New Plugin - Rating Poster Database

[jaruba 17]

@PowerXDrive @kikinjo 

I'm sorry to hear you believe the price is too high, it was one of the hardest things to choose. As it needed to take into account all fees, taxes and resource requirements for a stable service.

The fees for Patreon and transactions take away 15%, and there are additional fees for transferring earnings. This is without calculating taxes which are of a higher percent.

I wanted to ensure from the get go that the prices also take into account future feature requests also. And I currently release a new version based on user requests weekly. This was very important to me as I cannot presume that the initial service will be enough for all user needs.

There was no greed factor when creating this service, each VPS can handle a number of users, so the costs need to be split between the number of users that each can handle manipulating images for on-the-fly in a short enough time. There are also CDN prices and other technological resources required.

The VPS specs need to be quite high, as such a service needs high disk space, high CPU and RAM for on-the-fly image editing and storing.

The service is still new and the current statistics from the hundreds of users look good enough that I continue to add new features constantly. When feature requests calm down I may be able to add a completely free Tier for 500-1000 requests per month, and might even reduce prices for Tiers if all continues to seem sustainable also, but I can't give an ETA for this for obvious reasons.

As for lifetime payments, they are the equivalent of 26 months of service for the Tier, as is Emby's Premium and Plex's Lifetime also. I need to ensure being able to pay monthly / yearly required services myself for each user forever at these prices.

I have worked with online services for a very long time, I know the prices that should be expected. But yes, the prices have been set to be a bit higher to take into account the future needs of a new and growing service and it's users.

[giankoski68 4]

The plug-in is almost the same price as  Emby for lifetime subscription. It’s a bit over priced. imho. 

 

[Carlo 4330]

The monthly price for bigger systems is roughly 150% of the monthly price of Emby Premiere which unlocks numerous features and clients. So using that comparison alone, it's a very steep price.

But this is something unique and may not have mass appeal so the devs have to cover costs and dev.

[jaruba 17]

@giankoski68 

Maybe it would be better if I explain the challenging factors that make resource usage so high for this service.

The first one is keeping the data fresh – all movies / series from the last 2 years get their posters (with ratings) refreshed weekly, while all other movies / series get their posters (with ratings) refreshed monthly. Having fresh information was an important factor, there is a server dedicated for this task alone that propagates all changes to all other servers.

While RPDB pre-processes the images for most user required cases (although more feature requests for new cases are piling up), it will still need to do on-the-fly image manipulation for many cases: the more obscure media (with very few votes) will get their ratings burned in the posters on request, badges / labels (such as 4K, 1080p or custom text) are also burned on request, custom posters (by user choice) will get their ratings burned on request too.

To be on the safe side with resource usage and speed of responses, on-the-fly image manipulation can have a concurrency of 50-100 per server. So one server cannot handle too many users at the same time, thus requiring us to set up many servers for a high amount of users.

As I stated before though, the prices might change in the future as more will join RPDB and we get a better understanding of how to optimise it for everyone and our prices.

This service could also be used by Emby directly, if they choose to get involved. As long as they would cache RPDB's posters through their CDN servers and offer it as part of Emby Premiere, their premium users wouldn't need to pay anything more for these features. RPDB would handle all their rating needs for the future too, as more rating providers will continue to be added in the future also.

[Carlo 4330]

But why would they do that when they already have posters (with choice of source or personal), some of the ratings (could add others) and the cover art plugin which can dynamically manipulate the images right on the server vs in the cloud.  The cover art program can already do a lot of image manipulation. Any changing rating then would not require pulling down new images all the time and would just get rendered on the Emby Server directly if needed.

All that would need be done to the cover art program is add a ratings bar to the bottom of the picture.

That would be far easier from an Emby standpoint then integrating a different service since it's mostly done already.

[jaruba 17]

@cayars

 

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But why would they do that

Competitive advantage? Resource management from a user standpoint? Developer time and maintenance which would actually be more expensive? Paying a service that is focused on this in particular and improving it constantly?

I'm not trying to sell this to Emby developers. I just stated a fact, this service (and it's price) is not directly targeted to users only. It's an API which can be used by either users or developers of applications.

I had the idea for this service many months ago and am driven by getting these features in the hands of the users. This is how I myself like to enjoy and choose what to watch and believe others would prefer these options themselves, it's why it was built.

[Carlo 4330]

But all this gets you is a new poster with the info on it.  It doesn't help you sort by ratings, filter by ratings or anything else.  These are the type of things being added to Emby to make it more functional in different ways. Some of the ratings can be placed under the poster now and could likely be added to the bottom of the poster via Cover Art if that was something people requested.  You still get all the normal ways to select your own graphics as well or the treatment you want to apply to them. This could likely be added to iconic as well if asked and it would all run directly on the server itself.

So I'm personally not sure why a 3rd party would be needed for something like this but that's just me and this was hypothetical at best anyway.

[jaruba 17]

@cayars 

As this is a friendly debate, I tested the latest Emby Beta version with my Emby Premium account to entertain the discussion further.
 

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It doesn't help you sort by ratings, filter by ratings or anything else.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Emby can only use one Audience Rating and one Critic Rating at a time per primary Metadata Agent choice. Even if it did have all the raw data to access any ratings, it would still only be able to show and sort by 2 ratings max at one time.
 

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So I'm personally not sure why a 3rd party would be needed for something like this

 

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But all this gets you is a new poster with the info on it.

This might hold more value than you presume. I'm on Emby Beta and I can see (only) IMDB and RT Critic scores in the Library -> Movies view.

Can I see Emby's ratings in the Library -> Suggestions view? No. Can I see RPDB's ratings there? Yes
Can I see Emby's ratings in the Library -> Folders view? No. Can I see RPDB's ratings there? Yes
Can I see Emby's ratings when searching? No. Can I see RPDB's ratings there? Yes
Can I see Emby's ratings for the suggestions row on the Movie and Series details views? No. Can I see RPDB's ratings there? Yes

As stated, I'm not trying to convince you, this was just a simple comparison.

[Carlo 4330]

By "These are the type of things being added to Emby to make it more functional in different ways." I was not implying 4.6 version but that Emby is constantly adding new features like this by user request.  But it would not be hard to add other ratings if already available via existing meta-data providers (or could pull this info from other places as well).

You'll likely see the ratings added to more screen with each release as functionality is increased along with other filters and features.  The UI is getting more and more feature rich with each release but thee are lots of clients to take into considering as well.

I still think something like this would be done internally vs external and would make the most sense, since all the pieces are already in place and cover art with a mod could put ratings on the covers quite easily. 4.6 just got an image editing revamp as well to make sources new covers easier as well. So nearly all the functionality already exists in the server to do this already.

 

[horstepipe 356]

 

@cayarsfor sure that would make sense. But we all know about Emby's development speed because resources are tight. So we can't really expect one of these features in the next months, probably not even in years. The features you were referring to already came up years ago and didn't make it to Server yet.

This development is nice and gives us very valuable info. I'd personally love to see this added as a third party metadata provider, so we can also sort and filter by the ratings and I do not expect the features provided here being added to emby server natively within the next 2 years.

So if there's any chance about some kind of collaboration, is it good that @jaruba told you to be willing to.

Edited May 4, 2021 by horstepipe

[Carlo 4330]

5 hours ago, horstepipe said:

 

@cayarsfor sure that would make sense. But we all know about Emby's development speed because resources are tight. So we can't really expect one of these features in the next months, probably not even in years. The features you were referring to already came up years ago and didn't make it to Server yet.

This development is nice and gives us very valuable info. I'd personally love to see this added as a third party metadata provider, so we can also sort and filter by the ratings and I do not expect the features provided here being added to emby server natively within the next 2 years.

So if there's any chance about some kind of collaboration, is it good that @jaruba told you to be willing to.

Was just a hypothetical friendly conversation only and not meant in any way to say don't use this plugin and wait for Emby, as that could take a long time (if ever). That conversation was only about how I thought they would do this if the did, not how they ARE doing this.

It only came about when a few people questioned the value or cost. Yes it can seem high compared to the base premiere license but infrastructure isn't free especially for the 1st item.  What we do have is a solution NOW that just seems to work and do it well from day one.

I really should try it myself first hand which often times gives a different perspective then playing from the "side lines".

@horstepipe you mention you would like to see this added as a 3rd party metadata provider.  Isn't that more or less what adding the plugin does for Emby?

[ebr 14913]

6 hours ago, horstepipe said:

I'd personally love to see this added as a third party metadata provider,

To my knowledge, this service does not provide metadata.  It provides images.

[jaruba 17]

@ebr @cayars

That's true, RPDB only provides posters and backdrops with ratings and certifications. The project is based on a huge metadata engine that I've been working on for several years (which has a ton more data than RPDB itself uses). That can be opened up through RPDB easily also but the name and direction of the project don't really fit.

I released RPDB because it was a unique concept that could easily be embedded in any media app, as all media apps I've tested only support 1 or 2 ratings at the same time at most and sorting by rating is also limited by only 2 parameters (critics / audience), but many have already expressed their interest in a metadata API.. IMO, such an API cannot make ratings visible throughout an entire app and will always be constrained by the implied rating limits of the apps, but I'm obviously looking at this from a plugin developer perspective.. I'd still release the metadata API too as there seems to be some demand, but as a separate project.

If you're interested in a monstrous metadata API that has very detailed (frequently updated) rating data / reviews (with plans on adding more ratings from other providers as well) and includes all other general metadata that would be required for a complete media app also, I could make it available through a specific Key only from RPDB for you guys to test with until I officially release the other API.

[horstepipe 356]

2 hours ago, cayars said:

@horstepipe you mention you would like to see this added as a 3rd party metadata provider.  Isn't that more or less what adding the plugin does for Emby?

 

1 hour ago, ebr said:

To my knowledge, this service does not provide metadata.  It provides images.

 

Indeed, but as jaruba already mentioned, it is primarly an "api service" which brings other ratings which are not supported by emby natively.

[Carlo 4330]

8 minutes ago, horstepipe said:

Indeed, but as jaruba already mentioned, it is primarly an "api service" which brings other ratings which are not supported by emby natively.

But only to the image and not into Emby meta-data/database (at least for now).

Edited May 4, 2021 by cayars

[jaruba 17]

@cayars I think u might have missed my comment before his..

[ebr 14913]

40 minutes ago, jaruba said:

If you're interested in a monstrous metadata API that has very detailed (frequently updated) rating data / reviews (with plans on adding more ratings from other providers as well) and includes all other general metadata that would be required for a complete media app also

We would need to know the origin and acquisition method of that data.  To my knowledge, most of the large rating providers consider this proprietary information and they charge for it.

[jaruba 17]

@ebr 

That's another interesting subject for hypothetical discussions, as I don't currently have such a metadata API made public, let's play a math and legal game with a popular API that is already on the market.

The OMDb API is created by 1 person, has 2.214 patrons and should be presumed to generate ~$11.070 per month. (based on it's Tier prices)

The Rotten Tomatoes API costs $60.000 per year, the IMDB API (as of their last official statement) has annual fees ranging from $15,000 to higher depending on the audience for the data and which data is being licensed, Metacritic (which did not have an API until late sept 2020) does not state their price, but lets presume the minimum of $15.000 per year.

That totals up to $90.000 per year, in the best possible case. (data which OMDb makes use of)

Now OMDb published some articles on some of it's costs to it's patrons (of which I am one for $5 per month for many years). In 2017 he stated that his monthly costs were of ~$446 for running his service, within the same year he posted a Cloudflare invoice of $1.248 for one month, after which he stated that he is enabling Argo in Cloudflare that will cost him an extra $1.000-$1.500 per month. So let's round this sum to around $3.000 per month for tech costs only. (this is old data though, he stopped posting completely in 2019)

He also mentioned hiring a person part-time as a goal (the goal passed) some years ago, but for the fun of it we won't take that into consideration on pricing.

So OMDb makes ~$11.070 per month from which Patreon takes 15%, so that leaves ~$9.409 of which his costs are ~$3.000, which leaves him at ~$6.409

This would mean that OMDb has a yearly profit of ~$77.000 while the costs of the service providers he would need for it would be a minimum of $90.000 per year.

On his site, under the legal page he states that his data is submitted by users (although there is no way to submit such data), and that he accepts DMCA requests. On Patreon, when removing Rotten Tomatoes ratings (which he brought back a few years after) he stated, and I quote:

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After becoming all too familiar with Amazon (who owns IMDb) and Fandango's legal team on a regular basis, I've been looking into other options for returning movie ratings. With this proposed change, I would act merely as a conduit and relay an unmodified response from other service providers which is protected under the 512(a) "safe harbor" of the DMCA.

Without ever mentioning which these other service providers are, but I could guess quite accurately if necessary as I am well accustomed with all such existing services.. although this would be a completely different discussion all together and a fun hypothesis of it's own.

Emby is a sponsor of the OMDb API, and pays $360 in donations per year to it, while OMDb is quite clearly not paying for the ratings it provides.

But the OMDb plugin, which I believe is an official plugin as it comes pre-installed in Emby, is not enabled by default for Emby users. The one enabled by default is the TMDB plugin, which means that enabling and making use of OMDb's IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings is a user choice.

Now, who is to blame, legally, for this entangled web of scrapped data distribution? How did OMDb justify "the origin and acquisition method of that data"? And how is Emby (in general) even liable for any legal action while using a payed API for data that is used solely on user choice?

Edit: rephrased last question

Edited May 4, 2021 by jaruba

[Carlo 4330]

Emby writes software that can use existing meta-data as allowed by providers.  They do not redistribute it or resell it in any way.
In some cases Emby runs mirror servers to take the strain off the meta-data providers network but this is by contract or permission and only used in the fashion agreed to.

Emby would not be entitled to form a new product based on this information or to sell it to another company as it's not their works. So at a high level this is what ebr I believe is getting at, in that in order for Emby to consume this data legally they would need to make sure all the legal ducks are in a row and all data is properly licensed for resale or distribution in modified works.

[ebr 14913]

It is a tangled web, indeed.

The night is dark and full of terrors.

[speechles 1917]

5 hours ago, ebr said:

We would need to know the origin and acquisition method of that data.  To my knowledge, most of the large rating providers consider this proprietary information and they charge for it.

Exactly. You cannot REGEXP. You cannot scrape. You cannot borrow. There must be a documented API that exists with a license for the data coming through that API to your service. So there is some kind of chain of custody of the data. Who owns the data? They do. You know for a fact it came from a legitimate source (them) with a legitimate license (from them) who is also licensing through fair use or otherwise to others (to you) to do the same and offer this data to those (for others) who use your application. For a fee or free isn't the problem. It is the fact you are obtain anothers copyrighted work without permission and reuse is where the violation occurs. Each violation can incur a cost. Those costs are what lawyers will pursue.

Edited May 4, 2021 by speechles

[jaruba 17]

I still did not receive any answer to my own questions regarding Emby's legality and choices for partnerships:

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Now, who is to blame, legally, for this entangled web of scrapped data distribution? How did OMDb justify "the origin and acquisition method of that data"? And how is Emby (in general) even liable for any legal action while using a payed API for data that is used solely on user choice?

But I am quite versed in the legality of media streaming applications such as Emby and the legality of plugin use. So I already know the answers to these questions, I was actually wondering if they will be avoided or not.

But that's less important, as the resolution to this is simple. Emby itself cannot and will not have diverse and insightful rating data of it's own in the future, I have outlined the minimum prices (which increase based on the size of the audience) for the acquisition of this data clearly in my previous comment. So @cayars previous comments about the possibility of adding such features to Emby in the future is not realistic, I presume we can all agree on that.

Edited May 4, 2021 by jaruba

[roaku 795]

This is so weird.

[jaruba 17]

@roaku You're telling me? I just wanted my plugin added in Emby's catalog, but I enjoy a good intellectual debate, so here we are. 

[roaku 795]