Comcast has launched Fancast, a new online media portal that's best described as an IMDB challenger with way more multimedia, and a generally less useful interface.

Fancast does have some good ideas. You can type in the name of an actor, movie, TV show, or director and Fancast pulls up a biography, photos, and videos. You can also buy movie tickets through Comcast-owned Fandango or play "six degrees," a game where you can try to connect actors to other projects.

In time, Comcast plans to add full length TV episodes and movies to the site.

But IMDB thrives for much the same reason as Craigslist. Although there are pictures and some links to videos on IMDB, it's clean design makes it extraordinarily easy to navigate. We can't really say the same or Fancast. If you want to find out every movie that an actor has ever been in, we'd recommend going to IMDB, not Fancast. If you want to buy movie tickets, you can probably skip Fancast and go right to Fandango or Moviefone.

[via paidContent]