New DVD price search engine

[DeepThought]

I've just made public a DVD price search engine I'm working on and need to get some feedback, in addition to testing it with some real users to iron out the bugs out.

It can be found @ Multiregion DVD Price Check (http://www.*********************)

I'm in the process of adding more search modules to the engine, but currently it covers 4 R1, 2 R2, and 2 R4 suppliers.

Let me know how you get on via the feedback form on the site.

Cheers,
Mark.

[Uridium]

Just had a brief look for a couple of DVDs - worked very well. If you intend to add a few more retailers (eg DVDstreet, DVDstop.com.au) it would be superb. Nice work! :)

[orac]

Looks really good

er.. can you make the R2 Planet of the apes boxset display as 29.99 and they honour it??!!!!!!!!!!!!

[yaffle]

Good - a few questionable results (e.g. searching for Bridget Jones brought up results from Amazon including Monkeybone and Doc Hollywood!) but quick and powerful. I echo the need to add a few more retailers - ********* especially, if possible - at which point I'd use it all the time.

[dean richardson]

nice one!! agree it needs ********* etc.....

interested in buying "along came a spider" and the search worked 100%.

[Mundos]

Very impressive, add a few more retailers and I'll be another regular user.:)

[mythuk]

very nice site and something that's been needed for a long time! I like the fact that you actually convert into GBP, very good.

as with the other comments needs a few more retailers, but this is definately a bookmarker!

[powlest]

Very nice, keep adding the retailers and your on to a winner.:D

[John Hodson]

Nice effort, but something's screwy. Entering Shrek tells me that it's just over £13.50 (or thereabouts) from AB Sound, but if I go to AB it's $35.79 Canadian...which equates to about £15.79; have you got the postage rates set correctly?

---
So many films, so little time...

[DeepThought]

The price check returns £13.85, the price at ABSound is CAD$25.79 + $6 postage giving $31.79, which based on todays rate of (1 CAD ~ 0.44 GBP - See xe.com) works out at about £14

But you have reminded me that i've not written the script to update the exchange rates daily (they are currently a week out of date). I'll try to get that sorted tonight, in the meantime I've manually updated the rates :-)

Thanks for the feedback.

Mark.

[jchante]

looks really good but...
was looking for x files season 3 and only 1 retailer had it.... weird...

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by yaffle
Good - a few questionable results (e.g. searching for Bridget Jones brought up results from Amazon including Monkeybone and Doc Hollywood!) but quick and powerful. I echo the need to add a few more retailers - ********* especially, if possible - at which point I'd use it all the time.

Funny that, a search on Amazon actually does return these strange titles.. It seems to "OR" the input parameters.

Anyway I've filtered out the garbage and updated the Amazon search module, it should not only pick up the 'real' matches.

Thanks for reporting this,

Mark.

[jchante]

also prices for x files season 3 did not match on the result pages and following the link...

[jonathan_d]

it would be a good idea to have all the buttons ticked by default or to add an 'all retailers and regions' checkbox for the lazy people like me who cant be bothered to click them all seperately :D

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by jchante
looks really good but...
was looking for x files season 3 and only 1 retailer had it.... weird...

You need to be careful when searching, some suppliers list it a "x-files" others as "x files", I searched for "files season 3" and got 2 results.

In addition numbers are a pain, some list as "3" some as "three" e.g. DVDOffice use "three".

Mark.

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by jonathan_d
it would be a good idea to have all the buttons ticked by default or to add an 'all retailers and regions' checkbox for the lazy people like me who cant be bothered to click them all seperately :D

You may not have noticed, but you can click the region icon to select the whole region :-)

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by DeepThought


You need to be careful when searching, some suppliers list it a "x-files" others as "x files", I searched for "files season 3" and got 2 results.

In addition numbers are a pain, some list as "3" some as "three" e.g. DVDOffice use "three".

Mark.

Oh, and don't forget "3rd" and "third"....

Play247 and Amazon use the above variants.......

[nigel_williams]

What about 2-disk sets?

absound.ca charge based on weight so some 2-disc sets will require $12 postage.

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by nigel_williams
What about 2-disk sets?

absound.ca charge based on weight so some 2-disc sets will require $12 postage.

I know... and EzyDVD charge less shipping for pre-orders....

I'm working on it :-)

[poolking]

I like it in general, but don't like the check boxes though, I would prefer it to trundle through the retailers automatically, once I've entered the title I'm looking for.

[John Hodson]

Originally posted by DeepThought
The price check returns £13.85, the price at ABSound is CAD$25.79 + $6 postage giving $31.79, which based on todays rate of (1 CAD ~ 0.44 GBP - See xe.com) works out at about £14


Ah, but Shrek is a double disk and incurs a higher postage rate of $10, and obviously your calculations don't take that into account.

No small matter, weight; try searching for The Godfather boxset and you'll see what I mean!

Keep on with it though, iron out these wrinkles and you'll have one heck of a site there...

---
So many films, so little time...

[Alan. b]

Very good, but as others have already stated it needs more retailers in all regions. :)

[Ridcully]

:) Very useful, possible saved my self some money already.

As mentioned above needs more retailers.

:p and just so that I can be really lazy any way it can get the info from my DVD profile wish list so that I don't have to type in the names over and over again ;)

[KeithHx]

Fantastic. Even if it's not perfect, you get a clear idea of who's gonna be cheapest.

I definately think more retailers are needed especially for R2. Have a scour of the Supplier forum to see which suppliers we all use.

K

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by John Hodson


Ah, but Shrek is a double disk and incurs a higher postage rate of $10, and obviously your calculations don't take that into account.

No small matter, weight; try searching for The Godfather boxset and you'll see what I mean!

Keep on with it though, iron out these wrinkles and you'll have one heck of a site there...

---
So many films, so little time...

Yes, the Under18 search is a bit vague... hopefully I'll have it fixed tonight.

[Bapapapa]

Impressive work DeepThought, very nice.

[Paul490]

A fantastic little website in my opinion.

There are still a few things that needed to be sorted out, but other than that, it's great. :)

[den]

Can the results be sorted by price ... cheers :)

great website

[Aardvark]

Impressive. I like the layout.
Include Chaosmusic in the region 4 section and I'll be a regular!
Already added to my 'favourites' list.

[bobwindy]

Great site....added to the favourites list, its shown me that R4 is cheaper generally. Also like the way it adds postage....very useful :)

[Gromit]

Looks very useful. Definitely needs devoted from R4 and are we really so limited for good R2 suppliers??? I guess we are.

[KeithHx]

den,

click on the 'Total' heading to sort by price.

K

[ASH]

Outstanding !

Deep Thought you complete and utter bast**d you have made it even easier for me to throttle my CC each month !!!

Seriously though - a great site.

Suggest

R1
*********

R2
DVDStreet ( even if only to make the others look good)
BlackStar (Enormous range)

R4
Family Box Office

Thanks for the facility

[Jimmyboy]

Err, it don't work.

[lorenzo]

Great job - well done ;)

[jonathan_d]

another suggestion
maybe have a few colums for the price showing the original price
the price in £'s, an estimated shipping column and then finally a total cost column :)

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by jonathan_d
another suggestion
maybe have a few colums for the price showing the original price
the price in £'s, an estimated shipping column and then finally a total cost column :)

Don't think I understand? Does it not already have this info? Or ar you talking about a different presentation?

[DeepThought]

1. I've added ********* (R1) and Amazon.co.uk (R2) tonight.

2. I've also hopefully sorted the filtering problem with sites like Under18 that do a 'vague' search.

3. I've added exchange rate details to the output results.

4. I'm going to bed now.....

[zulm]

Cool! very useful - on my favs now :) with ********* on it’s one of the most promising sites - keep it up. Any chance of futureent.com going on too?.. of course after you’re nap :D

[den]

Could you add CDNow to the list?

Cheers.

Using this site so much now :eek: :eek: :eek:

[Jimmyboy]

very good, got it working now.
Some more stores to add -

futureent.com (R1)
bensonsworld.co.uk (R2)
dddhouse.com (R3)

[Rolie]

Very nice effort, have registered in the hope that more suppliers will be added, especially those in the Uk who sell Region 1.
( Future Entertainment, DVD mod, DVD Popcorn etc).

[Axil]

Very Useful site - suggest ,if possible, addition of devoted.com.au , my favourite R4 supplier at the moment.

[SimonInd]

I'd like to see www.dvdguide.com.au added - they're currently my R4 retailer of choice due to $3 shipping or free shipping for orders over $50 ( 2 DVDs normally ).

Also www.deepdiscountdvd.com seem to be comparable to DVD Box Office for Region 1s but they can deliver in a more timely fashion....not hard I know!

Otherwise, excellent site which I'm sure will be well used by all...

Simon

[ajm]

very sexy. good job.

more e-tailers would be good, but you've covered most of the ones I use.

[pythons]

I'm well impressed, it looks really cool... very usefull!

nice one! :D

[tbibic]

This is now one of my essential sites for buying DVDs!

Absolutely cracking.

For every additional retailer you add, the more essential this site will become!

I agree that you need a "select all" option - read your comment about clicking the region and that is very useful - you probably need to tell people that they can do that on the site itself (perhaps just under the region symbol?).

So far so good, be prepared for A LOT of traffic as this site expands!! A good price comparrison site has been LONG overdue.

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by tbibic
This is now one of my essential sites for buying DVDs!

Absolutely cracking.

For every additional retailer you add, the more essential this site will become!

I agree that you need a "select all" option - read your comment about clicking the region and that is very useful - you probably need to tell people that they can do that on the site itself (perhaps just under the region symbol?).

So far so good, be prepared for A LOT of traffic as this site expands!! A good price comparrison site has been LONG overdue.

It does actually say you can click the region in the text beneath the search box, and if you hover over the region image!!! I guess some people don't RTFM :-) :-)

Now if only I could get a penny for each search :-)

[tbibic]

DOH! you're right :D

[John Hodson]

Originally posted by DeepThought


Yes, the Under18 search is a bit vague... hopefully I'll have it fixed tonight.

No, I wasn't too concerned by under18 finding instances of 'The' or even finding me James Brown (Godfather of soul - geddit?), but by this:

ABSound GODFATHER COLLECTION (5 DISC) R1 £38.62(CAD87.79) Shipping £2.64(CAD6.00) Total £41.26(CAD93.79)

DVDCrave DVD - Godfather Collection Box Set (5 Disc) R4 £41.26(AUD119.22) Shipping £1.90(AUD5.50) Total £43.16(AUD124.72)

EzyDVD Godfather Collection, The (5 Disc Set) R4 £42.84(AUD123.81) Shipping £1.90(AUD5.50) Total £44.74(AUD129.31)

Those prices to ship The Godfather Boxset? Not a chance.

---
So many films, so little time...

[Grumpy]

WOW whos a clever boy then, very impressive what a great site.
Most of the suppilers I use are on there but if you get the time how about putting Ringos on it, I appreciate you can only put so many suppilers on it and that you'll never keep every body happy but theres no harm in asking.
I have saved if as a favourite and will give it a proper go soon.:)

[niz]

i wonder if you've had a chance to compare with dvdpricesearch.com... there are many R1 suppliers on there that are not on *********************... it would be very useful to add those, or possibly "borrow" the search results from dvdpricesearch.com as well... (i.e. treat dvdpricesearch as a supplier)... don't know how ethical that would be...

;)

[kanedaa]

top site mate, just found some anime at prices I thought were no longer possible direct from America :)

i'm not personally too worried about shipping as I no how much extra work that will create, would make your site the definitive option (but don't forget, even the bigwigs - dvdpricesearch - get shipping to the UK wrong regularly)....

get a few more suppliers into the R1 section and you're onto a winner.

dave.

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by John Hodson


No, I wasn't too concerned by under18 finding instances of 'The' or even finding me James Brown (Godfather of soul - geddit?), but by this:

ABSound GODFATHER COLLECTION (5 DISC) R1 £38.62(CAD87.79) Shipping £2.64(CAD6.00) Total £41.26(CAD93.79)

DVDCrave DVD - Godfather Collection Box Set (5 Disc) R4 £41.26(AUD119.22) Shipping £1.90(AUD5.50) Total £43.16(AUD124.72)

EzyDVD Godfather Collection, The (5 Disc Set) R4 £42.84(AUD123.81) Shipping £1.90(AUD5.50) Total £44.74(AUD129.31)

Those prices to ship The Godfather Boxset? Not a chance.

---
So many films, so little time...

Yes, the shipping (as it says in the note below the results, is only for a single DVD), I've added this 'bug' to my bug list and will try to fix it ASAP.

Thanks for the comments.

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by niz
i wonder if you've had a chance to compare with dvdpricesearch.com... there are many R1 suppliers on there that are not on *********************... it would be very useful to add those, or possibly "borrow" the search results from dvdpricesearch.com as well... (i.e. treat dvdpricesearch as a supplier)... don't know how ethical that would be...

;)

I did consider at one time utlilsing other search engines (e.g. dvdsearch.com) to harvest the results but decided against it . I wanted full control over what I obtained from each site (e.g. I pull availability detail from Play247 - a feature which I'm going to add for other suppliers soon - assuming that the suppliers make this detail available).

My intention is to add *every* supplier that will ship to the UK I can find, but it will take time and I'm currently adding them based on priority.

My first priority was to add the suppliers I tend to use, yes I do find some time to watch movies :-)

Secondly, I'm adding other sites based on feedback I get from other users (hence the current poll on the site).

Once I've done this, I'll add the others when I get time.

Mark.

[mythuk]

i agree with one of the comments above, it'd be nice to have some UK sites who sell different regions. I only have a switch card (damn you Natwest!) and so US sites tend to laugh in my face :mad:

but as i said earlier top quality site!

[DeepThought]

DeVoteD now added to the search list....

[RichB]

Another request for DDDhouse please :)
Very good, just needs more (HK especially!) sites

[yaffle]

This just gets better and better! Really quality work ... straight on my favourites list :)

[Tob]

Great work mate, very nice indeed:)

[DR HIENVO]

Its great! good work!
btw u need to input a lot more sites ill post some e-tailers here later that would be handy additions to the already established arsenal of dvd e-tailers

[Francis]

Stunning site you're building up there pal =)

[phlebas]

Nice site - now in my favourites!

[den]

DeepThought - just had this error message...

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 25305 bytes) in /home/ipx/www/dvdpricecheck/smodules/dvdepot.php on line 30

I was searching across all suppliers

[grant]

Good site, needs more suppliers...
particularly www.deepdiscountdvd.com (the cheapest place), and www.thunderdvd.com, rapid Canadina supplier.

[Prav]

This is a very useful site - wish you the very best. The two most important things to mention are accuracy and ease-of use: from my experience with your website provides both. Good one

[wong fei hong]

Great stuff! Two searches for two different items gave me the kind of results I was looking for. Thumbs up :D !

Suggestion for adding: www.coolashop.com - though their own search can be a bit wonky...

[William Shatners Wig]

I'm getting the following error whenever I try to access the site...
:(

'Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 46080 bytes) in /home/ipx/www/dvdpricecheck/mainfile.php on line 1164'

[Drel]

Excellent Job I can see your site become more and more essential with the addition of each new supplier. Just added to my faves.

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by den
DeepThought - just had this error message...

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 25305 bytes) in /home/ipx/www/dvdpricecheck/smodules/dvdepot.php on line 30

I was searching across all suppliers

How dare you search across all suppliers... :-)

I encountered this myself the other day, it may be due to load or a memory leaking bug somewhere in the code. I'll investigate.

I have now opened some site forums for logging bugs/feature requests/etc. Please report these problems via those thanks....

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by grant
Good site, needs more suppliers...
particularly www.deepdiscountdvd.com (the cheapest place), and www.thunderdvd.com, rapid Canadina supplier.

They are on my list....

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by wong fei hong
Great stuff! Two searches for two different items gave me the kind of results I was looking for. Thumbs up :D !

Suggestion for adding: www.coolashop.com - though their own search can be a bit wonky...

Added to (now a growing) list of extra suppliers to add....

[Welshlad]

OK, am I missing something? :confused:

I do a search, and no matter how many retailers I select, it searches Play, then reutrns no results at all???
I'm assuming this is just a temprary bug?

Just thought I'd let ya know...

Very promising site though...gonna be a real essential link!

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by Welshlad
OK, am I missing something? :confused:

I do a search, and no matter how many retailers I select, it searches Play, then reutrns no results at all???
I'm assuming this is just a temprary bug?

Just thought I'd let ya know...

Very promising site though...gonna be a real essential link!

What browser are you using, and do you have cookies enabled? Please post site problems on the forums at the site, to save clogging these forums up.

[Narshty]

Excellent stuff! Outstanding!

[Welshlad]

Originally posted by DeepThought


What browser are you using, and do you have cookies enabled? Please post site problems on the forums at the site, to save clogging these forums up.

DUH! Cookies it is...I never enable cookies on any site that I don't have to, just a personal dislike, nothing major...Sorted now.
TOP site btw...love it!

You'll be very pleased to know you've earned a coveted place on my links bar in IE.. consider yourself VERY privileaged! :)

[Jay]

Very impressive, and it's gone straight into my favourites.

About time someone came up with something like this :)

[Nirvana]

.

[Smiler]

Nice site, I'll certainly be paying you a few visits.


Smiler

[cottrells]

Excellent Site
Bookmark it straight away folks :D

...Steve

PS how about adding dvdimport

[DeepThought]

Other sites will be coming along soon.

[giturnbull@aol.com]

is it just me??? every time I try a search, I get this message "Help, unknown operation invoked !!!". Can anyone help?

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by giturnbull@aol.com
is it just me??? every time I try a search, I get this message "Help, unknown operation invoked !!!". Can anyone help?

Sounds like you may not have cookies enabled. It uses cookies to maintain session data for the search.

[den]

There are problems when searching Amazon UK - its giving a X on a yellow circle. Others are fine.

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by den
There are problems when searching Amazon UK - its giving a X on a yellow circle. Others are fine.

The search engine has some some logic that says if three or more consecutive searches to a site fail then it will disable searching for that site for a period of one hour. When I looked at the database everything seemed to be back to normal, and the amazon search now works OK.

I'll add a status page that shows the state of each search module, including whether a module has been temporarily disabled.

Apologies for any problems this caused.

[Chyna Tsui]

Very nice site Mr Deep Throat. Added to My Fav's as well.

Any chance you could add www.hivizone.com to your R3 list?

Cheers

[Joe Pasquale]

Originally posted by Chyna Tsui
Mr Deep Throat

:)

[DeepThought]

LOL