So I’ve been a Web Developer for over 20 years now, but in all that time I had never made a mobile app of any kind. Well that changes finally, as I’ve launched my app, Disc Vault: Blu-ray, 4K & DVD Collection Tracker on Android
So, what is it? And why is it? Well, like it says on the tin, it’s a collection app for all the Blu-rays and DVDs and such in your collection. They why, is because I wanted an app to do that for myself. The main thing was I had caught myself buying a disc I already owned a couple of times. This got me thinking that I needed an app to store my disc collection in one place, so I could easily see if I already owned something or not. If the idea that I couldn’t just remember what I own sounds crazy to you, just wait till you get in your 40s, you’ll start to understand.
So anyways, while there were already some similar apps, I decided to roll my own, both as a learning exercise, and because I enjoy this kind of thing. And also because those existing apps, I didn’t really care for how they looked.
So, after I produced something half-way decent, I decided to launch the app onto the Google Play Store for anyone else who may be interested. I’ve also been adding in some additional features, doing bug fixes, etc.
The main new feature I added after launch was the Watch Picker. Users when adding the titles they own, can select if it’s something they’ve watched already or not. Then they can use the Watch Picker to help pick what to watch next from all their unwatched titles. Either let the app pick something completely randomly, or select from genres to include / exclude from the selection pool.
You can either let the app just pick exactly what you’ll watch, or have it suggest four titles and you pick one from that. I kind of based this on how my partner Ashley and I will pick movies ourselves. One of us grabs two to four discs off the shelf, and the other picks from that selection.
Anyways, if you’ve got an Android device, and you’ve got discs, check out the Disc Vault: Movie Collection app. It’s free to use up to 100 discs in your collection, afterwards it’s a flat $5 to unlock unlimited usage.
