INTERACT FORUM
Windows => Television => Topic started by: elprice7345 on May 28, 2020, 03:18:58 pm
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Is anyone else seeing this?
I'm using MC to pull episode info metadata (Get Movie and TV Info) and the only result I get is "No information available from the selected result"
TVDB says the API is up: https://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?p=178103#p178103 (https://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?p=178103#p178103)
TMDB interface is working.
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IIRC there is a daily rate limit for the API key shared across all users.
Basically, just try a bit later :)
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We're investigating.
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Dear all,
I am still greatly satisfied wih MC25, however, I have one problem since yesterday.
"Get Movie & TV Info" is currently not working for TV series on TheTVDB. It finds the series, but it says "No information available from the selected result." Season and Series no. are provided and I tested for several series that were working before. Did TheTVDB change the API access?
Does anybody has the same issue with MC25? If yes, it is working in MC26?
Best regards, Sascha
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JRiver knows and they're investigating.
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,125535.msg869605.html#msg869605
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Sorry, somehow I missed the other topic :o
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I've merged the topics.
TVDB apparently turned off our access.
Wikipedia says that they are "community driven", but they must have been purchased by Whipmedia. Whipmedia contacted us a couple months ago to discuss licensing. The pricing was prohibitive.
Whipmedia doesn't look community driven.
https://www.whipmedia.com/meet-the-team/
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Do you see any alternative in future except adding the information manually?
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Give us a few days.
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If nothing else, we'll provide data from another source. TheTVDB is not the only game in town.
Either way, we'll be providing TV Show lookup again, even if it isn't from TheTVDB anymore. TheMovieDB is looking promising right now, we already have experience with them from movie lookup, and their TV database looks quite decent - they are also the primary TV datasource for other media applications due to their better reliability and providing data in multiple languages instead of just english.
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Sounds great - thx!
Will this work for MC25 as well or will I have to upgrade to MC26 then? Usually I am updating almost every year, but this time I missed the cheap offer at the pre-announcement :(
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Sounds great - thx!
Will this work for MC25 as well or will I have to upgrade to MC26 then?
VERY likely MC26 and higher. TheTVDB will likely be broken for older MC versions not developed anymore unfortunately.
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I wonder if it would be possible to side-step their commercial product regulations by making a "free" stand-alone program that could be used to access TheTVDB's api and act as a middleman between them and jriver - much in the way that epg123 does for listings?
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Since it's free for people to use that are not selling a commercial product, could you allow us to enter our own API key that we obtain and then configure Media Center with this key? Probably would not get around the licensing... but a thought.
Alternatively I suppose one might be able to set up a local server that proxies to TheTVDB and then using something like host file in windows, map api.thetvdb.com to a local endpoint which calls the APIs on Media Center's behalf and simply passes through the JSON payload... From Media Center's perspective, it would look like you are calling TheTVDB directly.
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A solution that works for 0.1% of the users that want to use this functionality is unfortunately not very fruitful. An alternate data source is not necessarily worse, maybe even better in some areas.
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Another thought ...
Could JRiver license TVDB access and sell a "premium" JRiver license that allows TVDB access, while continuing to sell a less expensive license without TVDB access? I would be willing to pay if the increased cost were reasonable. I believe MC is very reasonable priced.
Of course, I have no idea how the licensing works or any insight into the JRiver business model.
Just offering my unsolicited 2 cents ... :)
I'm open to any solution, but having MC look up TV metadata is one of main main uses of MC.
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Another thought ...
Could JRiver license TVDB access and sell a "premium" JRiver license that allows TVDB access, while continuing to sell a less expensive license without TVDB access? I would be willing to pay if the increased cost were reasonable. I believe MC is very reasonable priced.
Of course, I have no idea how the licensing works or any insight into the JRiver business model.
Just offering my unsolicited 2 cents ... :)
I'm open to any solution, but having MC look up TV metadata is one of main main uses of MC.
@Hendrik - of course. I figured allowing a configuration of my own API Key would be "easy", but probably still in violation of the license. As for the other thought - that would never scale and be practical. more thinking out loud and perhaps a fun little project to do in my copious spare time. haha
I do like the idea of perhaps plugins that one could pay for that would (perhaps) cover your license cost - but have no idea what The TVDB license cost structure looks like. Having been on the "API Service Provider" side of things, I have some ideas.... but would prefer of course an alternative. the Movie Database does indeed have TV shows; I've no idea how deep and I have a lot of old TV series (still to backup) and not sure if they are in there. Going to sample this weekend and see.
Will wait....
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How to build and kill a service:
Get users to build a huge database of extensive material. Let them use that data for free, providing just the infrastructure.
Sell to someone with commercial interests.
Start charging users to use the data they provided for free. Yes, we are being charged, not JRiver, who are just the middlemen to me in this issue.
This will likely severely impact the amount of work user will put into adding data, and hence kill the service over time. Great.
TheTVDB did have to take down a lot of images recently, due to copyright demands, didn't they? Maybe that made them unviable as a free service. So once again, the "copyright holders" are screwing the users, their customers. Well, end customers, if not direct customers.
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sorry i did not see this post but same here for 24
If you do a google everyone is having this issue
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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.
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Thanks, Scott. I just sent you a license.
It looks like Whip raised $50 million in January, in part to buy Mediamorph, another venture backed company.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/29/whip-media-group-parent-to-tv-show-tracking-app-tv-time-raises-50m/
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any update or fix for this?
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really struggling now manual input is slow and now my shows are backing up my weekly update is now turning in to a full time chore :/
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26.0.87 is now available which supports TV Show lookup from TheMovieDB
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,125608.0.html
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Is the switch to TMDB a permanent MC change or a stopgap solution?
The TMDB can be used to lookup metadata vs. TVDB, but after spot checking TMDB for several series I'm interested in, many of the episodes, metadata, images, etc. are missing. Also, even if they exist, many series names, episode names, and other metadata are different.
These can be populated and improved on TMDB, but it will take a lot of effort from many users to make it anywhere near the level already available on TVDB.
Also, it's a significant effort on each user's part to convert all their existing media metadata from TVDB to TMDB.
For my personal situation, I choose to use MC to manage and play my media files, so I will probably go with whatever permanent solution JRiver chooses.
As a reminder, TMDB API access is free now, but so was TVDB API access not too long ago.
From TMDB:
Does the API key cost anything?
Our API is free to use as long as you attribute TMDb as the source of the data and/or images. However, we reserve the right to charge for the commercial API key in the future.
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I agree. It's going to be an arduous task to convert my entire library. Also, if my experience with tmdb is the same as my experience with their movie lookup, it's going to be a nightmare. Too many times I have had to build my own movie metadata because a movie that exists on their database is never retrievable through the import function of jriver regardless of how exactly you create (or manipulate) the name in the lookup field.
i.e. try to "get movie and tv info" on Black Sabbath
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/28043-i-tre-volti-della-paura?language=en-US (https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/28043-i-tre-volti-della-paura?language=en-US)
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Instead of complaining that all is terrible based on assumptions, why don't you actually report problems with the search? That'll help everyone! :)
If there is data that we're just not getting, then thats something we should fix.
So, in the next build, looking up "Black Sabbath (1963)" will offer up that result specifically, there were apparently just too many matches so comparing the year on our end wasn't enough, have to actually pass it to the search.
(PS: the alternate search that would've always worked was using the original name, instead of the translation)
Either way, its not like there is a choice at this point.
Also, it's a significant effort on each user's part to convert all their existing media metadata from TVDB to TMDB.
Why would there need to be any conversion, manual or otherwise? They fill practically the same fields, even the TVDB ID is still being filled (and used, if the TMDB ID isn't present).
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Is the switch to TMDB a permanent MC change or a stopgap solution?
I think it is great that JRiver quickly switched to a working service, and that switch worked immediately for me. I've been running the Beta for a while now.
However, I am hoping that JRiver is negotiating with TheTVDB and can come to an agreement, because I do find it has better metadata generally, and that it is available faster for new shows. I suspect that studios populate TheTVDB before a show airs, so the metadata is immediately available. Or users gather pre-release information and update TheTVDB. I don't think that is happening for TheMovieDB. Yet.
It isn't so long ago that TheMovieDB even started storing TV Show data. They do seem to have done a good job of populating their database with TV Show data though. So there is hope it will be even better than TheTVDB.
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Either way, its not like there is a choice at this point.
Is this an answer to my original question? Is JRiver transitioning permanently from TVDB to TMDB?
Why would there need to be any conversion, manual or otherwise? They fill practically the same fields, even the TVDB ID is still being filled (and used, if the TMDB ID isn't present).
You're correct that the field names are similar between the two, but the data in those fields can vary significantly.
I suspect most popular serialized shows will have very similar, if not identical metadata, e.g., "Game of Thrones", "Stranger Things", etc.
Less popular and documentary shows are often subject to discussion and can vary significantly in episode order, and other metadata.
Example:
I was looking up metadata for the series "NOVA" using MC and TMDB today and the episode titled "Bigger Than T. Rex" is numbered S41E20 on TVDB and the series title is "NOVA"
Looking up the same episode on TMDB, I first have to tell MC the series name is "NOVA (1974)" so MC can find the proper episode number, then it matches it to S41E20 on TMDB which is titled "Why Sharks Attack". "Bigger Than T. Rex" is S42E07 on TMDB
This could possibly be addressed by adding some logic to check episode titles when looking up metadata, but it would require users to verify each match or trust an algorithm that could go horribly wrong.
Again, I'm curious to know if this switch is permanent or temporary?
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Again, I'm curious to know if this switch is permanent or temporary?
I cannot tell you what I do not know. The reasons for the switch are documented in this thread. At this precise point anyones guess is as good as mine if those reasons will find a resolution.
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how do i fix my version 24 please
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Why would there need to be any conversion, manual or otherwise? They fill practically the same fields, even the TVDB ID is still being filled (and used, if the TMDB ID isn't present).
A good example is the series "Bar Rescue". Both the seasons and episodes within the seasons don't line up between the 2 services. It's a continuing series, so in order to add new episodes, I will need to manually convert all of the current season/episodes to the "new" supplier.
This is just one example and there are many others like it.
I know it's what we're stuck with, but it is going to take weeks if not months to carefully convert over to the new database.
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A good example is the series "Bar Rescue". Both the seasons and episodes within the seasons don't line up between the 2 services. It's a continuing series, so in order to add new episodes, I will need to manually convert all of the current season/episodes to the "new" supplier.
This is just one example and there are many others like it.
I know it's what we're stuck with, but it is going to take weeks if not months to carefully convert over to the new database.
If you're satisfied that the data for the episodes you already have is good, why do you need to change it? Yes, there may be some inconsistencies between the data for old and new episodes, but I think that's something I'd be inclined to live with, especially if the general consensus is that the TVDB data is better.
I have no idea just how much money TVDB is looking to charge, but if JRiver would give users an option to pay an extra fee in order to be able to use the TVDB data, it might be a viable solution. Based on Scott's post above, it does sound like they would like to come up with a solution that works for both parties.
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Glad I found this thread, I've been so frustrated the last few days! Thank you for being on top of this and all your diligent efforts to resolve it in a timely manner. I've been using MC since version 16 and you guys are the best! However I am currently running MC 25 and did not plan to upgrade again until next year, 25 is great and until this issue did everything I needed. Is there some way you can put out a fix for older versions? If not could we get another shot at the discounted price? Hard to swallow paying $60 just to get a fix for this issue.
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Upgrade prices are here. https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,122405.0.html
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how do i fix my version 24 please
You can upgrade
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,122405.0.html
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notice one show did not download genre,
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i normally wait until you release the next version before i upgrade so dont have to install new updates every month ect plus it reduces problems as you have ironed them all out before the next release seems like i have no other option but to upgrade and its more annoying as i have also contributed to over 2000 shows on the tvdb site.the only loser here is the consumer :(
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Glad I found this thread, I've been so frustrated the last few days! Thank you for being on top of this and all your diligent efforts to resolve it in a timely manner. I've been using MC since version 16 and you guys are the best! However I am currently running MC 25 and did not plan to upgrade again until next year, 25 is great and until this issue did everything I needed. Is there some way you can put out a fix for older versions? If not could we get another shot at the discounted price? Hard to swallow paying $60 just to get a fix for this issue.
Save $10 when you purchase by using this promo code:
ritz
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notice one show did not download genre,
I've added the Genre to the lookup for TV shows just now for the next version.
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Hard to swallow paying $60 just to get a fix for this issue.
Upgrade price seems to be ~$27
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,122405.0.html
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I'm actually very glad that MC now supports TMDB. Especially the episode images are much better. TheTVDB episode images are restricted to 400px in width, which is really backwards. Also they only allow one image per episode. If someone uploads an image in the wrong aspect ratio (e.g. 4:3 on a 16:9 show) or with TV channel logo, it will stay there forever. That is because the process to exchange such an image is quite tedious as it requires to manually write a forum post.
However, that also means that MC needs to allow users to specifically choose an episode image and also to remember that selection. I really can't stand it if APIs are only partially implemented. I remember it took JRiver years to implement a simple language selection and I don't want to happen something like that again.
The TMDB api implementation currently does not seem to work flawlessly. Even if the TMDB series id is set correctly, MC will not use it and instead searches using the series name, which may lead to false results.
If a TMDB id is given or obtainable, it should be used. Otherwise a search with the series name should be made. If there is an outstanding result, it should be used. Otherwise show the user a list of possible series names too choose from.
For users that have problem with different episode counting in TMDB and TheTVDB I can recommend FileBot. Use the rename dialog (F6) in MC to rename episodes so that they contain series name, season number, episode number and episode title. I use the template: [Series]~S[Season]E[Episode]~[Name] since the "~" symbol is usually not used in neither series names nor episode titles and acts therefore as delimiter. Then you can drag the whole series into Filebot and right click "Match" and click on TMDB. Right click on Match again and select "Edit Format" and paste the following template: {n}~{s00e00}~{t}. Then click Rename and trigger an auto-import in MC. If all goes well, MC has imported the new files and deleted the references to the old ones. Now select the whole series and press F12. On the left select template and Filename and paste "[Series]~S[Season]E[Episode]~[Name]" into it. After that click ok and use "Get Movie and TV Info" to get descriptions and episode images.
Of course the whole process might differ depending on your file structure and preferences, but the basics stay the same. However, if there is per episode information you want to preserve, then the whole process will get very tedious. And sadly Filebot is no longer free and is 6$ per year.
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However, that also means that MC needs to allow users to specifically choose an episode image and also to remember that selection.
I'm adding the ability to pick a different image, but there is no special kind of "remembering". Of course it'll remember the image you choose, because it downloads it and stores it in a file. That image isn't going anywhere, unless you do another lookup and another image is downloaded.
There is no automatic process that should ever override that image choice, only user-actions can do that. For example a new lookup and not picking the image you want, or not disabling the checkbox to update the image in a bulk lookup. Do note that in a bulk lookup the "Allow overwrite" option also works for the image, like one would expect.
The TMDB api implementation currently does not seem to work flawlessly. Even if the TMDB series id is set correctly, MC will not use it and instead searches using the series name, which may lead to false results.
This has already been fixed for the next build. It was erroneously comparing with the TVDB ID, oops.
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The new lookup doesn't collect the thumbnail images, the cover art, or seasons art.
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26.0.87 is now available which supports TV Show lookup from TheMovieDB
Many thanks to the J River team for working for the quick resolution to this issue!
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Now I upgraded to MC26 and TV show lookup is working with TMDb in English. But as I switch to German, the description still is in English. If I do the same thing with a movie, it works as before (also with TMDb). Looking on the website of TMDb, the TV show I was looking for IS available with German description. Can you please correct this? Would be great!!!
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New version of MC 26 and now it is working also in German language - THX a lot! :)
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very hit and miss with TMDB i can get info for some episodes but not other.eg Betrayed 2016 s1e3 and S1E6 no info but 1,2,4 etc are ok
any ideas??
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MC can only show information that is actually present:
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/67633-betrayed/season/1?language=en-US
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@hendrick – This is my biggest issue with switching to TMDB from TVDB. Series, seasons, episodes, and episode info are missing from TMDB that are present in TVDB.
All this information can be populated on TMDB with enough of our time and effort, but JRiver is asking us to choose between JRiver and TVDB.
I wish MC would allow users to choose between TMDB and TVDB and if necessary, charge users a premium to use MC with TVDB.
Is JRiver pursuing an option that allows MC to use TVDB? Is the switch to TMDB permanent?
I would be happy to pay a premium to use MC with TVDB, just give us that option!
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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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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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I believe that TheTVDB has blocked MC's API token. Otherwise, your older version would work without any fiddling.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Seems to find it for me just fine, incidentally both as a 3-part series or a 2-part movie.
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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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Yes. That's been the general direction since they cut off support.
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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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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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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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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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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?
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.