Use "release_date" from earliest date the movie came out

[cylon 15]

At the moment MBS populates the Year field based on the release_date metadata for the country setting set in MBS.

If it can't find a release date for a specific country it defaults to the US release date.

 

My issues with this are as follows:

• TMDB metadata is more likely to be incorrect for counties outside the US. For example the release date for Bambi (1942) is incorrectly recorded for Australia as 2013:
  {"iso_3166_1":"AU","certification":"G","release_date":"2013-06-04"}
• The release date for any movie should be the earliest point it screened. Some movies take years before they air in Australia.

 

Solutions: 

 

My initial thought was to go back to using the "Year" field but that does not provide the flexibility that a full date provides when sorting by year. For example the Avengers series are screening multiple movies a year. If the "year" field is used they would sort the movies by name which would be incorrect. If on the other-hand "release_date" is used the movies would show in the order that they screened which is preferable.

 

So now that we have established that "year" shouldn't be used lets look at three possible solutions:

• Search for the earliest screening for a movie across all countries and use that as suggested by @@jwill
  This would work if the metadata was accurate for all countries but I don't have faith that it is.
• Use the US release date as I believe the metadata is most accurate for that country
• Use the "primary" flag if it is available and then default to one of the two options above if it is not. Also suggested by @@jwill
  I just did a quick search through IMDB (10 popular movies) to find an example of how the "primary" flag is used but I couldn't find it in any of the metadata

Edited December 23, 2013 by cylon

[jwill 28]

I noticed that TMDB has a flag "Primary" that can be applied to the release date of one of the countries. Perhaps MBS should always grab the "Primary" year. If none are marked "Primary", then the fallback should probably be to read all the years and take the earliest one.

Edited December 10, 2013 by jwill

[cylon 15]

I noticed that TMDB has a flag "Primary" that can be applied to the release date of one of the countries. Perhaps MBS should always grab the "Primary" year. If none are marked "Primary", then the fallback should probably be to read all the years and take the earliest one.

This is an excellent idea but i can't find any movies that use the "Primary" field and I don't trust the accuracy of other countries air dates.

Perhaps if we used the "Primary" field and then fallback to the US?

 

Update - Had a better look and I can see the primary selection is designated by the green tick in TMDB. What is confusing is that is also what seems to designate it being set to primary in the page source (tick-small.png) as I can't find anything else designating the US release as the primary except maybe the fact that it is at the top:

<ul id="release_date_list" class="certification hide">
    <li>
      <img src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/36eefb4c632941c/images/flags/us.png" />
      <p><span itemprop="datePublished">1942-08-12</span> <img style="margin: -1px 0 0 0;" src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/fbbf6bacaba2848/images/tick-small.png" width="16" height="16"><br /> <span itemprop="contentRating">G</span></p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <img src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/373b8f3d6c92338/images/flags/gb.png" />
      <p><span itemprop="datePublished">1942-08-08</span><br /> <span itemprop="contentRating">U</span></p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <img src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/a30514266c8337b/images/flags/au.png" />
      <p><span itemprop="datePublished">1943-04-15</span><br /> <span itemprop="contentRating">G</span></p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <img src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/8aa93fc2143c4a2/images/flags/se.png" />
      <p><span itemprop="datePublished">1943-10-04</span><br /> <span itemprop="contentRating">Barntillåten</span></p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <img src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/73a7d298286803c/images/flags/ca.png" />
      <p><span itemprop="datePublished">1945-07-24</span><br /> -</p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <img src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/d9062600b752c4f/images/flags/fr.png" />
      <p><span itemprop="datePublished">1947-07-15</span><br /> <span itemprop="contentRating">U</span></p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <img src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/659cdf8a9a4996d/images/flags/de.png" />
      <p><span itemprop="datePublished">1950-12-18</span><br /> <span itemprop="contentRating">0</span></p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <img src="http://d3a8mw37cqal2z.cloudfront.net/assets/ac122dcf0c9d720/images/flags/dk.png" />
      <p><span itemprop="datePublished">2005-02-23</span><br /> <span itemprop="contentRating">A</span></p>
    </li>
  </ul>

Edited December 28, 2013 by cylon

[cylon 15]

I just created a TMDB account and corrected the Australian release date info for Bambi. The updated info is yet to pull via the API but I assume that just requires some patience on my part. This is what prompted me to raise this request in the first place.

 

I still think it should default to the "Primary" release date (green tick) as per @@jwill's suggestion.

Edited December 28, 2013 by cylon

[Vidman 589]

star wars iv has the same issue, the release date for au was listed as 1997 which would have been when the special edition was released