Movie Collector OH

We've been migrated to newer forum software. It is always a little rough in the beginning. This transition appears to have gone fairly smooth. Just needs some odds and ends ironed out.

Now try clicking on the Print Movie Listing button

Don't like the huge emojis?? Under Firefox or Chrome families of browsers (and I now see also Safari - see here: https://adblockplus.org/en/safari ), add the "Adblock Plus" extension. Click "Filter Preferences" and click "Add Filter". Copy and paste this line into filter field to kill emojis, close config, and refresh page. http://content.invisioncic.com/q242003/reactions/* [this rule is subject to change] You're welcome.

Jeez. All I'm seeing here is **** **** **** ****. Good to be back. Has anyone seen the printer-friendly monthly schedule yet?

My project says so. At least since 2000. Before that most of the schedules are accounted for too, except for about a combined two years worth.

Monthly updates from my project are posted. Things have been busy for me lately, but I still managed to get this done. Also the last of the data for 1997 is in. One more complete year of old schedules accounted for. Here is my usual take on the premieres: http://moviecollector.us/reports/Future_Premieres.htm Here is a new report showing just the movies, but listed in order of last showing. Top of list is stuff that hasn't been shown in a long time, bottom is most recent stuff added to the schedule. It probably doesn't serve much practical value for quick reference purposes, but may still be interesting for some: http://moviecollector.us/reports/Movies-Only_last-scheduled.htm

That link works. P.S. the former link was just a non-secure redirect link that throws up an error on the browsers. In other words they could present a vulnerability. If I defeat the security measures on my browser then I am able to get to it. About par for the course around here I suppose.

Broken link? I tried it on three different browsers. No Twitter account to log into for me though.

At first I didn't notice, but the sticky in this area says they are upgrading their "platform" software. That is the software which manages the website, not the website itself. Also I have noticed that they are running a recently discontinued version of Apache Tomcat, which happens to be platform software. Right now the core version they are running is around ten years old. So with an upgrade to a current platform, one can anticipate things like better load balancing, better uptime, etc. All things that would benefit streaming videos (which have evolved quite a bit since then), if that is in fact located on the same system. One can only hope. This website itself has a number of issues that could be corrected with a minor amount of hacking, not really even programming. Well you could call it that if you want. That would just take someone who is familiar with the scripting language that this site is coded in, or familiar with scripting languages in general, and make some small changes. (Hopefully it is good hacking) Anything is possible.

I have posted on this before, they are presently using Apache Tomcat 6.0.35, which was EOL earlier this year after version 6.0.53. (scroll down to see Releases table - 6.0.35 isn't specifically shown as it was a minor point release) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Tomcat

Sounds like they are just going through a punch list of things to get done. Maybe fix a few things, maybe add a few features. It can't hurt.

**scrap that last idea for now, let's see how servers work after upgrade**

A bit O/T but I did see someone is doing something, related to the website. There is a locked sticky thread in the off topic forum, stating that it will be temporarily unavailable on Tuesday the 17th for maintenance.

I use the Dell Latitude 14.1" (E6420) and 15.6" (E65xx) laptops. They are medium-sized business-class machines which are sturdy and the more commonly replaced items are usually easier to service than on the lower end consumer-grade laptops. For instance, to get at the HDD, you don't need to remove the keyboard and/or the whole bottom. It is just four screws on the bottom, and the HDD caddy slides out. Also the CD/DVD transport slides out (without any screws) and is easily replaced with a secondary HDD caddy. Anyhow I went wireless at home years ago. I don't use my wired network interface unless I need to connect to the Internet at a job. I went wireless at home over a decade ago with my laptops, before the wired network interface was integrated onto the system board and was usually just a slide-in PCMCIA module. I was burning through CAT-5 connectors too. For me it was the CAT-5 connector on the wire which usually went bad. The coating on the terminals wore off and then oxidized. Replacing the wire or reterminating the wire fixed that. I have found a wireless-G or wireless-N hot spot and Intel mini-pci BGN internal network cards to be a good combination, more reliable than an actual wired connection, for the reasons you mention. [This may not be the case if you live in a condo or apartment in close proximity to a bunch of others doing the same thing.] A pitfall in the past that has been resolved in the last 8 years or so on these Dell Latitude machines is the DC power connector. Prior to that they used to be soldered to the system board, and the electrical connection would sometimes break loose. In more recent years the DC connector is a discreet component jack with wires that go to the system board. This jack is loosely connected to the chassis, using a clamp mount which allows to float around a bit. The first computer I got where they mounted it this way scared me, until I looked inside and realized the change they made. I though "oh, how cool is that". There are plenty of USB ports, so the only remaining weak point for me on these is the single HDMI port, which I don't use that much. It looks to be more robust than the other types of connectors anyhow. It is closer in design to a USB port, which is designed for a high amount of insertion cycles. I don't think I've ever had a USB port catastrophically fail. Not unless the computer falls to the ground with a connector plugged into it, and the USB connector is dislodged off the system board. They just seem to loosen their grip a bit over time. On the other hand, I have had thumb drives that get worn out over time (worn off coating and oxidation like the CAT-5 terminations??), but the USB ports on a computer generally outlast the computer for me. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the HDMI ports would last a long time too, unless abused, like if bumped or it fell with a connector plugged into it. Also last but not least, these days I insist on laptops that have LCD displays with LED backlighting. Traditionally they used LCD displays with CCFL backlighting (a form of fluorescent light), and they might still make some of those. The problem is that CCFL lights go through a "red-shift" when they get old, whereas LED backlights are brighter and remain bright longer, which is easier on my eyes for a work computer.

@Stephan55 Nice post with historical overview. I especially like your conclusion: "So sit back, and have a glass of TCM wine, and relax. Enjoy TCM for what it is, a channel that offers relatively "uncut and commercial free" programming, no more, or less." Spot on. At least I don't think I've heard them use the overused corporate phrase "these are exciting times". Or if they have, I filtered it out.

Thanks again. Just your objective testing and reporting is all they need. FWIW, I see there is a odd Firefox testbed to happen in Germany. Could be a rabbit hole or could be nothing as far as we are concerned: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/09/mozilla_tests_cliqz_in_germany/ Also the comments section there reminds me of the downstream versions of Firefox. There are a couple well-known ones anyhow. I say "downstream versions" as they are not really developed into something much different than FF. In fact they are more just reactions to the design changes Mozilla has made over the years to Firefox. Also I think they are maintained by one individual each, not by entire teams or companies. Waterfox -dereviative of Firefox. "64-bit version only. Creates its own user directory, seperate from the FF user directory. The telemetry is all removed; it's not even an option you can turn on or off." Pale Moon -derivative of Firefox. Frozen version with pre-Australis interface (classic theme). 32-bit only. [FF Stable was 32-bit-only on Windows until just the last year or two, so not as big of a deal as it may seem.] So if you like the older theme, you wouldn't need to use Classic Theme Restorer add-on. Doesn't support "e10s". ["e10s" is the finalized release of FF's long-time process abstraction project, using a dedicated Web Content process to run all external plug-ins. This isolates the browser for stability in the event a plug-in crashes, in which case the browser just keeps going along.]

They might be out there if you look. Not a fan myself of fan edits, but this one could be interesting. The original I have seen too. It was "ok" I thought when I saw it on a Sat morning back in the late 70s or early 80s. I'll be recording this one.

Ok, then in the same kind of direction I was going with Vivaldi, there is one more browser. It is called Brave. This is different from Vivaldi as it is written from the ground up. As a result it has the least amount of features out of any browser I have covered in this thread, but it too is actively being developed by a real company. It is headed up by the former CEO of Firefox of many years (back during their most productive years), and he was also the creator of Javascript (part of any modern web browser). In any case, Brave is entirely built in-house, except for some optional extensions as I understand. https://brave.com/ A unique feature of Brave is that it incorporates its own optional ad server system which allows you to substitute Brave's own ad network for a given website's ad server (Allow Ads / Show Brave Ads / No Ads). The clicks from Brave Ads generate revenue for both the site being visited and Brave. You can also choose to just browse without any ads. Besides those three options, there is a fourth option to register and put money down to browse without ads, but only for sites you wish to support. The money is directly transferred in anonymity to your preferred websites in click points, in exchange for no ads. Your preferred websites get credit for click points and you get no ads. Like Chrome/Android, Brave will soon have a Sync With IOS completed (for iPhone). On the other hand I think it is unknown if Vivaldi will have this, as most of the important things Vivaldi does operate outside of the Google Chrome environment. There is the provision for extensions with Brave too, but it is mostly still in its infancy. This would include an external plug-in for Adobe Flash. I can't speak for Windows, but on Linux operating systems it needs "pepperflashplugin", a product developed for Chrome by Google. This browser caught my interest because its main components are truly built from the ground up. So to summarize desktop browser families in order of popularity: There is Google Chrome and several downstream browsers which use common open-source tools developed by Google for it. One of these downstream browsers would be Vivaldi, which has all the Google telemetry stripped out, but also has the benefit of their R&D in its rendering engine. It has many additional features that only Vivaldi's (formerly Opera's) crazy Norwegians could think of (actually they listen very closely to their user base). There is Mozilla Firefox and its derivatives, written from open-source components sourced by Mozilla. This has a large add-on base, but they are currently phasing older ones out due to recent changes in the main program. This may or may not hurt them. There are the two main OS vendor browsers (IE/Edge and Safari). Both are closed-source, so no downstream browsers being developed by third parties. Then there are new ones built from the ground up. This is a very small category because it is the most difficult to do with limited resources as they have built their own rendering engines too, in order to qualify being in this category. This would include Brave (headed up by Firefox's former CEO). Because he is involved, I would say Brave has a lot of potential. I have Firefox, Vivaldi, and Brave all installed on my Linux Mint computer, mostly for evaluation purposes. That way I get to see what these two major Firefox and Chrome families of browsers are doing as well as Brave. If something is broken in Vivaldi, there is a good chance it will also be broken in Chrome (in particular, with rendering or with the add-ons). My regular browser is Firefox. To reiterate, I have no interest in watching movies online using the Watch TCM services at this time, but wish to see things work out. So thanks for the constructive feedback and helping them with their R&D.

Hey Stephan55, I see you are having issues with Firefox again. There is another browser you may be interested in testing for these purposes. It is from the team that brought us Opera in the early 2000s. https://vivaldi.com/ The short story is that the Opera browser was sold to the Chinese and is no longer being developed by its Norwegian founders. The good news is that Opera's original developers have regrouped and are actively developing Vivaldi, carrying over their methodology from Opera. (The original Opera browser brought us many of the browser features we use across the board today, such as tabbed browsing) It has more native baseline features than Firefox, so depending on your browsing habits you would probably need fewer add-ons for Vivaldi than for Firefox. The rendering engine is the open-source Chromium project from Google, so if the Google Chrome browser can work for you, then this should too - except that it won't "phone home" to Google (though it uses free add-ons from the Chrome "store"). Just another tool for the toolbox.

I don't personally try to watch movies this way, but not that long ago I helped another poster out with Firefox. It turned out that this TCM service requires third party cookies to be enabled, and apparently they weren't on Firefox on his machine. (To the best of my knowledge, this wasn't actually posted anywhere to inform) Also if you can get it to work on the Chrome browser, but want your computer to be Google-free as I do, there is the web browser Vivaldi - made by the founders of the web browser Opera. These days Opera is owned and run by the Chinese, no longer by the Norwegians who originally gave us Opera. Vivaldi uses open-sourced Chrome components, but doesn't phone home to Google like Chrome. Being that Vivaldi is based on the same rendering engine that Chrome uses, it ought to work just the same. (I'm a Linux Mint guy when I'm on the Internet, so my browser options include everything available except for Microsoft or Mac browsers, which I wouldn't want to touch anyway)

Slacker!!

No, I don't see it going the way of AMC. The schedules show that. They have just been furiously shuffling everything else about the brand around. Ruffled a lot of feathers. The one thing that could use some updating is this site (or not). The quirks and pitfalls haven't changed one bit in the roughly three years I've been posting here.

I was talking about the *ahem* performance artist. Maybe I should start my own thread on this, just so I can claim what is O/T or not.

I didn't happen to see it. Do you mean like a vertical jitter? Sounds like an analog type of problem.

You might want to post over here too, more people who have a clue about these things: https://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/forums/directv-support-forum.11/ Using process of elimination... Maybe a bad LNB on the dish, or a bad Power Injector? (PI is a small box that powers up the the active electronics on the satellite dish, it is located somewhere along the coax cable, between the dish and receiver) Also you might have an "SWM", a device with a splitter on it. This connects the satellite dish to the Genie receiver and also the Genie clients. The installers put my PI and SWM on the floor behind my entertainment center. It's been sitting there just fine for three years. It looks like mine is connected like this: satellite dish >> power injector >>SWM splitter >> Genie receiver & clients Of course there are other types of configurations in older installations.