Connection (api) problems with thetvdb.com (2 Viewers)

[roedler86]

Hello everybody,

I’m facing some trouble importing new series’ banner. All other media is imported correctly.

The log shows some API error. Is there anything I can do about it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Lehmden]

Is there anything I can do about it?

Yes, pray and wait. Try it at a different time. Maybe it is working then.

TVDB was not , is not and never will be reliable.

 

[roedler86]

Can you recommend an other provider for series? Which one do you use?

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

Can you recommend an other provider for series?

At least you should activate TMDB in MP2 settings (but keep TVDB activated). TMDB don't have as much series listed as TVDB but the number constantly is growing. Aside this there are a lot of series that are not listed on TVDB (due to various reasons) but are available on TMDB. So you definitely need both sources to get a good set of data.

Which one do you use?

"Local information only".
Personally I don't use any online grabbing while importing movies or series into MP2 or Kodi or,... All my movies and series are prepared with local fanart and metadata (aka .nfo files) so no online lookup is needed at all. This always gives a 100% perfect match and the import really is as fast as possible.

I prepare all movies and series with my own tool Media-Buddy but there are other tools like tMM or Ember that also can do the job nicely... Media-Buddy itself is using a combination of TMDB, TVDB and fanart.tv to get the best data possible without user interaction. If this still don't give the result I want, I always can correct and change things later. This way I even can add episodes not listed (or not translated) in online sources into my media library as Media-Buddy even can create "empty" .nfo files for those not listed episodes that I later can fill with data manually, mostly found on fernsehserien.de some even at wikipedia or google... Sadly fernsehserien.de did not offer an API for their data as it is the most complete data source für series in German language. So you need to "copy&paste" data from them if no other source can deliver the desired data. This is hard to achieve inside an HTPC app meant for usage on big screen with remote. Such can be done much better with mouse and keyboard in a desktop app.