Re: Images failing to load

The Movie Database Support

posted by darthShadow
STAFFMOD
on August 3, 2025 at 12:53 PM

Hi,

As a follow up to https://www.themoviedb.org/talk/65cc7217894ed6014726c832, on further digging, it seems like the "referer" header may be causing issues.

Trying this:

curl -L 'https://media.themoviedb.org/t/p/w440_and_h660_face/bL1mwXDnH5fCxqc4S2n40hoVyoe.jpg' -H 'referer: https://www.themoviedb.org/'

returns:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0"/><style>body{margin:0px;padding:0px;}iframe{width:100%;height:100%}</style><iframe src="http://www.airtel.in/court-orders/ " width="100%" height="100%" frameborder=0></iframe>

but this works fine:

curl -L 'https://media.themoviedb.org/t/p/w440_and_h660_face/bL1mwXDnH5fCxqc4S2n40hoVyoe.jpg'

returns (basically the expected image):

Warning: Binary output can mess up your terminal. Use "--output -" to tell curl to output it to your terminal anyway, or consider "--output <FILE>" to save to a file.

Is it possible the CDN itself may be caching invalid responses? And if so, can it be configured to skip those invalid responses?

2 replies (on page 1 of 1)

Reply by darthShadow

STAFFMOD

on August 3, 2025 at 12:55 PM

CDN response for the first (with referer header):

< HTTP/2 200
< date: Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:53:50 GMT
< content-type: text/html
< content-length: 262
< vary: Accept-Encoding
< server: BunnyCDN-CEN1-1045
< cdn-pullzone: 1885712
< cdn-uid: 29af4e0e-bcbd-4fcb-8635-74ddc38a1ebf
< cdn-requestcountrycode: IN
< access-control-allow-origin: *
< access-control-allow-headers: Server, x-goog-meta-frames, Content-Length, Content-Type, Range, X-Requested-With, If-Modified-Since, If-None-Match
< access-control-expose-headers: Server, x-goog-meta-frames, Content-Length, Content-Type, Range, X-Requested-With, If-Modified-Since, If-None-Match
< cache-control: public, max-age=31919000
< pragma: no-cache
< cdn-proxyver: 1.33
< cdn-requestpullsuccess: True
< cdn-requestpullcode: 200
< cdn-cachedat: 08/03/2025 16:44:55
< cdn-edgestorageid: 1045
< cdn-requestid: 8d3c317077b9073de49f167b01d9a7f3
< cdn-cache: HIT
< cdn-status: 200
< cdn-requesttime: 0

Notice the cdn-cache: HIT.

And for the second (without the referer header):

< HTTP/2 301
< date: Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:54:31 GMT
< content-type: text/html
< content-length: 166
< location: https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w440_and_h660_face/bL1mwXDnH5fCxqc4S2n40hoVyoe.jpg
< server: BunnyCDN-CEN1-1045
< cdn-pullzone: 1885712
< cdn-uid: 29af4e0e-bcbd-4fcb-8635-74ddc38a1ebf
< cdn-requestcountrycode: IN
< access-control-allow-origin: *
< access-control-allow-headers: Server, x-goog-meta-frames, Content-Length, Content-Type, Range, X-Requested-With, If-Modified-Since, If-None-Match
< access-control-expose-headers: Server, x-goog-meta-frames, Content-Length, Content-Type, Range, X-Requested-With, If-Modified-Since, If-None-Match
< cache-control: no-cache
< cdn-requestid: 06ec6a9ca0ef66dc4c814bd6422746e5
< cdn-requesttime: 0

Reply by Travis Bell

STAFFMOD

on August 4, 2025 at 1:25 PM

The data being returned in your first request is from Airtel, it has nothing to do with us. The body of that request tells you what is happening.

We’ve known for a long time that there are ISP’s in India that block TMDB which is unfortunately outside of our control.

Regarding the referer header, it’s set automatically by your browser and cannot be altered. Without that header the request is redirected to image.tmdb.org. This being a different domain, it looks like Airtel isn’t blocking it. Again though, we have no knowledge as to what Airtel is or isn’t blocking. And what they do block seems completely arbitrary at this point.

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