TVDB done March 2021

[NetworkGuy]

Originally Posted by NetworkGuy

I just found this

TV Maze

If you want to add TV information to your website or app then you've come to the right place!

We provide a free, fast and clean REST API that's easy to use, returns JSON and conforms to the HATEOAS and HAL principles. The root url is http://api.tvmaze.com and the available endpoints are documented below. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the API, please post them on our forums.

If someone is willing to update BMT, why not use something that is free?

[stuckless]

I'm also interested in seeing how this plays out with Plex. As a lifetime plex-pass user, I hope they don't force user subscriptions

Someone asked about IMDB... it's possible, it used to work that way, but, you are screen scraping the site for information and that breaks whenever they update the site. It's not sustainable.

Phoenix (which is what BMT uses) has a pluggable metadata system. When/if anyone wants to work on this, I can certainly help with questions about what needs to be done, etc.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by stuckless

It's not sustainable.

Is any service that's currently provided for free sustainable? It's not like their users are even visiting a website where they can throw up some advertisement to help offset their costs.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Is any service that's currently provided for free sustainable? It's not like their users are even visiting a website where they can throw up some advertisement to help offset their costs.

When I say it's not sustainable, I mean, from the development point of view the effort to keep the scraper up to date is extremely high. As I said, I used to have an imdb scraper, but, it broke weekly because of changes to the imdb HTML pages. Services that use JSON REST apis are sustainable, from a development point of view. They might change every couple of years, but that's far better than randomly changing every week.

But I agree with your point... A free service that offers data and images is not sustainable, given the costs to host and serve that data. They need to make money somewhere.

[wayner]

To pick up this conversation, they could move to a subscription model, like SD. Many folks From a variety of communities would presumably be willing to pay get this data, again just like SD.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by wayner

To pick up this conversation, they could move to a subscription model, like SD. Many folks From a variety of communities would presumably be willing to pay get this data, again just like SD.

Agreed. I’d pay $15 yr for it. Probably not enough from their standpoint.

[Galaxysurfer]

So what I hear is that in order to retain/gain access to current or updated version of data feed we will need to add a subscription based code similar to what was done when we moved to schedulesdirect for epg data?

Is anyone willing to create the tvdb plugin for us to incorporate into Sagetv?

What would be involved with such an endeavor? I would be willing to pay the suggested subscription price. All that would be required is coding to add that feature to our software.

[Galaxysurfer]

wayner

Tvmaze is offering both a free & a paid tier option. They offer 30 day free trial of their premium version.

Maybe they are the ones to move forward with, since the api is already available?

I would be curious to know how the TVDB & TVtvmaze products differ

I have noticed they provide data that would overlap the functionality of SchedulesDirect as well.

It would be nice if multiple options could be offered.

[gary201]

In the meantime, I would even be happy if Sage would populate the fields just from an imported show filename (e.g. season, episode), which it doesn't.

Here's how I most often use BMT. I use PlayOn to record shows off of Netflix, Hulu, PBS, Tubi, etc. That gets dumped in a Playon recordings directory. I then move that into a Sage import directory. Then I have to use BMT to populate anything about the recordings other than show length, even though the filename has additional info. For example:

The Walking Dead - s09e16 The Storm.mp4

I literally have to enter the show name, season and episode info in bmt. The only thing Sage picks up is the episode name (e.g. "The Storm" in the above).

Even if there were simply no description of the show, I'd be happy JUST to have the filename parsed.

[peternm22]

Originally Posted by gary201

In the meantime, I would even be happy if Sage would populate the fields just from an imported show filename (e.g. season, episode), which it doesn't.

That's almost the sole reason I use BMT as well. I don't use any fanart or posters, I just want to put imported video files into the TV section with the correct season/episode.

[gary201]

If that's the primary reason most folks use BMT for, then maybe either Sage can get updated to parse media in the import directory. Then BMT can be used to fill in other stuff if desired. If Sage just can't be made to do that, then maybe BMT can be updated to support auto-filling those fields.

One other thing that has been a nuance w/BMT. If I copy an recorded Netflix/Tubi/etc movie to a Sage import directory, Sage does pick up the name of the movie, but when I tick the box to mark it a sage recording, then save it, sage displays 4 hex characters prior to the movie name in Sage's movies list. I almost always have to mark it as a sage recording, save, unmark it as a sage recording, then re-mark it as a sage recording. That process seems to remove those 4 hex characters, and an interesting side effect stuffs quotes around the movie name. Odd, but Sage seems to ignore it in the sorting (that's a good thing).

[NetworkGuy]

I signed up for a free account on TV Maze.

A few interesting differences:

1. If you mark shows as favorites, they tell you when the next new episode is airing in a calendar view
2. They will also send you emails about new airings
3. They also provide this tracking for web shows
4. They allow you to mark episodes as (Acquired, Watched and Skipped)

It could be an interesting enhancement if the episode status could be synced with SageTV. https://static.tvmaze.com/apidoc/

[wayner]

Any update on this? It is now March 2021, is this now broken?

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by wayner

Any update on this? It is now March 2021, is this now broken?

How would we know if it’s broken?

[wayner]

I would think that show lookups would fail but it appears to still be working. I just tried retrieving metadata for a show and it worked.

[graywolf]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I would tackle this if I didn't have a baby on the way in a few weeks. I've been working on a few things the group might find exciting, but this wasn't on my radar. I ported BMT to use the v3 API (clearly wasted time now) and it's unlikely we'll see any ready to use libraries written in Java for v4 very soon, so I would need to write the whole thing from the ground up like I did for Schedules Direct support in SageTV. I will circle back in February and look at what it's going to take unless someone else starts working on this in the mean time.

ENE - Have you had a chance to look at this and if you would have the time/inclination to take this on? Maybe using TVMaze instead of TheTVDB?

I use this frequently and it appears many others do also.

Would hate to have the WAF plummet come the end of March when BMT fetch metadata breaks

[wayner]

I guess the other thing is looking into TVDB and seeing if you could get a reasonable paid license. But that doesn't sound promising if you read this thread on the Jellyfin reddit site:

https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin/co...censing_model/

Notice that there is a post from a person from TVMaze:

tvmaze
3 months ago
-Even if it means building a new service from the ground up,

Hi Jan here, just wanted to say.. No need for that, that's exactly what we did in 2014. A bunch of us got together and have been running independently and without any hickups since then.
If you have the time, you're welcome to check us out. www.tvmaze.com
We're a friendly community and are always open to feedback on how to improve what we do. Which is focus on TV meta data.

So it sounds like TVMaze is friendly to use purposes like SageTV

[wayner]

Actually here is a thread on the kodi sub-reddit where TVDB seems more reasonable: https://www.reddit.com/r/kodi/commen...cf0/?context=2

I wonder where this all stands today?

TheTVDB
3 months ago
One of the biggest complaints among our users is that our moderators have been toxic in the past. The forums were a large part of that, since users refused to abide by our rules (which are complicated, but necessary and thoughtfully assembled over the past 15 years) and directly attack our moderators constantly. Our new ticketing system has canned responses, which prevents toxicity from our side in the exchange. It also allows us to properly keep track of everything. We had almost 80 pages of unhandled requests in the forums before.

So the forums won't be back. However, I will be implemented meta-discussions directly on series and movie pages. This should allow a bit more of the productive discussion that we admit is necessary, but I will be finding ways to reduce/eliminate toxicity in both directions.

The costs involved with running the API are immense. When running at full capacity and before optimizations, we've hit $30k in a month (correction: max was $30k in a DAY. Average now is closer to $30k in a month). Thankfully our new API is more statically rendered, but there are still significant costs. The benefit to the new system is that the API isn't really cached anymore; it's updated directly and stored statically when records on the site are updated.

And on top of that, we now also have internal paid staff and some contractors working on data quality. Over time this has not only improved the quality of the data itself, but also the quality of the experience and sought to find ways to improve our relationship with the community.

Yes, it will take time for this to show. Yes, $12 was selected as a reasonable price point, since we actually don't know how much the API will cost per user. Having been a long time Kodi, Sonarr, Plex, Radarr, and Usenet user myself, I believed $12/year was a fair price to target. I'm definitely open to any and all feedback that people want to give, as long as it's productive and seeks to improve things for everyone.

[wayner]

And to continue my blitzkrieg of posts, TVDB has a paid service for $12 per year. I wonder if the current BMT could be updated to use that with minimal effort. That price is pretty reasonable: https://thetvdb.com/subscribe

[jt4242]

Originally Posted by wayner

And to continue my blitzkrieg of posts, TVDB has a paid service for $12 per year. I wonder if the current BMT could be updated to use that with minimal effort. That price is pretty reasonable: https://thetvdb.com/subscribe

That would be great if someone could do it - I'd certainly be willing to pay.