Improve movie release dates

Ideas and Suggestions
1

I wonder if the way release dates of movies are determined could be improved. Currently, there are some inconsistencies or inaccuracies in the way this is done in SeriesGuide.

Here is one example, but there are many others in my collection:

  1. Search for movie “Doctor Who” (TmdbId:15691). The first result shows up like this with a date of 14 May 1996:

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  2. However, when viewing the movie entry in SeriesGuide, the date shows as 8 February 2011.

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  3. The TMDB release dates page shows that SeriesGuide has picked up that date from a later DVD release of the movie.

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    IMDB agrees it is a 1996 movie.

  4. I have the Release Times country set to United States. This choice is global across all movies (I think) and doesn’t always match the first release date of the movie that TMDB, IMDB, and Trakt use.

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  5. I would prefer to be able to choose something like “First Release” or “Premiere” for release times instead of a speciic country release.

One more example for reference … “Grave of the Fireflies” (TmdbId:12477). This is a 1988 movie, but shows up in SeriesGuide with a date of 12 Auguest 2018.

1 Like
Movie release dates in SeriesGuide
2

Thanks.

This is because TMDB decides what date to provide when doing a search. For the movie details screen SeriesGuide can afford to download all release dates of a movie from TMDB and pick one that makes sense (but there are limitations). See the code documentation:

Movie release dates in SeriesGuide
3

Thanks for the reply, and I see the logic you’re following in the code.

I guess I’m asking if there could be a change made such that - instead of selecting a specific country as the “release region” - I could choose “First Release” or “Premiere” (or similar) which would ignore countries and just pick the first theatrical release anywhere. This would generally get a date closer to the release year you might see in IMDB.

In general, I don’t care what date a movie was released in the United States or New Zealand or another specific country - I’m more interested in when it was first released.

1 Like
4

Just a quick follow up on this… Is this something you’d consider? Or is it unlikely you’ll make this change?

Thanks.

5

Sorry, I don’t (and can’t) promise to work on things. When there is time I’ll have a look.

6

Just bumping this suggestion in case you might have time to take a look… Thanks.

7

I did some quick experimenting and there is room for some improvements. For example:

  • In details, display original release title and date (“release_date”), tag release date with region
  • In discover, provide option to display original release date (not sending a region appears to do this)
  • In popular, provide option to only search primary (original) release year
  • Provide option to store original release date in database (for sort by for lists)

But as said previously, I can’t promise when I can work on this. There’s many other things to be done.

1 Like
8

Thanks, Uwe. All I can ask is that you take a look at what could be done with this.

As it stands, the region-based release date can be meaningless. What you propose sounds good - the ability to ignore region and use original/primary release dates for searches, details, sorting, and in the database (including json exports).

I know that you’re busy, so happy for you to get onto this when you can.