Neat Netflix IMDB Hack

Joe sent this cool Internet Movie Database hack in and I love it.  Have you ever been on a Netflix movie page and wanted to look up the movie on IMDB?  By adding a bookmark you can look up the movie with one click.  Joe's tested it in several browsers, but I've been playing with it in Safari (OS X).

The following directions are for Safari, but your browser should be similar.

1.  Copy the following code into your address window (do not press enter).  Be sure you get all of the code on the address line.

Javascript:location.href='http://us.imdb.com/find? type=substring&q='+encodeURIComponent
(document.title.substring(9,document.title.length))+'&sort=smart;tt=1';

2.  Drag the icon to the left of the code to the toolbar.

3.  Name the bookmark (in this case I called it "IMDB").

4.  Find a movie you want to look up on Netflix.  You must be on the movie page for this to work.

5.  Click on the IMDB bookmark.  You will see the IMDB page for the movie (or a list of movies with that title).

Netflix would never do this since the IMDB is an Amazon.com company.

Thanks, Joe!

Comments

[Abhi]

That hack is awesome. I've been wishing for something like that for years! You can't believe how much time that's going to save me. I never add a movie to my queue without checking it out on IMDB first.

[dvdmnky]

Nice hack.

I couldnt get it to work as you described, since Windows kept telling me "Unable to locate program JAVASCRIPT" when I tried to create it.

So I created a blank shortcut link. Then edited with NOTEPAD, and added the Javascript line. It works great! :)

[LWK]

Excellent! Thank you! I had wanted to link to IMDb for each title on my movie blog, but dreaded looking up 400+ tt##### codes. A slight adaptation of this works a treat.

BTW, some may find IMDb's Link-it service handy too. Look on their help pages for info.

[blubot]

this RULES !

i love you , and HackingNetflix for enhancing my film browsing experience so greatly!!!

good work.

cheers.
+
thanks!

[Fred]

Too bad it didn't work the other way around. Look up movies in IMDB and click to Netflix. Guess it never will as you say.

[Ken]

So how does one make this work with Internet Explorer?

[Thomas Paine]

Make sure you get both lines of the javascript. You will have to copy & paste them one at a time. AWESOME hack btw. Just the other day I was wishing there was some cross linkage going on. Too bad about amazon owning IMDB.

[adam]

How do you create a "blank shortcut link" in windows? I tried to create a shortcut, but you can't create a blank shortcut.

[Darrin]

Wow! I know next to nothing about writing or interpreting HTML code; however this was easy to accomplish and worked on my first try.

Since I have my Links toolbar set to show in IE. I dragged the icon and put it next to my "Hacking NetFlix" icon.

Would anyone have be able to write an icon code to change it from the standard 'e' icon?

[Kevin]

This works at Walmarts DVD rental site as well. Nice Hack Thanks alot.

[Buhusky]

I have zipped both a Netflix-to-IMDB IE favorite as well as a IMDB-to-Netflix IE favorite. Just unzip & copy/paste into your IE favorites.
Enjoy!

http://www.geocities.com/buhusky/Netflix_IMDB_Links.zip

[Jon]

I think this is now broken by some new Netflix site stuff. Had I paid closer attention to how it worked last week, I might be able to say more. But maybe it's because the movie title is no longer in the page's attribute? Sad, I only got to use it about three times before Netflix changed out from under it.

[neilfred]

I went looking for the reverse bookmarklet -- since I do most of my browsing of movies on IMDb, and wanted to be able to easily jump to the corresponding Netflix page -- and I found this page. Thanks, this is great! Starting from this one, I've created the reverse bookmarklet, and now I've got them next to each other in my toolbar, so I can bounce back and forth between the two to my heart's content. w00t!

I've posted details of my bookmarklet at http://www.derf.net/elsewhere/20050109_Netflix_bookmarklets/ ...

[fastreplys]

guys it seems to be so easy to do what all of you have done but i cant even figure it out please can someone tell me step by step what to do.
thanx

[boston java]

The above hack works great on my Firefox browser. Wish I found it earlier!
Also, I created a reverse hack, IMDB to Netflix, as someone suggested above.
In short the search string after the http part should be:
netflix.com/Search?v1='+encodeURIComponent(
document.title.substring(0,document.title.length-7));

Enjoy!

[Vicki]

It took me a while to figure out how to do this in Firefox, since it wouldn't let me drag the icon anywhere until after I hit enter. But I just bookmarked a random page, and then right clicked that link, went to properties, and inserted the Java script in the location box. Now it works great!

[Melusine]

Is there any way to make this open in a new window or tab?

[toni cortez]

i just received house of the flying daggers from netflix. the disk pops an innocuous looking standard screen for play and features. when i click play a porn starts playing. in that my family watches movies that we select together, and in that sex ed in our house is discussed in a respectful, non-puritanical way, i would prefer that the education comes not from embedded porn. is this a new netflix standard?

[Bennewith]

Great hack! Works with Chrome on OSX too, but you have to create a bookmark, and then edit the bookmark and paste the code into the bookmarks code manually and then simply rename the bookmark. (Same as Vicki's explanation above).