[oneadvent]

There are a few problems with this site, two glaring ones: Wilfred incorrectly says it already had two seasons, and Archer is not updated...actually this one really makes me angry. Here is what a mod said on the Archer page:

Attention ALL Dumb Bastards, Season 3 has not started yet. Stop asking us to unlock it. --hikaricore

How horrible!

Anyway because XBMC IS NOT TheTvDB.com, what else can I use for normal US based shows? I see a lot of scrapers for Anime, but that doesn't do me any good.

Can someone point me in the direction I can use?

[Sranshaft]

I've always found the mods over at TheTVDb to be some of the most arrogant, elitest people on the internet. To call their userbase Dumb bastards is a bit over the line. Especially when they rely on that same userbase to help create and maintain the website. Unfortunately though, there simply isn't another TV database to use at the moment.

[Amra]

I agree with Sranshaft but it is the only site available. Maybe the following will help with the two items you mentioned.

You might want to double check on Wilfred as there have been two series with that name. The one you probably want is the US version and not the Original version. If you haven't already, try renaming your show folder and maybe the episodes too as "Wilfred (US)". That may help.

As far as the Archer Season 3 episodes that have recently aired, try placing them in "Season 0" as Specials & then renaming them to "s00e04" and "s00e05" respectively. The next episode that is due to air on 9/29 should then be renamed "s00e06" in your Specials folder. This has worked for me.

Good luck.

[oneadvent]

Yea the problems both are resolved, The Archer one because of my lack of understanding but Wilfred was out of date and got updating during the time on this thread, I swear!

Anyway, maybe we can petition and get an alternative site started, maybe not even a full fledged one, but one that over rides that site. Say for instance my wilfred problem:

XBMC would look to thetvdb.com and see what it has, and update my library accordingly, then it would go to this site and check what is there. If there is a conflict, it goes with what is at this site, unless it's not there, and in that case it goes with thetvdb?

Does that makes sense? That way we can correct more quickly what is going on, and we do not have to try and build an entire tv database. Also we aren't jerks.

[themistral]

I had a look at their forums and the level of abuse hurled at their users is just appalling especially from hikaricore. I've been a moderator and admin at forums before so I know the frustration at being asked the same things over and over but I was pretty disappointed by the level of disrespect they have for their own users.

The problem with tvdb is that it's only partially user-driven. Although users can create and modify most shows, the staff can override any changes and force users/scrapers to follow their reasoning. There is absolutely no further discussion once they have made a decision even if new evidence surfaces that contradicts their decision. With Wikipedia any issues people may have can be openly discussed and ultimately decided by the community as a whole. It is for this reason that I think it might be better leaving discussion about a particular topic in its own entry on the site rather than hidden in amongst threads on a forum.

Personally, I'd love to see fanart.tv merged into a television database.

[spiff]

* spiff whispers the f word. if they can't behave, remove them from the equation.

[Martijn]

Go complain to the makers of those tv series to provide better data.
Discussions are always about the same shows.
If the makers didn't f** up their shows there wouldn't be a problem

Who would start filling such a database with all the serires that are already there?
Then the discussion would start all over again. What data is correct and what not. On user thinks this way and some elese the other way. In such a case the moderator would need to step in and take the decision. After that they would be called a cold harted bastard

*Martijn goes back into zen mode

[themistral]

I think it's good to have options. If you disagree with how one site categorizes something you can simply switch your tracker to another site. It might also cater for holes in tvdb where they don't aggregate sports events and some documentaries.

The issue with tvdb is less about the decisions they make with their shows and more about how they communicate with their users. There's a difference between being called a cold hearted bastard and actually being one. Sure people continually beat at a dead horse but telling people to f*** off and die isn't going to be doing your own site any favors. Should another site actually pop up, tvdb might find less and less users willing to contribute.

[LukeS7]

A perfect example of this is all the threads on The Legend of Korra, thankfully my post was not reached by Hikaricore first, instead it was read by ManiacB, who actually took the time to read it and have a PM discussion with me about it.

[Richy Freeway]

I don't know how much help this would be, but I use a sort of proxy with Sickbeard to get American Dad downloads working properly. It's a episode remapper of sorts I spose.

http://thexem.de/

Don't know if this could be integrated somehow!

[WulfStoneback]

It's high time to dump the scaper since it's NOT consistant with real-world reality. They are more or less having the site as a "History Channel' for aired episodes (and not always correct) and not a database for how the networks are selling their products, hence how XBMC users would like to have their libraries ordered.

E.g. my latest encounter of off-the-wall episode ordering is with the series "Terra Nova" that I just required from iTunes WEB-DL. There is 13 episodes but THETVDB only flies 11. I won't bore you to much with structure details but when searching for a sollution on their forum got this more or less insulting reply to another user: http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=9127. End of story for using thetvdb scraper for the tv series "Terra Nova" and instead adding the folder to the "Movies" folder in order to use IMDb as movies scraper. Every other TV site has the correct order or gives the ability to work around couble episodes etc., like the pilot e01-02 and the season finale split into their own names.
(On my HDD the folders are "Movies", "Series" and "Musicvideos" (later which scraper isn't working at all, btw) so that I only have to drop a new folder on to the HDD without adding anything in XBMC.) In short, my XBMC library is NOT what it could have been, due to the state of thetvdb scraper.

Is there someone who can make another scraper for TV series using another Db, i.e. NOT thetvdb.com? Maybe use the IMDb scraper for movies to work for TV series as well?
Or if any other TV sites have a API to use, like;
next-episode.net
tvrage.com
tv.com
imdb.com
and others

Hopeful...
Wulf

I found this thread so I guess this one is redundant.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=110861

[Oddsodz]

+ 1 for fanart.tv to conquer the internets. The guys over there are doing a fantastic job with pumping out artwork for all TV shows and Movies, And now even music artwork. I Just don't know how they find the time

[Martijn]

+ 1 for fanart.tv to conquer the internets. The guys over there are doing a fantastic job with pumping out artwork for all TV shows and Movies, And now even music artwork. I Just don't know how they find the time

We have an 96 hour day

[NotShorty]

They removed the info for the p90x videos that I posted and it pissed me off royally. That said, it helps if your shows' filenames follow standard naming conventions. Try this http://www.therenamer.com/

[Kode]

+ 1 for fanart.tv to conquer the internets. The guys over there are doing a fantastic job with pumping out artwork for all TV shows and Movies, And now even music artwork. I Just don't know how they find the time

Randomly stumbling upon comments like this make me smile and are much appreciated (though I don't personally create much of the artwork as building the site, maintaining it, adding features, fixing bugs, trying to get 3rd parties interested in the site, etc sucks up a big portion of my free time).

As for thetvdb.com, technically I am a mod there, though the above pretty much explains why I'm not very active there and I do have a few points to make.

Hikaricore is basically marmite, lots of people love him, lots of people hate him, but he works damn hard, when Hikaricore is a mod you know there are going to be conflicts but the amount of work he does far far far outweighs any of that (he used to be an active mod on fanart.tv as well, but is now pretty much retired from there).

If Scott ever manages to release the new version of the thetvdb site a lot of these issues will be resolved as it will allow things like discussions directly on the show page.

The reason there is no alternative to thetvdb.com is because its a massive challenge, and the forum being distinct from the website causes issues like users wiping out entire records because they think they are wrong, or because they aren't ordered the way the user thinks is correct, and lots of threads repeating the same thing over and over again because noone can be bothered to search first, with the current site there is no way to recover from these destructive actions, which is a big reason why the moderators there get so irate sometimes.

On the other hand the new thetvdb.com site has been around the corner for the last 4 or so years, (fanart.tv has had 3 sites in that time, lol) so when we will actually see a release is hard to say.