Not all of us watch movies in theaters, there are many digital mediums like bluray, dvd, netflix, amazon, various online platforms
I've been utilizing Rotten Tomatoes's dvd release_date as an estimate for digital_release_date, however their data is extremely inaccurate and missing many movies, manually marking digital_release_date's is even a better alternative (I've also recently discovered that they deleted my api_key, for no reason and without any notice)
I don't think it would require much overhead for themoviedb to add a digital_release_date field and I think it would be extremely useful, I personally don't utilize the release_date yet, however digital_release_date was a priority
Editors can simply set the digital_release_date's of movies when they discover that a movie is digitally released, or beforehand if the date is available
What do you guys think?
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Reply by Travis Bell
on September 25, 2014 at 2:12 PM
Hey kaansoral,
This will be covered when ticket #527 gets completed. Basically, the current way release dates work needs to be completed overhauled. It's a lot of work which is why it hasn't been done yet.
Reply by kaansoral
on September 25, 2014 at 2:54 PM
Hi
Thanks for the update
I see the complexity of the situation, I'm guessing we won't see the new release_date system for some time
I'm guessing the new release dates will be accessible from a new sub-branch (like /credits /images), is there any chance to have a temporary "min_digital_release_date" similar to "release_date", that will be replaced by a derived value when the new system rolls out? (when the new release date system rolls out, the min/derived value could stay at the main /movie/id level, maybe)
The min value of the various digital release date's is particularly significant, as it represents the date when a movie is accessible online and outside the theaters
I actually don't think such a temporary value will be implemented, but just trying my chances :)
Reply by kaansoral
on October 26, 2014 at 2:50 PM
Is there an ETA for this feature? :)
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9321947/how-to-get-dvd-release-dates-of-movies-programatically
rotten tomatoes API used to be a not-so-bad source for dvd release dates, however for some reason they stopped allowing people to use their API easily, would be great to replace that source of information with themoviedb
Reply by Travis Bell
on October 27, 2014 at 10:12 AM
Hi kaansoral,
No ETA but it is something that will get looked at soon. Soon as in probably the next month or so.
Reply by kaansoral
on October 27, 2014 at 4:12 PM
Great to hear, thank you
Anxiously waiting :)
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 13, 2016 at 1:07 PM
Hi guys,
While we still don't support specifying a country release filter on discover (this will be coming), we do now support multiple release dates per country and type (which includes digital/physical). You can read more about his here.
There's a new API method that supports returning this data which is documented here.
Cheers.
Reply by kaansoral
on January 14, 2016 at 3:12 AM
HI Travis,
Thanks a lot for the update
I personally find the minimal digital release date of importance, whether it's amazon/netflix or physical-digital, with this update, will we be able to deduct this data from tmdb?
(I also tried to find a movie with a digital release date info, but I failed)
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 14, 2016 at 9:45 AM
Hi kaansoral,
Yes, if you call the new /release_dates method you will get whatever we have added back (keyed by country with the type field). As always of course, it all depends on what data has been added to our DB though.
One I know of for sure (without doing a db query) is The Ridiculous 6.