2009-11-16, 00:08
Why do none of the other tv one work?
2009-11-16, 00:26
Same here.. trying to update my TV Shows database, running into tvdb.com downtime. 
General question, is there any other series DB that offers all the stuff that tvdb.com has? Episode names, ep. plot summary, series thumbs, season thumbs, fanart? I don't feel comfortable with just one web service to offer that. A backup would be fortunate.
General question, is there any other series DB that offers all the stuff that tvdb.com has? Episode names, ep. plot summary, series thumbs, season thumbs, fanart? I don't feel comfortable with just one web service to offer that. A backup would be fortunate.
2009-11-16, 01:27
Loc2262 Wrote:Same here.. trying to update my TV Shows database, running into tvdb.com downtime.
General question, is there any other series DB that offers all the stuff that tvdb.com has? Episode names, ep. plot summary, series thumbs, season thumbs, fanart? I don't feel comfortable with just one web service to offer that. A backup would be fortunate.
Not as good and complete, my friends.
Better hope for a more stable thetvdb.com ... and if there is a way, be sure to support them. I'm sure many of us use it a lot...
Wishing the best for thetvdb.com,
Jur.
2009-11-16, 01:48
Ever since I installed XBMC for the forst time some day's ago I've been running into scraper problems. I was losing my mind, even re-installing Vista but it seems that I'm not the only one...
Is there any scraper left working? I just tried TV.com and IBDM-TV but nothing returns...
How can this be? Is everything linked to TVDB.com or something?
Is there any scraper left working? I just tried TV.com and IBDM-TV but nothing returns...
How can this be? Is everything linked to TVDB.com or something?
2009-11-16, 02:04
Binder Wrote:Ever since I installed XBMC for the forst time some day's ago I've been running into scraper problems. I was losing my mind, even re-installing Vista but it seems that I'm not the only one...
Is there any scraper left working? I just tried TV.com and IBDM-TV but nothing returns...
How can this be? Is everything linked to TVDB.com or something?
I had the same problem, but I assumed it was because I was trying to "Scan for New Content" in a folder that already had most of its inormation from thetvdb.com (that was just an assumption... In all honesty, I don't know too much about the workings of these scrapers and XBMC in general). I'm somewhat glad to hear that I'm not the only one with that problem as well. Hopefully this will get fixed shortly. (I actually just reconfigured a portion of my network and was afraid I screwed something up at first!)
2009-11-16, 07:27
I posted elsewhere, but you can see the full explanation in this thread:
http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2246
About the third time in the past year for anything over an hour, I believe. The image mirror was down one of those and the main site the other two. We also had one planned outage for moving the server.
For reference, we're using free hosting right now because we can't afford the $800+/month that dedicated hosting would cost. People will throw in links to hosting providers, but frankly most won't work because of our insane bandwidth requirements. I think we were on pace for 6TB this month. We also have high CPU/RAM requirements, which means shared hosts are out of the question. We may eventually go with a CDN, but the good ones (S3 & Rackspace) are prohibitively expensive (~$0.22/GB).
We'd definitely appreciate it. I'd encourage everyone donating to consider splitting their donation 3 ways between XBMC, TheTVDB, and TMDB (if you use that combination). We are looking at some significant costs a few months from now when we'll require Microsoft licenses (I know... I'll detail in a bit). Which, BTW, if anyone has non-educational Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 licenses they'd like to donate, we could definitely use them.
No other site does right now, but our source code and schema are available if someone wants to branch. We're also looking at some major improvements to our site once I get some time to program it, which should hopefully happen in the next month or two. You can read a short novel about it here:
http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2073
One thing we may look at in the long term are premium features that would help pay for the site. The current functionality will remain free, but we might do things like allow users to custom-shift a season at a certain point (or multiple points) which would allow them to match the numbers to whatever scheme they want without much effort. Also things like labeling them as a donor in comments (which will get a really cool overhaul). We're currently getting hit by thousands of people, so if even a fraction make a small yearly donation it'll be enough to sustain the site without relying entirely on free hosts.
Anyway, sorry for the downtime. Will be back tomorrow.
http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2246
howyalikdemapls Wrote:Buzz kill. Seems like thetvdb.com goes down a lot!
About the third time in the past year for anything over an hour, I believe. The image mirror was down one of those and the main site the other two. We also had one planned outage for moving the server.
For reference, we're using free hosting right now because we can't afford the $800+/month that dedicated hosting would cost. People will throw in links to hosting providers, but frankly most won't work because of our insane bandwidth requirements. I think we were on pace for 6TB this month. We also have high CPU/RAM requirements, which means shared hosts are out of the question. We may eventually go with a CDN, but the good ones (S3 & Rackspace) are prohibitively expensive (~$0.22/GB).
Jkinney Wrote:If/When it comes back I would be interested in donating some $ for the site if need be
We'd definitely appreciate it. I'd encourage everyone donating to consider splitting their donation 3 ways between XBMC, TheTVDB, and TMDB (if you use that combination). We are looking at some significant costs a few months from now when we'll require Microsoft licenses (I know... I'll detail in a bit). Which, BTW, if anyone has non-educational Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 licenses they'd like to donate, we could definitely use them.
Loc2262 Wrote:General question, is there any other series DB that offers all the stuff that tvdb.com has? Episode names, ep. plot summary, series thumbs, season thumbs, fanart? I don't feel comfortable with just one web service to offer that. A backup would be fortunate.
No other site does right now, but our source code and schema are available if someone wants to branch. We're also looking at some major improvements to our site once I get some time to program it, which should hopefully happen in the next month or two. You can read a short novel about it here:
http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2073
One thing we may look at in the long term are premium features that would help pay for the site. The current functionality will remain free, but we might do things like allow users to custom-shift a season at a certain point (or multiple points) which would allow them to match the numbers to whatever scheme they want without much effort. Also things like labeling them as a donor in comments (which will get a really cool overhaul). We're currently getting hit by thousands of people, so if even a fraction make a small yearly donation it'll be enough to sustain the site without relying entirely on free hosts.
Anyway, sorry for the downtime. Will be back tomorrow.
2009-11-16, 16:11
Hey everyone,
First post here on the forums. I have been using XBMC for only about a month and I love it! However, when thetvdb.com goes down, its a real pain for all of us!
I happen to have a dedicated box with about 2TB of monthly bandwidth and I would be willing to either mirror thetvdb.com or branch off completely from it. Any suggestions on this matter?
First post here on the forums. I have been using XBMC for only about a month and I love it! However, when thetvdb.com goes down, its a real pain for all of us!
Quote:No other site does right now, but our source code and schema are available if someone wants to branch.
I happen to have a dedicated box with about 2TB of monthly bandwidth and I would be willing to either mirror thetvdb.com or branch off completely from it. Any suggestions on this matter?
2009-11-16, 19:01
phrac Wrote:I happen to have a dedicated box with about 2TB of monthly bandwidth and I would be willing to either mirror thetvdb.com or branch off completely from it. Any suggestions on this matter?
If you decide you want to mirror, let me know. Not sure of our exact requirements yet, but I do know we were on pace to do 6TB of transfer this month with at least 25m hits on the API. We've had a couple offers for mirrors, so it's just a matter of hashing out what we actually need and what people can offer.
2009-11-16, 19:10
After reading all of these responses here and on other posts from the tvdb admins, I just wanted to say thanks for the great service you offer the other 99% of the year and for taking the time to answer questions on all of the various threads and forums that have been discussing the issue.
I work in the managed hosting space and know that $hit happens every day in the datacenter, even for companies who pay a lot of money for dedicated hosting. Eventually, everyone gets a turn and unfortunately its now TVDB's.
Good luck getting things turned back up.
I work in the managed hosting space and know that $hit happens every day in the datacenter, even for companies who pay a lot of money for dedicated hosting. Eventually, everyone gets a turn and unfortunately its now TVDB's.
Good luck getting things turned back up.
2009-11-16, 20:56
Why does the scraper fail because the site is down?
I can understand not scraping episode details etc but why can't the scraper still add the raw show to the library?
By the point it's scraping the website it's already identified what season and episode it is. Dropping that in, albeit with no links perhaps flagging it as incomplete for future updates would seem a better solution?
I've also found that changing the scraper 'on the fly' between updates doesn't work and xbmc always reverts to the original setting configured when the library was setup. Is that correct? if so that also seems an odd design choice...
Is there anyway to bounce between scrapers so in this situation where one is down we can easily switch to another? I may be doing something silly!
p.s I would also be interested in providing some form of mirroring if details can be made available.
I can understand not scraping episode details etc but why can't the scraper still add the raw show to the library?
By the point it's scraping the website it's already identified what season and episode it is. Dropping that in, albeit with no links perhaps flagging it as incomplete for future updates would seem a better solution?
I've also found that changing the scraper 'on the fly' between updates doesn't work and xbmc always reverts to the original setting configured when the library was setup. Is that correct? if so that also seems an odd design choice...
Is there anyway to bounce between scrapers so in this situation where one is down we can easily switch to another? I may be doing something silly!
p.s I would also be interested in providing some form of mirroring if details can be made available.
2009-11-16, 21:42
szsori Wrote:If you decide you want to mirror, let me know. Not sure of our exact requirements yet, but I do know we were on pace to do 6TB of transfer this month with at least 25m hits on the API. We've had a couple offers for mirrors, so it's just a matter of hashing out what we actually need and what people can offer.
I would venture to guess you will set a record for api hits once the servers are back online.....BTW thanks for developing and managing TVDB....
2009-11-16, 22:08
Now, this is purely a theoretical idea, but....
What if TheTVDB operated in a very different way:
1) It created 'MediaPacks' (a collection of artworks, info etc) for each Tv show.
2) Each mediapack could have a revision (as new artwork is added etc).
3) The API returned a torrent for the media pack.
4) Peer to Peer (torrents) were used to download the media packs
This would significantly reduce the bandwidth, albeit with a massive 'rethink' of how the service worked.
The current technique of folks constantly scraping is massively innefficient, and many scrapers are pulling thumbs galore all the time. I just don't think it's sustainable in the long term to keep operating this way.
What if TheTVDB operated in a very different way:
1) It created 'MediaPacks' (a collection of artworks, info etc) for each Tv show.
2) Each mediapack could have a revision (as new artwork is added etc).
3) The API returned a torrent for the media pack.
4) Peer to Peer (torrents) were used to download the media packs
This would significantly reduce the bandwidth, albeit with a massive 'rethink' of how the service worked.
The current technique of folks constantly scraping is massively innefficient, and many scrapers are pulling thumbs galore all the time. I just don't think it's sustainable in the long term to keep operating this way.
2009-11-16, 23:00
AnalogKid Wrote:Now, this is purely a theoretical idea, but....
What if TheTVDB operated in a very different way:
1) It created 'MediaPacks' (a collection of artworks, info etc) for each Tv show.
2) Each mediapack could have a revision (as new artwork is added etc).
3) The API returned a torrent for the media pack.
4) Peer to Peer (torrents) were used to download the media packs
This would significantly reduce the bandwidth, albeit with a massive 'rethink' of how the service worked.
The current technique of folks constantly scraping is massively innefficient, and many scrapers are pulling thumbs galore all the time. I just don't think it's sustainable in the long term to keep operating this way.
Discussed here:
http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1927
In a nutshell, with the way our site and users work and need their data, adding more image mirrors and a mirror of the database itself is the way to go. We'll then use round robin DNS to load balance and failover. It's just a better method for our system.
2009-11-17, 04:50
Quick update from crzykidd in the tvdb forums....
"I will be picking the server up from the colo around 9pm PST. I hope to have it back online at the new location by 10:30pm."
So hopefully by around 1:30am EST it could be back online...best of luck to them
"I will be picking the server up from the colo around 9pm PST. I hope to have it back online at the new location by 10:30pm."
So hopefully by around 1:30am EST it could be back online...best of luck to them
2009-11-17, 06:02
Not sure if this helps, but I'm using a pretty good host at the moment:
http://www.canadianwebhosting.com/dedicated_hosting.asp
That's their dedicated hosting plans, I'm using the shared-server and it's also "unlimited" bandwidth, though I'm sure they'd balk at 6TB a month
http://www.canadianwebhosting.com/dedicated_hosting.asp
That's their dedicated hosting plans, I'm using the shared-server and it's also "unlimited" bandwidth, though I'm sure they'd balk at 6TB a month
