@ilyachase said:

Hello folks! I am a bit confused with the behavior of the TV show Details endpoint and the discrepancy between localized outputs, so if anyone can help I'd highly appreciate. Basically, there are several confusing parts:

1. When calling https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/199318?language=en-US, the contents of last_episode_to_air is:

   {
   "id": 5539105,
   "air_date": "2024-12-24",
   }
   

   But when calling https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/199318?language=ru (different language), the contents of last_episode_to_air is the previous episode:

   {
   "id": 5539104,
   "air_date": "2024-12-18",
   }
   

   Does anybody know the reason for the different outputs between the languages?

2. When calling https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/199318?language=en-US, the contents of last_episode_to_air as pointed out in p.1 but the last_air_date is 2024-12-18 (previous episode) which seems incorrect.

3. I'm building a bot for checking new episode series, and it seems that yesterday the response from https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/199318?language=ru included the correct last episode (Cliff Hanger) but for some reason got reverted to the previous one about 5 hours later. Is this expected behavior?

Appreciate any help!

A first guess.
It's probably due to the time difference between the two countries. UTC Time.
ru = +4h
us = -4h
8 hours difference.
If you are within the time difference when you query, you will probably get a response saying "one day" difference.
In ru day 6 - aired on day 6
In us day 5 - aired the previous week.

EDIT
I suggest using ru-RU, similar to en-US in the "&language=" specification.
It may change the result.

@ticao2 said:

@ilyachase said:

Hello folks! I am a bit confused with the behavior of the TV show Details endpoint and the discrepancy between localized outputs, so if anyone can help I'd highly appreciate. Basically, there are several confusing parts:

1. When calling https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/199318?language=en-US, the contents of last_episode_to_air is:

   {
   "id": 5539105,
   "air_date": "2024-12-24",
   }
   

   But when calling https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/199318?language=ru (different language), the contents of last_episode_to_air is the previous episode:

   {
   "id": 5539104,
   "air_date": "2024-12-18",
   }
   

   Does anybody know the reason for the different outputs between the languages?

2. When calling https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/199318?language=en-US, the contents of last_episode_to_air as pointed out in p.1 but the last_air_date is 2024-12-18 (previous episode) which seems incorrect.

3. I'm building a bot for checking new episode series, and it seems that yesterday the response from https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/199318?language=ru included the correct last episode (Cliff Hanger) but for some reason got reverted to the previous one about 5 hours later. Is this expected behavior?

Appreciate any help!

A first guess.
It's probably due to the time difference between the two countries. UTC Time.
ru = +4h
us = -4h
8 hours difference.
If you are within the time difference when you query, you will probably get a response saying "one day" difference.
In ru day 6 - aired on day 6
In us day 5 - aired the previous week.

---

EDIT
I suggest using ru-RU, similar to en-US in the "&language=" specification.
It may change the result.

Thanks! This is a good guess. But I still don't get why it was the last episode, then the previous one, and now it became the last one again (so it changed over time), even though I'm 100% sure I always access the endpoint with the same language (ru).

For now, I solved these problems by accessing the "Seasons" with the last season - it seems to be more consistent (by the time the "Details" endpoint was giving the previous episode, the "Seasons" one was giving the correct info - both accessed with the ru language).

Also after some more thinking, it would be strange to use +4 as ru timezone as it has 11 timezones