Trakt is switching to TMDb as the primary data source for TV shows

We’re switching to TMDB as the primary data source for TV shows

After several months of internal discussion, we are announcing our plans to use TMDB as the primary data source for all TV shows. The quality and completeness of data has greatly improved at TMDB over the years and we think with some re-alignment of community resources, it can work really well as Trakt’s primary TV data source.

Why are you switching to TMDB?

What it really boils down to is a moral opposition to taking in data from a community and then trying to sell it back to them. We believe when a user contributes to an online data source, they mean for that work to be shared with everyone around them. Both TMDB and Trakt have open and free APIs for developers to build upon that hard work.

TVDB is enforcing a commercial paid model to get access to their community moderated data. The first option is a commercial agreement with an app directly, but we’ve heard TVDB is asking for unrealistic licensing fees compared to an app’s revenue. The second option is charging users directly to access TVDB data. That doesn’t really work either, since that means an app is dependent on users paying a 3rd party service to work.

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I hope sonarr/raddar will make the change. With TVDB I got canceled seasons that are not canceled, strange seasons numbering (casa de papel and many others) and now is getting paid so why use a toxic data source?

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AMEN to that!!!

+1. Had a number of errors from TVDB recently, including ones that can’t be corrected except by moderators, and with the demise of the forums there’s no easy way to request a correction any more. (And even with the errors I can correct myself, I’m somewhat disinclined to put in the effort knowing they’re going to be profiting from my voluntary work.)

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EXACTLY. The ones that try to justifying what TheTVDB is doing without compensating the members disgust me.

One more black mark against TheTVDB - this week’s new episode of Family Guy has not been added. For some reason, the season is locked, so even people who don’t mind working for free for TheTVDB’s profit won’t be able to add the new episode. TVMaze already has next week’s, and TMDB has the next two weeks’. Since Sonarr doesn’t know about the new episode, I had to download, rename, and move it to my TV library folder manually. TheTVDB just isn’t fit for purpose these days.