User Guide
This tool recommends English-language movies, TV series, or actor/director credits based on your input. It fetches data from TMDB, OMDB, and Watchmode APIs to provide recommendations, trailers, streaming options, and more. Below are detailed descriptions of the inputs, features, and tips for usage.
Inputs:
- Title Input: Enter the name of a movie (e.g., "Inception"), TV series (e.g., "Breaking Bad"), actor (e.g., "Tom Hanks"), or director (e.g., "Christopher Nolan"). The tool will search for similar recommendations or the person's credits.
- Recent Searches Dropdown: Displays up to 20 recent searches. Select one to quickly reload previous results. History is stored separately for movies, TV series, actors, and directors.
- Type Select:
- "Movie": Recommends similar movies.
- "TV Series": Recommends similar TV series.
- "Movie Genre": Recommends movies in selected genre.
- "TV Genre": Recommends TV series in selected genre.
- "Actor": Lists the actor's English-language credits, split into movies and TV series, sorted by IMDb rating (descending) within each category, with biography.
- "Director": Lists the director's English-language directing credits, sorted by popularity, with biography.
- "Watchlist": Displays saved titles from watchlist.
- "Already Watched": Displays titles marked as already watched.
- Min IMDb Rating: Filters recommendations to those with an IMDb rating at or above this value (1-10, default 7.0). Ratings are fetched from OMDB.
- Show up to 2 Reviews Checkbox: If checked, includes up to two user reviews from TMDB for each recommendation.
- Search Button: Processes your input and generates results. Use Enter key in inputs for convenience.
Features:
- Click Title: Opens the title's IMDb page in a new tab for more details.
- Click Cast Names: Switches to actor mode and loads that actor's credits and biography.
- Click Director Names: Switches to director mode and loads that director's credits and biography.
- Watch Trailer: Plays the official trailer in a modal popup (from YouTube via TMDB).
- Where To Watch: Opens a modal with streaming/buy options (from Watchmode API).
- 🔊 Icon: Uses browser text-to-speech to read aloud the overview or biography. Click or press Enter/Space on the icon.
- Printer Icon (top right): Prints a formatted report of the results.
- X Icon (top right): Redirects to the index page (index.html).
- Cast/Director Photos: Hover over names to see photos; click photos or names to search for that person.
- Person Biography: In actor/director mode, shows the biography from TMDB with text-to-speech support.
- Add/Remove to Watchlist: Buttons next to titles to add or remove from watchlist (up to 20).
- Add/Remove to Already Watched: Buttons next to titles to add or remove from already watched list (up to 20).
- Export/Import Watchlist: Buttons to export or import the watchlist as a .sav file.
- Export/Import Already Watched: Buttons to export or import the already watched list as a .sav file.
- Ratings: Displays IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes ratings from OMDB.
How Recommendations Work:
For movies/TV: Searches TMDB for the title, displays details, then fetches similar titles filtered by English language, min rating, and sorted by IMDb score.
For genres: Discovers titles in the selected genre, filtered by English, min rating, date range if selected, sorted by IMDb score.
For actors/directors: Fetches biography and credits from TMDB, filters English titles with min rating. Details like cast, trailer, reviews loaded automatically to optimize performance. For actors, only includes titles where the actor is in the top 10 cast for movies or appeared in at least 8 episodes for TV series; for directors, where they are listed as director.
Tips & Troubleshooting:
- Use exact names for best results; partial matches may work but could return incorrect items.
- Lower the min rating if no results appear.
- Results are limited to English content with positive vote counts—only top-rated titles are shown.
- If errors occur (e.g., "Error fetching data"), check your internet or try again—API rate limits may apply.
- Text-to-speech requires browser support (e.g., Chrome, Edge); it reads in chunks for long text.
- Streaming options are US-focused; may vary by region.
- History is stored in browser local storage—clearing cache resets it.
- If trailers or streaming info fail, it could be due to API availability or region restrictions.
- For person searches with many credits, load details only for titles of interest to avoid potential API limits.
- For best performance, use a modern browser like Chrome or Firefox.
For more on APIs used: TMDB, OMDB, Watchmode.