Good, but not perfect – MyBoxOffice Review

I tried a couple of other movie database apps and came back to this one as the best of the lot. You might want to try out the free version first before spending the money to buy the full version. The barcode scanner worked flawlessly. I was amazed at how easy and accurate it was. I wasn't able to scan more than six barcodes at a time though. After that it got glitchy and the saved barcodes would disappear only to reappear later, with the end result of movies being entered into the database multiple times. It took about 5 hours to scan and save a database of 500 movies. Out of that 500, there were three barcodes that weren't recognized and had to be entered manually. Not a bad percentage considering a lot of those movies were old, obscure titles. It also helped to close the app and reboot every 100 movies or so. That allowed the database to update without overloading it. A lot of the glitches disappeared after I started rebooting more often. I would like to see a few changes in the app itself. The ability to edit the movie synopsis or even write my own synopsis would be a welcome addition. The ability to add the year of release and the actors, directors, etc. would be nice... and make it sortable by year, actor, director, etc. The option to clear the scanned barcode cache is almost a necessity. If I scanned a barcode twice for any reason, the app required me to save each instance. If I tried to cancel without saving, the same barcode would just come up the next time I tried to enter a movie. There was no way to clear it out of the cache. The second save would be identified as a duplicate and gives the option of not adding it to the database. If I chose to not add it, the option of being able to access other scanned barcodes would disappear and there was no obvious way to access them again unless I scanned another barcode. If I chose to save the movie as a duplicate, the same thing happened. Access to other scanned barcodes disappeared. I discovered near the end of the process that the barcode cache could be accessed again if I chose to enter a title manually. A message would pop up stating I had scanned barcodes and give me the option of saving them. A minor annoyance that it took me so long to discover that little trick. Not being able to clear the barcode cache was a major annoyance. My only other complaint is the lack of documentation or instructions. This app had a slight learning curve and figuring out how to access different options took time that could have been used to scan movies. A help file would have saved a lot of frustration on my part. Overall, I am satisfied with my purchase. There is definite room for improvement but it's a nice app and the few glitches are not insurmountable issues... and did I mention the barcode scanner is fantastic?
Review by Kotja on MyBoxOffice.

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