sho Wrote:There is blind overconfidence in the helper programs IMHO.
They really do not offer anything XBMC does not do on it's own. (Some people may like the approach they offer, but I am old fashioned that way).
Convince me otherwise by all means though
IMDb is still the most versatile scraper.
For the biggest range of thumb possibilities, make sure you select all the thumb options in the IMDb scraper settings.
AFIAK all fanart is scraped from themoviedb, so whatever approach you choose, that will always be the limiting factor.
Anyways that's what the fanart request thread here is for.
I'm gonna have to agree that for basic scraping of information, the build in tools are awesome, the helper apps are more like icing on the cake.
There are things that are different between MIP and Media Companion and how things are handled. And each has folks that love one over the other, choice is always a good thing.
Wide images, 3d box shots, are something only MIP does and full Media Image support is coming with Media Info Plus, the next gen of MIP as well as 2 new sites for images.
What MIP is shooting for is more then just a scaper for xbmc, sure that's a very key item that it does, but it's heading towards a complete media manager. Music is coming in the next version, options include sorting out the collection to a known format, renaming of music based on the tag data, modify the tag in the music for the entire album, the ability to inject images directly into the mp3 file, selection of fanart and artist images, full cover support for front back, cd image, inlay, insert. (for all media, movies and tv shows have this too). Tagging of images, resizing and making a poster directly from a high resolution cover of the front of the movie (show or music), these are either coming in the next release, or will be added soon after depending on how testing goes. And additional lang support might be coming with an additional member on the MIP team. Lots of what I consider neat things. MIP also works under wine, and the folks that are making wine have made a ton of improvements, 1.1.14 is really bridging the gap.
TV Shows are going to be getting more focus after the next release is out and stable. And I have gotten some great ideas on things to add to the manager side of things for those.
In the end, it's all about choice, and I don't think you can go wrong with any of them.