organized

Once upon a time oh God he’s doing that thing where he talks about how old he is again we had three channels and no remote control.

You knew what was on television because you flipped between the channels to see what was happening. As the only child I was the resident channel flipper. Only fancy households had TV Guide. Also, what do I need a TV Guide for? There are only three channels.

Yes, they were in color. Shut up.

Anyway, with the advent of cable but before the internet there were about a hundred channels and we had a remote control. My ability to control the VCR became as important as my previous duties to get up and change the channel.

But even with all this new technology we still missed things. And if you missed an episode of Magnum P.I. then you were just out of luck. Hope you catch the rerun in the summer Jack.

Of course, back then, television shows were not serialized all that much and if you missed one it was not all that big a deal. This did not become a problem for me until Babylon 5, which was one of the first great shows of my generation to be heavily serialized. It was syndicated which meant that it often appeared at weird hours and was a struggle to track down.

And then, glory of glories, we got the DVR. First it was known as a TIVO and like the TV Guide it was only for rich people. But it eventually became part of every cable set up. Now, you could tell the tv computer what shows you liked and it recorded all of them, the good ones even recorded syndicated episodes on other channels. You could, over the course of a few months, get every episode of The Simpsons or Buffy The Vampire Slayer or some other classic show.

What I didn’t know then that I know with certainty now, is that a lot of technology can actually make life worse. Much worse.

For instance, the TIVO and the DVRs let us skip ads. What has the streaming era brought to many of us? Unskippable ads.

Ugh.

The other thing that has happened is that the television and movies you might want to watch are buried in a hive of different services that don’t talk to each other or talk to whatever computer box you use to watch shows.

It’s so bad (both how the stuff is presented and my television addiction) that I have to use several apps to keep it all straight. Here are some of the ones I like:

Letterboxd:

For good or bad this blog exists because of Letterboxd and Twitter. Letterboxd is a place to catalogue movies you have watched and the review them. You can follow other people and read their reviews. It’s fun and I was having a fun time with it and then one day I said to myself, “Hey, what happens if an absolute schmuck buys Letterboxd and all these things you wrote on there just disappear.”

Or say, the cheapo new owner wants to start charging for the previously free services? After watching Stop! Or My Mom will Shoot do you have the perfect essay on how it fits into Stallone’s mid-career choices? That will be $8 please.

Letterboxd is wisely (I think) dedicated to film. But as a serious TV watcher it leaves a lot of room for me to use other services.

Sequel:

A tracker for nearly everything. It lists movies, series, games, books, and audiobooks. I don’t much care for the layout or the (I’m struggling for the right word) the way it feels, I guess. The way it works? Intuitive. That’s the word. This is not intuitive to me. I would be nice to have everything in one place. It also gets bonus points because it has home screen widgets. If you don’t know what those are then don’t worry about it. If you do then know what they are then know that Sequel is the only one, I think, that has them and they are cool.

I haven’t tried the book or audiobook sections of Sequel. Also, for me, if I was going to have one app to rule them all, then it would need comic books as well.

Speaking of Comic Books.

I use CovrPrice and CLZ Comics. I think CovrPrice is the best of the various comic book tracker things I’ve tried. No one has gotten this right yet though. And it’s a hard one to crack. If CovrPrice had an interface as easy to use as TV Time (coming up in a minute) it would be a real winner.

Reelgood:

Reelgood is the first one of these tracker things that I used with any regularity. It’s solid and it did what I wanted it to do in terms of keeping me up to date on where I was in various television shows. The movie section was underwhelming though.

TV Time:

This is the one I’m using the most now, has the best interface and does everything I want. I really enjoy the upcoming section to help me keep track of which new episode will show up when and where. This one for me is the winner so far.

Callsheet:

I ended up in a beta test for Callsheet, a new app that was released today. Think of it as IMDB but optimized for your iPhone. Callsheet actually helped me find the Sarah Silverman comedy special I was looking for yesterday. It wasn’t Netflix it was HBO.

I like Callsheet, I’ll probably pay the $9 a year the developer is asking for it. It’s a good little resource to help you keep actors and movies and shows straight. It isn’t really competing with TV Time or any of the rest of these other apps. It’s not for keeping track of things (at least not so far). But it does what it does well, and you can stay away from the gunked up internet to get a movie or TV answer.

Apple TV:

The app is actually one of the first places I go to figure out where I can watch a movie or a tv show. It does a great job of pointing you to the right streamer. And I skipped Blu Rays and bought a ton of movies and some TV directly from Apple over the years.

I’m mostly happy with my life choices.