From a moderation point of view this shouldn't cause any extra work, as the various cover images would already appear on the existing box set cover, so can easily be verified as being correct. Or if contained in internal packaging, then additional photos could be included with the submission, in the same way that currently happens.

Speaking as both a mod and a user who has numerous locally customised box set child covers precisely due to not wanting the same cover I have to say I doubt there will be any change on this from the standpoint of the public web service.

Part of the problem is you are highlighting just a handful of examples out of the VAST number of box sets that exist in the world where this might work and ignoring the much greater number where it won't.

Some box sets may have art somewhere in the packaging that's the right size or there about but far more don't. The trouble is once you start this sort of setup we will get a landslide of images pulled, re-sized, re-scaled etc. from all over and not just in the packaging causing all sorts of verification and quality problems.

There is also the significant monkey see, monkey do effect, where once users start seeing cover images that don't match the case they immediately assume oh we can contribute whatever we want now and set about doing just that in vast quantities that then all have to be reverted and corrected etc..

I understand where you are coming from and will say that while it is not something we encourage or recommend because it tends to lead to invalid contributions you can provided you are careful to never contribute it make any local change you wish, this will of course be local only to the device where made and will not sync across devices.

You are welcome to make a feature request but in terms of the contributed covers I am confident the developers would say no to any such change for similar reasons to why we avoid other preferential changes that don't follow the simple rules because everyone never agrees and such changes become a fight.

One possibility that has been suggested and discussed and is likely a far better option and I would encourage it being put forward as a feature request (no promises it ever happens though) is to simply have a choice/tick box option in the personal options to show the selected generic movie poster in place of the front cover as this solves all the problems and without accepting invalid cover contributions for the actual disc items.

While having the option to display poster art would be an improvement, it wouldn’t solve the issue from my point of view. Which is that ideally I want the cover images I see on MyMovies to reflect the real ones on my shelf.

I think the best solution is to have an option to add personal/custom covers to existing titles, so they would sync across platforms. Not only would this solve the Box Set Child titles issue, but it would also solve a load of other related issues. e.g. titles that have multiple different covers that use the same barcode, or people who don't want j-cards, stickers and other advertising paraphernalia displayed on their cover art.

Obviously this would have increased hosting/storage implications, so this could be offered as an add-on at an additional cost or for those over a set large quantity of points. It could also be scaled, so charge X amount or require X number of points for every X amount of custom covers etc.

This way you could have strict Core listings available centrally to everyone, but also have the option for individuals to use their own custom covers if they want to.

The box sets with individually packaged child titles aren't the issue, with these type of box sets everything works fine as it is.

What I'm referring to is all the box sets where the child titles don't have separate packaging.

Out of all of the box sets that I own that fall into this category, I'd say two thirds of them do still have individual front cover art for each specific title, despite not being packaged individually.

For example, I have several box sets where the discs are attached to multi-fold-out card digipack, housed in an outer slip box, with cover art for each individual title displayed on each of the fold out panels. Or I've had some box sets with similar Fold-out packaging where the individual titles cover art is displayed in the pages of a booklet, or series of art cards included in the box set.

There are other box sets where the back cover of the outer box displays small pictures of the cover art for each of the titles. The point is that in all these cases, the box set packaging shows specific cover art for each of the individual titles. I would like the option to be able to display that cover art on the respective Child titles.




I can think of an easy solution to that issue... Only allow users to add personal cover art to titles that are 100% completed and/or locked. You could code it so that the 'personal cover' option isn't accessible until this happens. That will force people to complete the core entry correctly first.

In fact this option to upload a personal cover could be added to individual titles as well as box sets. That way people could upload alternative or limited edition cover art to their titles if they wish (e.g. Where there have been multiple different covers released for a title under the same barcode) Or if they want to upload a cover image without stickers and j-cards etc.

I hope that makes sense?

I really like MyMovies as a way of cataloging my DVD and Blu Ray collection, and there's only 3 things that i don't like...
1. Having the same box set cover duplicated across all the titles it contains
2. Title covers not always matching the specific cover that I happen to own
3. Title covers including j-cards and stickers etc.
Having the option to add a 'personal cover' would solve all of these issues.

Yes, thanks for amending the rules to resolve points 2 & 3. It's much appreciated.
And I agree, this now completely removes the need for custom covers for those situations.

So from my perspective, this only leaves the issue of Box Set Child titles to work out a good solution to.

Here's some photos to illustrate what I'm referring to...
(Posting images didn't seem to work, so ive included links to the pictures instead)

David Lynch Box Set
The back cover of the outer box shows small images of all the individual title covers.
Plus the box set contains a series of full size art cards of these same images. So it seems clear that these images should be used as Child title covers (and can be easily scanned in hi res from the art cards)

Bong Joon Ho Blu Ray Box Set
This box set has unique cover images for each title, which match the design of the box set itself.
The complete image with movie title is displayed on the fold out digipack where the discs are held (discs removed for photo)
Plus there are a series of art cards of the same images but without the type/titles

In this instance there's a couple a variations for the covers (with or without type), so it could be argued over which should be used. Personally, I would say you should use the image with the film title included if there's a choice. Plus, the versions with type are a closer match to the aesthetics of the box cover.

Alfred Hitchcock Blu Ray Box Set
This box set has all the discs in the pages of a digibook, with each page displaying the original movie poster design for each film. Therefore these particular poster designs should be used to represent each film.

Again, there's a couple of options here as to how to do that. You could just use the poster designs, though this would mean that the aspect ratio would vary from film to film. Or you could scan the whole of the left page for each one which would preserve the same Blu Ray cover dimensions for all titles. Either option is good, though personally I would prefer the latter, for the size consistency.

A Nightmare on Elm Street DVD Box Set
The final disc holder that's attached to the card insert displays small cover images of each individual movie in the set.

Due to the size of these images, direct scans probably wouldn't look great. However all these images are the same as the ones used on the individually released editions of these movies, so higher quality images could be sourced from there.

70s-90s Captain America DVD Triple Pack
The front cover and back cover both display individual cover images for each of the 3 films.

The same situation as before... as the images are fairly small, then higher quality images could be sourced from the individually released versions of the movies. As the user with the box set almost certainly wouldn't also own the individually released versions too, they could either source these images from the MyMovies entry for that title or online etc. As long as the image is an exact match for the one displayed on the box set cover.

Hopefully that all makes sense.