
Show HN: Tello, a simple way to manage TV shows – built with React/Redux - joshwcomeau
https://tello.tv
======
joshwcomeau
Author here!

I created this during my vacation because I wanted it to exist. The joy of
being a web developer is being able to create the stuff you wish existed!

The repo is here, and the README covers some of the more interesting parts of
the codebase:
[https://github.com/joshwcomeau/Tello](https://github.com/joshwcomeau/Tello)

~~~
ben_jones
I want to give you a special thanks for releasing a working example of a clean
and professional codebase. I'm a web developer who works mostly in angular/vue
+ backend so it's great to have another reference point / comparison if/when I
dive into React.

Also as minor feedback, a bulk-add view for shows would be nice.

~~~
acostanza
Are you thinking about using React for a project soon instead? I'm kind of
considering it too, but I really like using Angular 4

------
dmitrygr
Website shows nothing (literally nothing) with adblock on both on firefox and
on chrome.

[https://screenshots.firefox.com/HgaNoCQnUsV14LhG/tello.tv](https://screenshots.firefox.com/HgaNoCQnUsV14LhG/tello.tv)

~~~
Doublon
Or with DNT

~~~
skocznymroczny
It says "TV Tracker" in the webpage title, so maybe that's why it doesn't work
with DNT...

doesn't work on my Chrome with uBlock Origin either.

------
alfla
Cool. The design is pretty slick, the calendar is currently not working for
me. Nevertheless, here are some first impressions:

\- When adding shows, why do I first have to select a show and then press "add
show"? It would maybe make sense if I could continue searching and add
multiple shows, but right now it seems like an unnecessary extra step.

\- It would be nice to see some more information about each show. Even though
I might remember the title of the show, there are some shows with similar
titles, so that I'm not completely sure that I've selected the right one. Just
a link to the IMDB page or something would be sufficient. Or maybe just the
release year.

~~~
joshwcomeau
Yeah, good points. I optimized it around adding a single show, not around the
initial experience of adding a bunch of shows.

And yeah, initially it didn't have the region as a subheading, and so it was
impossible to tell if you were getting the US or UK variant of The Office.
You're right that more information would be useful!

Thanks for the feedback :)

~~~
alfla
No problem. Keep up the good work, I would really like this to work well :-)

------
nidx
I like the feel of it but I gave up trying to add my 206 tracked shows. and it
is impossible to mark a series as watched.

FYI I currently use
[https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/](https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/) and I
would look at that for ideas (I've been using it for over a decade.

~~~
maturz
Pogdesign has a great site. Has support for ical so you can get your shows in
your normal calendar app, another nice thing is it gives you an alert for
newly added shows with a description and trailer so you can easily add it to
your list.

------
sachleen
Neat. I currently use EpisodeCalendar
([https://episodecalendar.com/](https://episodecalendar.com/)) so I'm looking
at it from the perspective of is it worth switching.

So far, no, as I like being able to see a month view of the calendar. Also, I
initially expected clicking the show on the calendar to give me more
information (full title, summary), not simply mark it watched.

I'll try it out for a week or so and see if it grows on me.

~~~
joshwcomeau
Totally fair :) Thanks for giving it a chance!

For my own use-case, I don't really need additional info about episodes, so I
wanted to make it as easy as possible to mark stuff as watched (I designed
this around the idea of "I have 1 thing I want to do, how can I make it fast
and easy?").

I can totally see how it'd be surprising, though, when you click an episode in
the backlog view expecting more info, and it disappears. Maybe I ought to use
a different cursor...

------
mysterpaul
I like the idea, I've been looking for something like this. Some feedback for
my preferences:

* would like higher information density, almost half the screen is the title bar and nav bar. the buttons don't need to be so big.

* I think the home page should be "backlog." the summary page isn't that useful to me, unless I want to click on a lot of tiny dots. I just want to see the very next episode I have to watch and be able to mark it as done. maybe instead of showing 4-5 episodes of a show at a time in a row in the backlog, it can just show the next episode, and have more room for other shows.

* would like a nicer dedicated view for managing the show. clicking those tiny boxes is not pleasant for unchecking an episode, and I can't see what episode they are. if I completed a show, the manage show popup doesn't let me do anything besides delete.

* when I add a show from the backlog page, sometimes it disappears and I have to refresh to see it.

~~~
joshwcomeau
Thanks for the feedback :) this is very much a beta release.

------
phoe-krk
I really read "Trello" and the name seems like a rather serious collision to
me.

~~~
lurker-
I'd say on HN then it makes sense that many will misread it as Trello, but I
think it's safe to assume that the name was inspired by Telly, and that the
Trello similarity is just a (un)fortunate collision.

------
mrleinad
Props for building it and releasing the source code. It makes for a fun pet
project.

I use other websites/apps for tracking TV shows. Did you check these out?

\- [http://www.episode-alert.com](http://www.episode-alert.com)

\- [https://www.tvtime.com/en](https://www.tvtime.com/en)

~~~
joshwcomeau
Thanks! Yeah, was fun.

Quoting my reply to a similar comment:

"""

Yeah, so I spent 2-3 days trying Trakt, which seems like the market leader.

I kinda hated it. It's SO feature-packed that it's overwhelming. I don't need
every app I use to be a mini-social-network.

One of my favourite things is to build a competitor that does _less_. I built
[http://panther.audio](http://panther.audio), which is essentially a pretty UI
for Spotify's "related artists" feature. It does way less than Spotify, but
its narrow focus means I can create a great experience for that single
function.

The other thing is, I just like building stuff :) truthfully, Trakt is
probably better for most folks; it just does way more. For me, though, I love
that I can spend <10 seconds (page-load time included!) on Tello, instead of
waddling through a bunch of sub-menus and pages to find what I need.

"""

I haven't tried either of the links you suggested, but I'm actually not a fan
of email/text reminders. I'm likely at work or doing something else when an
email comes in. I want to be able to check on my own schedule, to see when new
stuff's available (likely 10 seconds before I sit on the couch).

But yeah, different strokes for different folks :)

~~~
jimmydouglas
I think what you've built is beautiful. Sorry to hear you hate Trakt though.
=(

------
heywire
Very neat, congratulations for finishing a side project! As someone who
recently switched from Dish Network to a mix of internet TV providers, I'm
really struggling to keep track of which episodes of which shows I've seen.
Before, I simply DVR'd all of the shows I was interested in, and if it was
still on the DVR, that meant I hadn't watched it yet. So I could see something
like this being quite useful to me. That said, I rarely have a computer around
when I am watching TV. So for me, it is going to have to be strong on mobile
to work. Looking forward to giving it a try!

~~~
joshwcomeau
Yeah, truthfully the mobile side needs work. It's functional, but there are
some CSS bugs, and some things (adding/managing shows) are kinda painful.

Thanks for the kind words :) hope it's useful!

------
bastijn
Congrats on completing a side project to a point you can show it. Just
curious, what did you decide to make this project instead of using one of the
numerous existing options?

It looks beautiful from the landing page!

~~~
joshwcomeau
Yeah, so I spent 2-3 days trying Trakt, which seems like the market leader.

I kinda hated it. It's SO feature-packed that it's overwhelming. I don't need
every app I use to be a mini-social-network.

One of my favourite things is to build a competitor that does _less_. I built
[http://panther.audio](http://panther.audio), which is essentially a pretty UI
for Spotify's "related artists" feature. It does way less than Spotify, but
its narrow focus means I can create a great experience for that single
function.

The other thing is, I just like building stuff :) truthfully, Trakt is
probably better for most folks; it just does way more. For me, though, I love
that I can spend <10 seconds (page-load time included!) on Tello, instead of
waddling through a bunch of sub-menus and pages to find what I need.

~~~
stefantheard
I felt the same way about Trakt and also tried another site that has 200k
active users called sharetv and used it for a while out of necessity. The lean
feature-clean approach is better I agree.

------
stefantheard
Awesome job dude, this is shockingly similar to something I built (although
yours has way better UX!) and I also had the same feeling that spurred you to
build this in the first place. I track everything I watch through my profile
on my site
([http://www.overseer.tv/user/smt](http://www.overseer.tv/user/smt))

We even used the same API (thank you based TVMaze).

I'm going to check yours out in more depth later on today.

~~~
joshwcomeau
Hah, cool! Looks like we had exactly the same idea. I like that yours has
profiles!

~~~
stefantheard
Yours being so successful on here has inspired me to fix all of the little
issues with mine haha, I'll try to Show HN as well when mine is half as pretty
as yours is.

------
kartikrishi
This reminds me of Trakt.tv and the API it makes available to other apps like
Serist (iOS) and TV Series (Android). I find a lot of value out of this setup.

~~~
notyourwork
I thought of trakt.tv also and wonder what would compel me to switch?

I use trakt.tv with kodi and also take advantage of trakt's website.

------
rnernento
Love the site design, glad this is a side project and thanks for building it
but:

Is this really a problem that needs solving? I feel like using it is just
creating busywork for myself. It's not particularly difficult to know when
shows you enjoy come back. Most methods of watching them will automatically
track which episodes you've already seen.

~~~
joshwcomeau
Yeah, so I'm a Canadian, and Canadian Netflix doesn't have many US shows. I
imagine if I had a streaming service like that, this would be far less
necessary :)

For myself, I've been using it for over a month now, and it's been a terrific
timesaver. My old system would be to try and remember which shows I like, and
then google them to see if there's new episodes. It means that once I finish a
season of something, I'm counting on my memory to check back in 9 months to
see if the new season has started yet.

If you have an easier method to easily figure out when new episodes of your
favourite shows come out, then by all means, that makes more sense :)

------
tbirrell
I'll check this out when I get home, but what I'm wondering is if this
supports rewatching a show. My current grievance with trakt.tv is that it'll
track a show for you once, but the second time through, you either lose the
history or have to keep track of which episode you are on somewhere else.

~~~
joshwcomeau
Right, yeah. Mine doesn't support that either :( sounds like a good feature
though!

------
orf
This looks awesome, but it doesn't seem to work on Firefox (I'm on Quantum 57
beta).

~~~
joshwcomeau
Thanks! Hadn't tested that, will investigate.

~~~
binaryblitz
Same here. Just a blank screen on Firefox Developer Edition.

Took a screen shot of my console for ya. Hopefully it helps.

[https://imgur.com/a/1KwvF](https://imgur.com/a/1KwvF)

~~~
dmitrygr

      > https://imgur.com/a/1KwvF
    

Wrong link

------
waibelp
TypeError: Cannot read property 'isLoading' of undefined at t.value
(SummaryShow.js:92) at f (react-dom.production.min.js:3)

Google Chrome 61.0.3

------
yeswecatan
Looks pretty cool. Are you caching the results from the TVMaze api? What do
you plan to do if you hit their rate limit?

~~~
joshwcomeau
Yeah, I'm a little worried about that! I didn't expect this to hit front-page
D:

I do have a plan for caching, I just haven't implemented it yet.

------
assafmo
Shows a blank page on Android Chrome.

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nkg
At first, I thought there was no episode tracking feature. It took some time
to appear.

------
yjv
heads up: site pulled up blank in safari on ios 10. thanks for sharing the
code.

------
aardshark
Why does "True" show me True Detective and "True D" not?

------
cglace
It doesn't work for me on Firefox beta. Works on chrome. Cool idea.

------
ryanbertrand
All black for me. iOS 11 iPhone 6S.

------
superb_herb
This is awesome! I really need this in my life.

Also: it's very pretty. Love it!

