Revision as of 12:36, 9 April 2009

tmdb.pl is a perl script intended to perform movie data lookups based on the themoviedb.org database. It will replace the imdb.pl script used by older versions of MythTV, as the imdb.pl script is now in violation of the IMDb Terms of Use.

The best part about using themoviedb.org data is that it is designed for applications such as MythTV, so it provides a lot of information that IMDb does not provide--such as multiple high-quality movie posters per movie, fan art, banners, and more. And, the data at themoviedb.org is freely editable by users and is available for use under open licensing terms.

Downloading tmdb.pl

If you're using MythTV 0.21-fixes, tmdb.pl does not ship with MythTV, so you will need to download the script (as a non-root user in a normal directory, such as the user's HOME directory). Do so by copying/pasting the following commands directly into a terminal window:

install -d tmdb/MythTV &&
pushd tmdb &&
svn cat http://svn.mythtv.org/svn/trunk/mythplugins/mythvideo/mythvideo/scripts/tmdb.pl > tmdb.pl &&
echo "Successfully downloaded tmdb.pl." &&
svn cat http://svn.mythtv.org/svn/trunk/mythplugins/mythvideo/mythvideo/scripts/MythTV/MythVideoCommon.pm > MythTV/MythVideoCommon.pm &&
echo "Successfully downloaded MythVideoCommon.pm." &&
chmod 755 ./tmdb.pl ./MythTV/MythVideoCommon.pm &&
popd

Installing tmdb.pl

The MythVideo scripts are typically installed in /usr/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts/ or /usr/local/share/mythtv/scripts/. The following code assumes they are installed in one of those two directories. If not, adjust the SCRIPTDIR as appropriate (and skip the if conditional that tries to set it automatically). To use the code below, copy/paste the following commands directly into the same terminal window you used for downloading the script, above. If your distribution does not use the sudo command to execute scripts as root, ensure you're using the root account (and in the directory you were in when you downloaded the script, above) and do not copy the first line ("SUDO=sudo").

SUDO=sudo &&
if [ -d /usr/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts ]; then
  SCRIPTDIR=/usr/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts
elif [ -d /usr/local/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts ]; then
  SCRIPTDIR=/usr/local/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts
else
  echo "Unable to find script directory.  Please install tmdb.pl manually."
fi
$SUDO cp -Rv tmdb/* ${SCRIPTDIR} &&
if [ -e ${SCRIPTDIR}/tmdb.pl ]; then
  echo "Successfully installed tmdb.pl script to:"
  echo "  ${SCRIPTDIR}"
  if [ -e ${SCRIPTDIR}/imdb.pl ]; then
    $SUDO mv ${SCRIPTDIR}/imdb.pl{,-orig}
  fi
  $SUDO ln -s tmdb.pl ${SCRIPTDIR}/imdb.pl &&
  if [ -L ${SCRIPTDIR}/imdb.pl ]; then
    echo "Successfully configured MythVideo and MythWeb to use tmdb.pl."
  else
    echo "Unable to configure MythVideo and MythWeb to use tmdb.pl."
    echo "Please create a symlink called imdb.pl that refers to tmdb.pl in"
    echo "  ${SCRIPTDIR}"
  fi
else
  echo "Unable to install tmdb.pl script.  Please install tmdb.pl manually."
fi
unset SCRIPTDIR

When you're done with the temporary copy made when downloading the scripts, you may delete the tmdb directory:

rm -r tmdb

Using tmdb.pl in .20

tmdb.pl works perfectly in .20 as well. You can install it in .20 by performing the following ...

As per above scripts, download the above tmdb.pl perl script from http://svn.mythtv.org/svn/trunk/mythplugins/mythvideo/mythvideo/scripts/tmdb.pl and copy it to /usr/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts on which ever system you run your mythfrontend on, and create a symbolic link from imdb.pl (mythfrontend executes this when searching IMDB).

cd /usr/share/mythtv/mythtvideo/scripts
wget http://svn.mythtv.org/svn/trunk/mythplugins/mythvideo/mythvideo/scripts/tmdb.pl
mv imdb.pl imdb-old.pl
ln -s tmdb.pl imdb.pl

Ensure you have MythVideoCommon.pm accessible in one of your perl directories in order for the above script to work. When running the IMDB Search script, an error will popup if it doesn't exist identifying the directories where it thinks it should be located. Below is an example if where it can be stored.

cd /usr/share/perl/5.8/
mkdir MythTV
cd MythTV
wget http://svn.mythtv.org/svn/trunk/mythplugins/mythvideo/mythvideo/scripts/MythTV/MythVideoCommon.pm