I understand that we can’t assign personal artwork to shows and movies as the metadata is pulled from TMDB. That said, given that TMDB often has multiple posters available, why aren’t we given the option to pick one that is personal to our profile?
For instance, I loathe that the Star Wars Saga uses fan-art rather than the official movie posters; TMDB has the official posters available as an option, yet I can’t pick them. It’s minor, but it undermines the experience of using Trakt as a complete system.
Regarding the Star Wars (and possibly other) posters: if the policy is to always use the top voted on TMDB there shouldn’t be exceptions. Otherwise I’m happy to pay a bit more on my VIP subscription to be able to choose my own posters and such. Others have these options for their paying customers already.
Ok I’d like to come back to this topic since it isn’t resolved for me so I’d like to point out why this solution is not good at all:
Outdated Posters
A ton of the posters in the #1 tier - especially for older or non-blockbuster / foreign movies - are vastly outdated in quality and accuracy to the original. Obviously a lot of them posters are fanart but i usually prefer the ones that come close the the original art - which are available most times - just not in #1 tier.
Only 1 Vote
Which brings me to the second problem: you only (obviously) get one vote per item. A lot of movies have a very old low(er) quality poster in tier #1 because at its time it obviously was the only one provided. It has gotten a lot of upvotes for all the right reasons at that time but it’s now outdated but still sitting there because of named reason. I can’t push another poster up because I only get one vote so i (we) are stuck with that old inaccurate one.
Inconsistent Movie-Sets
Aside from the Blockbuster Franchises a lot of Movie Sets have inconsistent artwork. Different styles throughout the set are just unpleasant to look at.
Changes for Everyone
My Changes (if any are possible) will affect everyone on Trakt. And I believe that’s just a faulty design choice.
No change any single non admin makes on this site should have an effect on every single user. Especially since the site has grow immensely over recent years. Even if it’s as small as changing the artwork. People have different preferences and I bet a lot of users here are just happy with the default option. But there are ppl like me who’d like to optimize it a bit.
Letterboxd as an example
Letterboxd by now is probably considered a competitor for the movie collection sector and they actually let you choose your own artwork IF you are a paying VIP member. And I think there must be ways to tackle the problem of storage. For example the artwork chosen by the user could be force stored locally. Or why not link the TMDB and Trakt accounts and implement a way to chose the poster on TMDBs end where the artwork already is stored on servers. I’m sure there are ways to do this efficiently. As I mentioned before, I’d even be willing to pay extra on top of my VIP membership for such an option. Call it VIP+ for like an extra 10$ or something…
A lot of Posters are locked
TheMovieDB actually actively locks a lot of posters in first spot as primary even though there are better / more accurate / cleaner options available. This is all down to the mods preferences and hinders the users to actually vote for a #1 tier poster which takes the whole voting process ad absurdum. This alone is reason enough to find new ways so the users have actually the option of choice.
So for multiple reasons (at least for me) this way of dealing with artwork is outdated. And I just want to mention this: I love Trakt! I’d consider myself a heavy user. I’m using the iOS app on a daily basis! I’d just like to choose my preferred artwork in an easy way.
Thanks so much for reading and hopefully considering a change on this topic!
This is on my task list to look into more, but no ETA currently. I still need to do a lot more investigation about this and how much additional image storage will be required. However, that is probably not a big issue and the actual implementation on the website and mobile apps is where most of the work is.
Coming into this thread a bit late but I completely agree re: the “primary posters” on TMDB. It’s really annoying for shows where there’s a better option available whether it be for shows or their individual seasons (take HBO’s “Girls” for example—the first season’s primary poster has a very over-contrasted look but there is a version of the same poster uploaded to their database that is objectively better in regards to color, not to mention it shows more of the actual image. But since the noticeably worse one is set as the primary, that unfortunately reflects back on Trakt’s database).
I’m sorry I’m getting back to your reply this late, I’m just not as often over here as I’d like since business is booming
Also I did actually not expect you to reply to this topic anymore but I’m over the moon that this is on your task list now!
I’m a heavily design and style focused person and this topic is seriously THE most wanted feature for me personally since I joined trakt!
So sincerely thank you for listening and I can’t wait for this to hopefully be implemented! Of course I understand that this is not going to be tomorrow but I’m totally fine with that!
Hey Justin, it’s almost a year now so I just wanted to checkup on this since it’s still my most wanted feature. I hope you’ll find some time to look into this and implement it into the app. Looking forward to this feature
