Full tv.com cache file

If you're brave and want a copy of the entire tv.com code database (13583 shows), then download this ZIP file:

TVcomShowCache.zip

Make sure TVRename isn't running, and then expand it into:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\TVRename\TVRename\2.0 (on XP)
or
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\TVRename\TVRename\2.0 (on Vista)

If it works out OK (i.e. no nasty side effects from having 13000 items), I'll put an option in TVRename to download it itself.

Note: You'll want to do this only if you have the latest version (B20 or later). Although earlier versions will work, they'll be very slow when Adding/Editing a folder, and in other places that show the list of tv.com shows.

I liked the idea if downloading everything once and be done with it. What happened to it?

A few months back I stopped using tv.com, and switched to thetvdb.com. That aside, you can't download everything as everything isn't there. There will either be new shows being added, new episodes for those shows, or corrections to existing entries.

When you first add a show, it does download everything. The amount of data downloaded from then on is the minimal amount to keep updated, i.e. individual episode entries. It doesn't download everything every time. thetvdb also gives a list of what has changed recently, so those updates can be optimized and limited to just the shows you care about.

The only other thing "everything" would be useful for is searching for shows (when adding them), but there is no such master list available. A few other developers have asked thetvdb for it, but its not happening soon (if at all).

At the moment, searching for a show in TVRename uses thetvdb's search function, and they're working on making it better. I've noticed it now does partial word matches, and I think they're making it less sensitive to punctuation (or lack thereof).

Didn't mean everything ever, but rather a relatively complete and up to date database one can start from with regular updates (think anti virus definitions).

This is because it takes a relatively long time when you first start the program to have everything setup the way you like it (see here http://tvrename.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=151&p=627#p627 )

So maybe make three packages available for download (Or maybe two) one just for the program, one for the complete database updated monthly or bi-monthly, and a package for both together. This ,along with the quick pass , would get everyone up and running in no time, then you can spend a few more minutes to download the updates that didn't make it to the database and be done with sorting huge libraries in 10 to 15 minutes!

Ah.. I get what you mean. I've been poking around on thetvdb a bit, and I can manually put together a "master list" of shows, that could be used to pre-load your local database.

The hassle of me doing this (along with hosting the file and adding stuff to TVRename to download it), has to be balanced out by the relative benefit (doubly so if its a feature I don't have a personal need for ). It'll definitely make the first automatic "Folder Monitor" stuff you do quicker, but once you've done that, I think the time saving will be relatively low. For me, at least, searching for a new show when adding a show to "My Shows" is quite quick.

There's also a couple of side effects I have to watch out for when thetvdb removes a show, and at the moment TVRename will discard any shows from its local database if they're not in your "My Shows" list. None of this stuff is a reason not to have the full cache file - they're just issues that have to be addressed. There's a couple of features that have been requested of thetvdb that will take care of a lot of my reservations with doing a full cache file, so for now I'm going to cross my fingers that they do it soon (so I don't have to do it the hard way myself).

why switch from tv.com to thetvdb.com? as tv.com has a lot more info on series and a lot more series aswell I find.. theres been a couple of things I ain't been able to find on tvdb so far..

A while back tv.com changed their page design, which meant that my html scraper broke. I was either going to have to fix my code to cope with it, but I took the opportunity to get my data from a better (for technical reasons) source. Admittedly it has data for less shows, but it has all the shows that I watch

thetvdb.com is designed for programs like mine, as it gives XML data back. This means I don't have to trawl through the data from the site trying to figure out which episode is which, along with where the description is, etc., too. thetvdb is also a lot quicker as there's less to download (in terms of bytes) to get information on a series. With tv.com, to keep up to date I had to regularly download everything again and again, while thetvdb has a convenient list of changes. For people with 500 different series, this made a big difference.

If there's a service that gives tv.com data as XML (or something easily machine readable), then I could look into using that as an optional alternative data source.

A while back tv.com changed their page design, which meant that my html scraper broke. I was either going to have to fix my code to cope with it, but I took the opportunity to get my data from a better (for technical reasons) source. Admittedly it has data for less shows, but it has all the shows that I watch

thetvdb.com is designed for programs like mine, as it gives XML data back. This means I don't have to trawl through the data from the site trying to figure out which episode is which, along with where the description is, etc., too. thetvdb is also a lot quicker as there's less to download (in terms of bytes) to get information on a series. With tv.com, to keep up to date I had to regularly download everything again and again, while thetvdb has a convenient list of changes. For people with 500 different series, this made a big difference.

If there's a service that gives tv.com data as XML (or something easily machine readable), then I could look into using that as an optional alternative data source.
Ah fair enough if it was for technical reasons then its understandable. I thought it was a preference thing haha. Maybe for future releases if you find some way around it you could add a feature for members to choose which site to download from or maybe search both? A bit like collectorz.com software (i got game collectorz from there) lets me search amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, amazon.de and another load of sites for results in case I cannot find what i'm looking for. I use that to catalogue my games. Just an idea anyways if its possible

Yeah, I always had in the back of my mind the idea of letting users choose their "provider" for data, whether it be thetvdb or something else. The code is written to keep that side of things separate from the processing of files, etc.

If someone wants to write some code that scrapes tv.com, either as a plugin to TVRename or a web-based service (PHP or whatever, generating XML), let me know and I'll give you the necessary details.