Use TVDB instead of TMDB for TV Shows

[Gandalf-the-Blue]

TVDB has a more detailed and larger database for TV shows than TMDB - and is also used by Jellyfin and Sonarr as a way to track releases and shows. It might be worthwhile to look into transitioning TV shows from TMDb to TVDB.

[IRHM]

Hey @Gandalf-the-Blue,

I was always under the impression that tvdb was worse than tmdb, I still am, but I can understand that in some aspects it may be better.

When the time comes to look into the further, I'll have to see how we can make both tvdb and tmdb work nicely together.

Right now I'm thinking a user setting to swap out shows to use tvdb, then our local database can store tvdb and themoviedb show data side by side. This could add the weirdness of being able to add the same show to your list twice, once from tvdb and once from themoviedb, unless there's a reliable way to link them both to one watched item, I'll have to see (if they aren't linked, things like thoughts/ratings won't be shared/viewable by followers on the tmdb version of a show if the followed used tvdb).

We could also go the server setting route to force everyone to use tvdb, then things may be less likely to break (but then changing this later could break things).

Quite a few tasks to get to first, but I will come back to this.

Thanks for opening this issue! If you or anyone have any thoughts on how this could/should be implemented, feel free to share!

[JamsRepos]

tvdb is definetely worse than tmdb, that's a fact. But the OP is right in the sense of the arr's use it, so it would cause less mismatches supporting it. I definetely don't think that swapping to it is a good idea but adding a support layer as you mentioned is a great addition.

In an ideal world, tvdb support would be removed from the arr's but this is very unlikely.

Jellyseerr/Overseerr do a great solution to this, if there is multiple results for one show/movie then it is up to the user to choose from the list of potential matches, then the tool would then remember that for the future. This could be a similar way to tackle it.

[Kernald]

TVDB is not as good, but contains a lot of data that TMDB just doesn't want ever - e.g. sports events (think Formula 1 for example). This was (and still is) a pain point when Trakt migrated to TMDB, with some specific shows (e.g. Formula 1 again) being grandfathered into a legacy TVDB import flow, with no way to add new series from TVDB in the future.

Having support for TVDB, on top of matching the data used by Jellyfin more closely, would add a bunch of shows that will never make their way to TMDB.