martin_695862's profile

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Thursday, December 14th, 2023

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Dates displayed at season level for episodes of a TV series, when episodes have different dates in different countries

I'm intrigued. I know that when TV episodes have different dates in different countries, the one that is displayed for a specific episode is for the country that is selected in your user profile.

But what algorithm is used at season level (show all episodes in season 3)? It's not the user's country, and it's not the earliest date for any country.

Take https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10590066/episodes/?season=4 for example - All Creatures Great and Small (2020).

The dates which are displayed seem to be a mixture of several countries:

4.1  7 Jan 2024 (UK: 5 Oct 2023; AU (internet): 10 Oct 2023; US 7 Jan 2024)
4.2 12 Oct 2023 (UK, USA (internet): 12 Oct 2023; AU (internet) 17 Oct 2023; US 2024)
4.3 19 Oct 2023 (UK, USA (internet): 19 Oct 2023; AU (internet) 24 Oct 2023; US 2024)
4.6 11 Feb 2024 (UK: 9 Nov 2023; AU (internet): 14 Nov 2023; US 11 Feb 2024)
4.7 2024 (UK: 21 Dec 2023; US: 2024)

It looks as if the season-level displayed date is taken to be the US date if it is a full DD/MM/YY date, otherwise (for me in the UK) it is taken to be the UK date.

Is this logical? Would it be better to standardise on using the user's country-specific release date (as for the individual episodes) or the programme-maker's country-specific release date? If you want to assume the US date even when the programme is not made in the US and even when the US date is not the earliest, at least make it consistent.

My vote would go for either user's country-specific release date or else (if you can't make it user-specific) programme-maker's country-specific release date?

Discuss... ;-)

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2 years ago

Hi @martin_695862 -

Can you clarify what date do you mean for season level release date? We only list series level and episode level release dates.

Thanks!

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I can't reproduce it any more: when I look now at the list of episodes for a given series for the title I mentioned, they are correctly displayed.

Either it was a temporary bug or operator error (maybe I wasn't logged in and so it was using default country rather than country selected for my user ID).