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Author Topic: TheTVDB lookup broken  (Read 13438 times)

maid

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #50 on: June 18, 2020, 06:37:21 pm »

I must admit I am confused.
Is there any manual way of getting all this info, except going to tvdb and copy paste..
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AnalogRoaming

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #51 on: June 24, 2020, 04:52:14 pm »

I'm in a situation where upgrading MC to the latest version isn't possible right now.

I am considering creating a proxy to let old versions work with the new data, but I would need to know what the request that MC used to look like, and what the response JRiver expected for older versions.  I'd open source this tool for others to use. Can anyone share this info so I can get started?

I am sure I can capture the request that MC makes, and can probably just fiddle around, but it would sure save time if someone could help me out.
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CHaun

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #52 on: June 25, 2020, 06:12:41 pm »

I believe that TheTVDB has blocked MC's API token. Otherwise, your older version would work without any fiddling.
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AnalogRoaming

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #53 on: June 26, 2020, 09:03:20 am »

Hmmm. So in theory I could buy my own token and just make a request proxy that swapped out the token?
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greynolds

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #54 on: June 26, 2020, 09:26:23 am »

Hmmm. So in theory I could buy my own token and just make a request proxy that swapped out the token?
In theory, you probably could do that (unless the request is encrypted before your proxy could modify it), but I believe that would violate the license terms you'd be agreeing to when obtaining a token from TheTVDB as you'd still be using the token with a commercial product.

There had been some discussion between someone from TheTVDB and the JRiver folks that implied they were still trying to work something out, but it's not clear if that's a dead end or not.  It's not even remotely clear just how much money TheTVDB is asking for from JRiver - if it's not a huge sum when you look at it per JRiver user, it would be nice to see JRiver offer it as an extra cost option for those of us who still want to use it.  I know I'd be willing to pay a little extra to retain the service as an option.
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maid

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #55 on: June 26, 2020, 06:58:32 pm »

This is nowhere near as good as tvdb there are a lot of images and info missing

We need a workaround to get episode images like in the music section.

The only thing you can get is season posters
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AnalogRoaming

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #56 on: July 02, 2020, 03:42:45 pm »

Hello.  Scott here from TheTVDB.  Just want to clarify.  We did provide commercial licensing terms to JRiver, but we also made it clear we would discuss to find a price point that wasn't cost prohibitive.  After a brief back and forth they stopped responding to all emails from us for over two months.  We would love for the administrators to contact us to find something that works for both sides and we're happy to reinstate the API key during that process.

To be clear, this process for commercial licenses isn't related to the purchase by TV Time (which rebranded as Whip Media Group) last year.  It's related to us moving our services to AWS to be more reliable and scalable when launching our new site last November and having a 10x increase in costs.  Without commercial projects sharing some of the costs, TheTVDB would be cost-prohibitive to run.

What's the story on this, folks? Did you really just stop negotiating with them on this? That's disappointing if true. I've been supporting y'all with licenses pretty steadily since MC 10, but I don't know if I can pay for the upgrade to fix this if I'll still end up being unable to pull my show data because the API you switched to is incomplete.

I'm a software dev. I know this is hard. I know it stinks to have a third party put the screws to you like this. Charge me a yearly fee for my usage of the API and use that to fund the thing so this isn't a problem going forward maybe?
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greynolds

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #57 on: July 04, 2020, 10:55:21 am »

I think the gist of it is that TVDB wanted far more money than JRiver felt was feasible.  So unless something changes negotiations are over and we need to find a way to live with the new solution or consider alternatives to JRiver (I'm not aware of anything that's even close).

An external tool similar to MCRatings could potentially be an option, but it wouldn't be tightly integrated inside JRiver and I'm not sure where that would fall under the TVDB access key agreement as they could reasonably see it as a way to circumvent the commercial license.

I would think that the same thing happening with TMDB at some point is a legitimate concern too.  I'm not sure if JRiver has a commercial license or not or what TMDB charges for a commercial license, but the terms of use certainly imply that there should be some sort of cost involved:

https://www.themoviedb.org/documentation/api/terms-of-use

Even if JRiver currently has a commercial license and the fees are reasonable, that could change.

For now, our best option is probably to do what we can to contribute data to TMDB to make it a better replacement for TVDB.
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AnalogRoaming

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #58 on: July 06, 2020, 10:42:14 am »

I think the gist of it is that TVDB wanted far more money than JRiver felt was feasible.  So unless something changes negotiations are over and we need to find a way to live with the new solution or consider alternatives to JRiver (I'm not aware of anything that's even close).

You're right - there isn't anything that's even remotely close. And yet, my Plex server can still look up tv shows. I paid them a one-time fee of $150 a few years ago. Somehow they're able to get access to a working API of TV shows.


An external tool similar to MCRatings could potentially be an option, but it wouldn't be tightly integrated inside JRiver and I'm not sure where that would fall under the TVDB access key agreement as they could reasonably see it as a way to circumvent the commercial license.

Yea I've been experimenting with creating a tool that creates the sidecar XML files myself and then just using JRiver's "update library from tags" feature. That's working for shows that already got imported.  If I can get the sidecar files created before the import, JRiver "just works". So that's probably where I'm heading next. If I get it working behind a decent UI I will release it on github.

I think the gist of it is that TVDB wanted far more money than JRiver felt was feasible.  So unless something changes negotiations are over and we need to find a way to live with the new solution or consider alternatives to JRiver (I'm not aware of anything that's even close).


For now, our best option is probably to do what we can to contribute data to TMDB to make it a better replacement for TVDB.

Yea but this is honestly disappointing - we contribute this metadata and then get locked out of it because a couple of commercial entities can't negotiate on a fair price. I'm not blaming JRiver here, to be clear - I'm just not interested in doing free work for companies that profit from it.  Full disclosure - I work at a cloud hosting company so I understand the costs of running one of these things at scale. It's not free and it's not cheap. But it's also nothing without the data that people provide. So there's gotta be a better alternative.
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maid

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #59 on: July 08, 2020, 07:47:47 pm »

why is this  The War of the Worlds (2019) in tmdb but jriver cant find it
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/83981-the-war-of-the-worlds?language=en-US
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Hendrik

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #60 on: July 09, 2020, 05:05:27 am »

Seems to find it for me just fine, incidentally both as a 3-part series or a 2-part movie.
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elprice7345

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #61 on: July 22, 2020, 06:18:34 pm »

Well it's been almost 2 months since the TVDB lookup stopped working.  >:(

Is it safe to assume that no further progress towards MC/TVDB licensing has been made?

Should your users suck it up and move to TMDB?
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JimH

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #62 on: July 22, 2020, 06:25:05 pm »

Yes.  That's been the general direction since they cut off support.
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amandalishus

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #63 on: October 17, 2020, 02:11:53 pm »

Maybe this is a ridiculous question, but from one programmer to another... just how complicated is the TVDB interface? Is it WSDL or REST?

If someone were to stand up a database with roughly the same metadata that JRiver supports and provide an open API to both upload and download data, would there be any interest in providing support for that interface? And if so, what kind of web service interface would JRiver prefer?

Just as a point of curiosity... from one bored programmer to another who is probably overworked as is ;)
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tij

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #64 on: October 18, 2020, 08:04:55 pm »

Maybe this is a ridiculous question, but from one programmer to another... just how complicated is the TVDB interface? Is it WSDL or REST?

If someone were to stand up a database with roughly the same metadata that JRiver supports and provide an open API to both upload and download data, would there be any interest in providing support for that interface? And if so, what kind of web service interface would JRiver prefer?

Just as a point of curiosity... from one bored programmer to another who is probably overworked as is ;)

TVDB start banning IP addresses that used JRiver to connect to TVDB. There was some discussion around this before. Basically TVDB wanted JRiver to pay for developer API (probably because JRiver is commercial software, unlike Kodi).

As JRiver user base have some ppl not using video features at all, price hike due to TVDB seems unfair.

imho, TVDB should have users subscribe for right to use API, then ppl who needs it - get it and enter their credentials in JRiver. Alas this is not the model most businesses pursue  (same would be true if JRiver wanted to switch to say MySQL database engine ... its free for home users, but developers of commercial software needs to pay for API, which in the end costs more to users anyway)
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amandalishus

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #65 on: October 25, 2020, 12:21:11 pm »

TVDB start banning IP addresses that used JRiver to connect to TVDB. There was some discussion around this before. Basically TVDB wanted JRiver to pay for developer API (probably because JRiver is commercial software, unlike Kodi).

As JRiver user base have some ppl not using video features at all, price hike due to TVDB seems unfair.

imho, TVDB should have users subscribe for right to use API, then ppl who needs it - get it and enter their credentials in JRiver. Alas this is not the model most businesses pursue  (same would be true if JRiver wanted to switch to say MySQL database engine ... its free for home users, but developers of commercial software needs to pay for API, which in the end costs more to users anyway)

I'll go one step further than that... Users like you and I should be able to pay TVDB for use of the API, but TVDB should pay JRiver for traffic their site gets from their software. If it's not fair to add in the cost of the API to JRiver users who don't use video, it's no more fair to ask JRiver to support and maintain an API for a commercial product. Worse yet, it's a commercial product that is largely created by the very people who use the API. I put a lot of time and data into that database... I'm appalled that they now want to charge me to use it.

TVDB has made the classic blunder... No, not getting involved in a land war in Asia. Even worse, in the Age of the Internet; they became convinced that their user interface was more valuable than their data. They'll sputter on for a few years on the strength of that data, but unless they start paying people to enter data they will be irrelevant in three years. Those of us who have been quietly pruning their garden for the last few years making them so very popular will simply move to an open system like TMDB. I don't think "thetvdb.com" has embedded itself in the public consciousness quite like IMDB, so they're not going be capitalize their UI the way that bloated yet invaluable institution has... and unless they're getting licensed by Google I don't think they can capitalize their API either.

I could stand up the database and web services which constitute the core functionality of TVDB over a long weekend, with a fresh refill of adderall  and permission to play the stereo loudly at night. The first problem with that is getting a core set of users and data to achieve relevance. I'm pretty sure JRiver users are exactly the sort of core users you'd want for that project, and the data is already in our databases. The second problem, of course, is maintaining and supporting that system while it continues to accumulate users, data and relevance, meanwhile supporting yourself and the hardware resources required for your growing userbase... but Amazon Web Services and the increasing freedom for developers to work from home might have just about made that possible by now.
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RoderickGI

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #66 on: October 25, 2020, 05:54:38 pm »

I understand the reason they wanted to charge commercial applications for use of the API was that their costs had gone up, because they had moved to AWS to improve their reliability and performance. I don't know if you noticed, because MC didn't highlight it, but it wasn't unusual for TVDB to fail to respond to requests on the API. They claimed it was due to load. Of course for casual users who actually use the web page they can generate income from advertising. But for applications, commercial or otherwise, that use the API they don't get that chance. Users of applications never see the web site.

But I think you are perfectly correct in that commercial applications aren't going to offset their costs enough to make a difference. Particularly when they just shift, as JRiver have done.

I'm appalled that they now want to charge me to use it.

Tell them. Share your other thoughts. What have you got to lose? In fact, if the situation continues, you effectively lose access to all the work you put into the database already.

Charging users who do not actively contribute would seem like a better idea, as long as they allow people who want to contribute to do it. They hold tight reins on their data, as far as I can tell. I've never contributed and would be willing to pay around $10 a year for access. I don't know if that level of funding would cover costs, but I suspect it might. It would just need the applications, all applications whether commercial or not, to add in a user login process for using the API. But that must be there at some level for developer API now.

So have at them! TMDB is okay, and probably will get better, but it misses pretty often as well.
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What specific version of MC you are running:MC27.0.27 @ Oct 27, 2020 and updating regularly Jim!                        MC Release Notes: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Release_Notes
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CHaun

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Re: TheTVDB lookup broken
« Reply #67 on: November 17, 2020, 10:34:07 am »

It looks like TVDB is going to implement a user subscription API starting very soon (as well as other licensing changes) for $11.99/year. Is this something that may be able to be implemented into JRiver?

Quote
Hello,
 
There are some big changes coming for TheTVDB that will affect both developers and our end users, most notably our brand new API (“v4”). With the launch of this new API fast approaching, we wanted to give an overview of all of these changes.
 
Two Models for API Access
There are now two ways to access TheTVDB API. Each company, platform, or project will have the ability to select their preferred method of access. This decision will ultimately be up to the developers of the projects themselves, so if you are an end user, you'll need to wait for the platform/software you use to announce any changes regarding your access.

Licensed

This is the way things work now. Companies and projects enter into a contract with us and are given an API key. License fees are based primarily on usage, company size, and how the data is used.

Example: Mobile apps & websites

User-Supported
 
This is new. Some companies can’t or don’t want to license API access directly, and have requested that we pass along any cost to end users. We have determined an approach that will keep this affordable and accessible for all, detailed below.

Example: Synology Video Station
A note for Plex users: TheTVDB is in ongoing active discussions with Plex. Please stay tuned for more information if you are an end user of Plex.
User Subscriptions
User subscriptions are global, and not tied to a specific API key. This means that if, as an end user, you use three projects that make use of TheTVDB API, your subscription will grant access for any of them that choose the user-supported model.
 
Important Notes
 
•   A subscription is required ONLY if the project/software you're using has indicated so — although we’d love for you to support the site anyway.
•   Subscribing will grant you a unique PIN, which will be entered into the software you use.
•   User subscriptions will be $11.99/year.
•   Subscriptions will also include an ad-free site experience, a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart, and future incentives that we’re planning.
 
While we believe this to be a reasonable subscription fee, we understand that some of you may prefer another approach. With that in mind, we’ll also allow users to earn a free annual subscription by contributing quality data to the site, like missing IDs, translations, and artwork. We’ll provide additional details concerning this model in the coming months.
 
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