Alternate Interfaces

This page describes various alternate ways to access The Internet Movie Database locally by holding copies of the data directly on your system. Click here for information on IMDb Content Licensing.

Introduction

• The plain text data files
• The Unix command line search programs
• The Amiga interface
• The OS/2 interface
• The Acorn interfaces
• The MS-Windows interface

Alternatively the IMDb may be searched via a simple e-mail interface. For details send a message with the subject:

HELP

to <mail-server@imdb.com> and the server will reply within an hour.

The Plain Text Data Files

The plain text data files used to build the Internet Movie Database are available from our ftp sites as follows:

• ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany)
• ftp.funet.fi (Finland)
• ftp.sunet.se (Sweden)

The files are compressed using GNUzip in order to save space and network bandwidth. Once uncompressed many of them make interesting reading and can be browsed using your prefered editor/word processor. However, note that some of them are huge (the actors section is 140Mb) so think carefully before blindly downloading everything.

The Unix Command Line Search Programs

Col Needham's package of Unix command line programs can be installed on your machine. The package was written under Linux the free PC Unix but runs on a wide variety of Unix systems. You'll need between 250Mb and 1Gb of local disk space and an ANSI C compiler to install the package:

• ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany)
• ftp.funet.fi (Finland)
• ftp.sunet.se (Sweden)

The package offers a simple command line interface to the database with a wide variety of searches and combinations available. A graphical X11 front-end known as xregal is available for use with the above package. It provides an offline hyperlinked interface with many features:

• ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany)
• ftp.funet.fi (Finland)
• ftp.sunet.se (Sweden)

Alternatively, an interactive text front-end for the Unix package, including automatic name/title completion is available:

• ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany)
• ftp.funet.fi (Finland)
• ftp.sunet.se (Sweden)

A LaTeX pretty printer for the interface is also available:

• ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany)
• ftp.funet.fi (Finland)
• ftp.sunet.se (Sweden)

The Amiga Interface

Andre Bernhardt's interface provides an easy to use local graphical front-end to the database. It's available from AmiNet and also on the IMDb ftp sites:

• ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany)
• ftp.funet.fi (Finland)
• ftp.sunet.se (Sweden)

The OS/2 Interface

Steffen Siebert's Alternative Movie Database package (AMD) provides both a graphical and command line interface to the IMDb for OS/2 and is available via ftp:

• ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany)
• ftp.funet.fi (Finland)
• ftp.sunet.se (Sweden)

The Acorn Interfaces

John Baker's Credits program is an IMDb interface for Acorn computers which uses the same database files as the Unix package and is available from:

• http://www.cse.bris.ac.uk/~ccjpb/ftp/

The Windows Interface

The non-graphical command line version of Steffen Siebert's Alternative Movie Database package (AMD) is also available for Windows 95/NT/98 machines:

• ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany)
• ftp.funet.fi (Finland)
• ftp.sunet.se (Sweden)