I would like to share two tips for other users. Forgive me if you already know about these.
1. Create a collection of streaming public domain films. Use dvdpedia's Link function to Internet Archive, Feature Films.
http://www.archive.org/details/feature_films
Many are poor quality, but here you will also find difficult-to-find Soviet films (Lietenant Kije Киже, several Eisensteins) and Mao-era extravaganzas (The Red Detachment of Women, The East is Red - 东方红 Dongfang Hong) , dadaist silents (Hans Richter's Ghosts before Breakfast), American silents (Chaplin, Keaton, DW Griffith) and some dreadful but camp drive-in fare. The archive does NOT boast the best indexing, and browsing is something you do NOT want to do often. Keywords are a mess.
DVDpedia solves this problem by allowing you to catalogue your selections, create links, and then play these streaming films in a browser or full screen. (Although I could not get the play function to work in DVDpedia's full screen mode, it works fine in "info" view.) Files are available for download, but DVDpedia's ability to link may be a better choice for some viewers who like to travel light.
Users worldwide should take care regarding copyright, because films considered "public domain" in USA might be protected content in another place. The Internet Archive also hosts other collections, including old animations and the Prelinger Archives a collection of 60,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. DVDpedia can help you keep your favorites easy to find in a snap.
2. Do you have films not on dvd, but recorded off air or on VHS only?. . . What to do? IMDB will probably suffice, but another
useful database including info about some (mostly U.S.) films not available on DVD can be seen at Turner Classic Movies
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/index.jsp
Turner also offers a wealth of trailers for these splendid old gems, many not found on YouTube.
DVDpedia has the power: you can associate more than one link with a title, so you can have a "preview" (streaming) and the "film" (your own) both associated with the same title. Again, I can't get this TCM preview link to work in full screen mode, but the browser window pops up fine in "info" view.
I find these trailers useful anyone who enjoys "previews" before deciding on the Saturday night show--and can't recall who is Susan Hayward and who is Rita Hayworth (like my own offspring, sheesh). Sometimes the original trailers are just as entertaining as the feature.
BTW, on the Turner site you can also vote for films that should be made available on dvd.
I enter data from the TCM database manually, but someone with with cocoa skills who is not in AARP
can probably work it.Hope this is useful to someone.
