Copying the imdb.xml from SVN works like a charm, but I had a 170 movies with missing year due to this change from IMDB.
I was worried I had to drop my whole library OR manually re-scan the movies with missing year. I found a workaround that seem to work ok for me at least:
1) Download sqlite client for your O/S if you do not already have it (
http://www.sqlite.org/download.html or "sudo apt-get install sqlite3" for Ubnutu)
2) To be sure quit XBMC and backup your database file (.xbmc/userdata/Database/MyVideos34.db)
3) Open the database with the sqlite client (sqlite3 MyVideos34.db)
4) To check the number of movies with wrong year run this sql:
SELECT count(*) FROM movie WHERE movie.c07 = 0;
5) To delete these movies from the library use these sqls:
DELETE FROM path WHERE idpath IN (SELECT idpath FROM path WHERE idpath IN (SELECT idpath FROM files WHERE idfile IN (SELECT idFile FROM movie WHERE movie.c07 = 0)));
DELETE FROM files WHERE idfile IN (SELECT idFile FROM movie WHERE movie.c07 = 0);
DELETE FROM movie WHERE movie.c07 = 0;
6) Quit sqlite client by typing ".quit"
7) Start XBMC and do a "update library"
WARNING: Use at own risk, I did not dig too deep into the data model and I guess this could cause problems