SeriesFinale
I’ve been neglecting this space but I hope this post will compensate.
So, I had a problem. My girlfriend and I really like to watch a few TV series but we never know what was the last episode we watched… The irregularity of the TV schedule and the fact that sometimes we stop watching a show and catch on with it after a while make us forget how far in a TV show are we at.
Hence, I imagined it would be really useful that every time we start watching an episode I grab my N900 and mark it as watched! Plus, it would be nice to read the episodes’ synopsis in case we need to know what happened at a certain episode before.
And that’s what my hackfest time at Igalia brought to life! Using the TheTVDB API, users can search for their favorite TV shows and it will pull the shows’ information with every season’s episode information as well and present them as a check list. Of course, all this can be inserted and edited manually, useful for example for TV shows that are not available on TheTVDB.
While I try to put it on Extras Devel, you can get its source from Gitorious, download the source package or download a Debian package directly.
Enjoy SeriesFinale:
SeriesFinale from Joaquim Rocha on Vimeo.
December 6th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Nice! Combined with TPB website scraping this could even let you get episodes that you missed, as we already have Transmission and TV out on the device. Think about it
After that, you could automatically mark an episode watched when the media player has finished playing a video file that (roughly) matches the show names and get the season and episode number by using the regex “S(\d{2})E(\d{2})”..
Oh, and one more idea for the show and season list: It would be helpful if you can show the next episode to watch on the right side of the list (e.g. if you have watched episode 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of season 2 and all of season 1, it would show “Next: Episode 6″ in the season list and “Watching: Season 2″ in the show list).
December 6th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Sweet! I suspect the itch you’re scratching is a very common one. Thanks for developing this!
December 6th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
watching your tv shows with XBMC would take care of the tracking problem.
December 6th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
[...] se você quer usar o Bluetooth do bicho pra conectar seu laptop à internet, leia aqui como. E um programa que agradará aos viciados em [...]
December 6th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
I LOVE YOU! Oh my.
I’ve been looking for something like this for god knows how long. Using scribbles, trying to keep text files on my PC – always fails. Always have to go back to googling an episode run list. Just bought an N900 (although not here yet!), and this will be perfect.
THANK YOU!
December 7th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Hi guys,
Thank you for the kind words and for your suggestions. Let me know about more ideas you have on how to improve this application and make our (TV series’ fans) lives easier.
Cheers,
December 7th, 2009 at 7:10 am
PVR software, like MythTV, keeps track of this nicely itself. However, SeriesFinale sounds perfect for anyone who doesn’t have a PVR and still wants to keep track of watched/unwatched lists.
December 7th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Another idea would be to have two different people managing their own watching habit, and when they meet, the application will determine (via Bluetooth/Wifi/IM/SMS/Telepathy pipes?) the episode with the lowest season and episode number that both users have not seen yet, and suggest that for viewing. That would be helpful for situations where two people normally don’t watch episodes together, but now want to watch an episode together, but no one wants to watch a episode he/she has already seen.
December 7th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Oh, man! That rocks! I’ve been using a piece of sheet to write down watched episodes, but really that is a must for me.
Thanks!!
December 7th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Hi Joaquim. SeriesFinales sounds looks amazing. I have tried to install it but I don’t know how. I have just downloaded the .deb package but can’t figure how to install it. Do I have to access shell and type dpkg -i or something like?
December 7th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
By the way, it would be great you enable an option to follow comments by email.
December 7th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I’d love to have this on Diablo/Maemo4
December 8th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Hi Paco, currently you can install the app like you would do in a regular Debian based Linux system: downloading/moving it to a folder in the N900 and do dpkg -i in the terminal as root. You can be root on the N900 by installing the “rootsh” program and then on a terminal do: sudo gainroot
Let me know if you have any problems with it.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:21 am
I don’t own a 810 tablet but if someone would like this on Diablo, I think it would be easier to port. Maybe you can suggest that on #maemo channel at Freenode.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:22 am
I’m happy I made your life easier Juan
Paper sucks, I always end up losing everything I got on paper.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Interesting point, maybe the opposite would also be nice, sync the episodes’ list between two devices. Then, if we port SeriesFinale to GNOME, people could check the shows using their desktop or mobile Linux
December 8th, 2009 at 12:25 am
I don’t use MythTV so I didn’t know about that. Thank you for the info, I’ll take a look at that to maybe get some ideas from.
December 8th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Hi Joaquim. Just Installed SeriesFinale and it works great! Could be possible to mark a complete season as seen? I have some shows I already saw previous seasons and want to mark all the episodes as seen.
Another suggestion is when you get the list of TV shows it display which episode is the first you haven’t seen without having to enter.
And, finally, when you enter inside a show marks which season are you seeing and which you have already seen
Thanks a lot for this great app, is now one of my favourite in N900
December 8th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I can add a menu item to mark a whole season as complete.
I don’t understand what you mean on the second paragraph, can you make it clearer?
I can also make the series and seasons that are completely seen more evident by adding a subtitle or gray it out.
Thank you for your feedback Paco!
December 9th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Sounds like an awesome program. I’d totally use it to keep track of my anime watching if only TVDB wasn’t lacking in data on the genre.
Maybe some fan with more coding ability than I have will find a way to link it up to Moonphase’s data or something.
December 9th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Hey Carl, what is the Moonphase about? I don’t know about it..
December 9th, 2009 at 11:19 am
http://moonphase.cc/Html/anime.html
Basically a list of all anime currently airing on TV, getting released in cinemas, or released on video.
December 9th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Nice, I was a big Anime fan a few years ago. I’ll check about that later! Thanks
December 10th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Hola, perdona que esta vez te escriba en español pero el inglés no es mi fuerte como habrás comprobado.
Tengo el siguiente problema que no se si me podrás solucionar.
Me instalé seriesfinale del paquete .deb nada más que lo publicaste y me iba perfecto. Ayer u hoy, no recuerdo, al entrar en el gestor de aplicaciones del N900, me salió que había un update disponible del seriesfinale. Supuse que ya lo habían incluido en el repositorio y actualicé.
Desde ese momento me desapareció el icono del escritorio y no hay manera de que vuelva a aparecer. He desinstalado, purgado, vuelto a instalar, ejecutado gtk-update-icon-cache y nada… he mirado en /usr/share/applications/hildon/ y el seriesfinale.desktop si está ahí y parece que bien…
¿Se te ocurre alguna cosilla para que vuelva a aparecer el icono en el escritorio?
Mil gracias.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Hola Paco… Pues, hubo un problema con la construcción de ese paquete en el repositório. Piensé que iba igual que en mi ordenador pero no. Acabo de subirlo de nuevo a ver si de esta vez queda bien.
No te preocupes que la configuración de la aplicación no te va desaparecer, es decir, tendrás todas las series que añadiste y todos los cambios. Instalate el Debian inicial que ya debrá funccionar mientras no aparece un update bueno…
Perdona, a ver si la versión 0.2 se constroye mejor.
December 14th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Pues parece que la 2.0 tiene el mismo problema. La he instalado y nada. Eso si, en el repositorio aparece bien el icono, pero al instalarla no aparece nada… :-/
December 14th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Sí, la 0.2.1 debrá ser la que está buena. Ya la subi pero todavía no apareció en la lista de updates. A ver si esta semana estará.
December 25th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Nice App ! Maybe you could add original air date info too ? (For past episodes and those to come next)
That would be great
March 14th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Hi I just tried your application and this really great. Thanks a lot.
But I would like to underlined some points to improve it.
- First of all I can’t use correctly your tick case to select an episode I watched (I have to use the stylet) because the case is too small and the touch is not precise.
- I usually don’t watch the special episodes for a Serie, so I use your “delete episodes” function, then Ctrl+A, delete, perfect, no special episodes anymore.
But when I update the series the special episodes appears again, which is kind of annoying because it said “20 episodes not watched”…
- I take “Fringe” as an example.
I watched every episodes of the season 2 so far which means 15 on 22 scheduled. So if I go the fringe folder, season 2, I don’t have any blue episodes which is ok.
At this point I think you should find another color between the episodes watched and the ones which are not released, because actually it’s grey for both. So you’re right I haven’t watched those last 7 episodes but this is not the same thing.
The problem is similair regarding the first screen of your application.
Fringe: 2 seasons / 7 episodes watched / Next air date: 01 avril (color grey)
Heroes: 4 seasons / Complety watched (color grey)
Maybe you should find another color for Next air date only or something like this.
- There are some incoherences concerning a few series.
Take Flash Forward for example. It seems to have 16 episodes scheduled.
Your application indicates the first one was release in 1997 !? And the there is not indication for the other episodes. I guess the serie reference in the database you’re using isn’t correct.
- The scroll is great, very smooth but it misses some pictures or colors, like maybe the cover of the series (especially if you want to read the details of an episode). This is not very important but it makes your application nicer and pleasant to use.
- Finally I think the update all function slow. Indeed I have 25 series to update and it takes almost 5minutes to check everything (WiFi or 3.5G).
I hope this feedback can help you. Thanks again for your work.
Best Regards,
Supergex
March 14th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Hi supergex,
Yes… that’s a problem. It seems the toggle widget I’m using doesn’t get Hildonized. I keep in mind the idea of doing a custom toggle widget for it but there are more important features and things to solve first.
I see. I could add some functionality to prevent Special seasons’ episodes from being added on each update.
Well, here I don’t see this as a real problem but if more people agree with you I can think about changing it.
That’s because the Flash Forward you have added is not the Flash Forward show you and I are watching
Just look at the episodes’ synopsis.
I have that feature planned as well.
Well, it’s normal to go that slow, after all it is doing a lot of requests but I’ll study a way of making it faster.
It indeed helps. Thank you for your comments!
April 1st, 2010 at 3:01 pm
thanks, this is a great app for my n900. (if you’d use flattr, i would flatter
)
May 5th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Hi Joaquim,
This is a great app, i use it a lot, but I am unable to delete shows that I no longer require.
For example I (stupidly) added in Flash Forward instead of FlashForward and now i’d like to get rid of the wrong one. However, when I select Delete Shows, it doesn’t get rid of it.
Any ideas…?
May 6th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Hi Ryan, that’s a bug that is gonna be already solved in next release.
Cheers,
May 7th, 2010 at 8:34 am
“Hi Ryan, that’s a bug that is gonna be already solved in next release.”
OK, great, look forward to it!