The Silver Screen Oasis

Several months ago - 6? 8? 10? - IMDB removed their "Home Video Available" icons. For several years, this displayed a movie's page with those icons signifying that the movie was or wasn't available on DVD, VHS. Then they had their links to Amazon-UK, Germany, France, too, so I could go straight to those sites for ordering. Very handy.

Of course, I'd heard various tales that IMDB was "owned" by Amazon or supported by Amazon. I thought that was a shame to cut out all other vendors, but heck, let THEM support such a great database-! Still, it's great to have a movie-database that shows whether films are or have been commercially available.

Did IMDB get too much flack for their Amazon-Only links? Is that why they were removed? And thus, Amazon is not truly The Owner of it? Or is this some nod toward anti-monopoly practices by only linking into Amazon? (I'd have suggested letting our mouse hover over a "DVD AVAIL ICON" and having a pop-up of all vendors who submitted proper links... if they didn't want to do that, fine, then they weren't linked to easy sale of merchandise - their choice.)

I think the imdb is a brilliant resource for film lovers, some of it I treat with a pinch of salt. I'd never heard that it was supported or owned by Amazon, still if they are responsible for this marvellous resource good for them. Other than using it an awful lot I can be of no further help

The Amazon links are still there, although they moved over to the left side of the screen.

And yes, Amazon bought them in the late 90s.

Yes, I see it now as a "BUY IT AT AMAZON" word-button now. I still miss the easy DVD-VHS identifiers, though. Ah well, at least that's something. I didn't know if other vendors had complained about those being 'monopolistic' but I'd still say "set up an WWW.DVDAF.COM type facility to compete - or COMPLETE - the IMDB site".

DVDAF.COM has about the best North American DVD-Release schedule I've seen. It has a few Region-2 entries here and there which is a nice heads-up for me to see so many All-American films being only released in Europe.

I've wondered, do you really get that much more info at IMDB Pro (or whatever that paid service is called)?