Read this before you invest a lot of $$$ in a MythTV system

[fuzzy bee]

It will *probably* be taken care of by someone developing a new screen-scraper, but in the meantime, us US MythTV users should be a little nervous. Zap2It Labs, the free listings provider, is shutting that service down.

http://labs.zap2it.com/

For several years we have offered a free TV listings service to hobbyists for their own personal, noncommercial use. In October of 2004 we posted here an open letter saying the future of Zap2it Labs was at risk because of certain growing misuses of the Zap2it Labs data. Unfortunately this misuse has continued and grown. These misuses, combined with other business factors have led to the decision to discontinue Zap2it effective September 1, 2007.

We thank those users who have honored the terms of the agreement, and we suggest you consider the many TV listings options offered by the commercial licensees of TMS TV listings data.

If you would like to discuss how to license TV listings for commercial use, please let us know by e-mail (labs@zap2it.com) and include your company name, telephone number and the best time to reach you. We will respond to your inquiry as soon as possible.

We anticipate this decision will generate discussion and invite you to respond via the Zap2it Labs forum. We will do our best to respond to relevant questions posted on this forum in a timely manner.

[blackoper]

great all the other programs that abused those listings really hurt. Myth was about the only one that complied with their wishes

[DireWolf08]

@$#&!

That really stinks. I wonder what is going to happen in the next few months, I hope we can find a new grabber service.

[trbarry]

Bummer.

I haven't even built my first Myth box yet but was saving and shopping. And I need zap2it for my CW EPG anyway.

I wonder when they will start busting people with 'pirated' guide info? Imagin a GIAA organization running around suing people and busting down doors.

Are there more or less current torrent or newsgroup guides yet?

- Tom

[Derek K.]

my guess is they will offer a pay guide service for individuals come september.

[jalaram]

I guess this affects DV Archive users as well.

[tld]

I just built a pretty significant MythTV system for OTA use (three HD tuners, a TB of disk etc). Ironically, I just sold a Sony DHG-HDD500 and built the MythTV system in part because nobody knows what will happen with the TVGOS for OTA only users of the Sony when the analog stations go away. Figures.

In my case, I always schedule recordings as "record only this showing" and I always do it through mythweb in a browser. Given that, scheduling recordings manually until some other option is available would be tolerable, but obviously not ideal. I love mythweb by the way...nothing like being able to schedule recordings without turning on the TV or bothering people who might be watching it.

With the Sony, if it stops getting data from the TVGOS host station, it literally wouldn't even know what time it is.

Tom

[DonInTn]

I've only used MythTV with Zap2it's DD service. It seems the only other option presently being thrown around is some sort of screen scraper. From posts by those who have to use that type of guide gathering in areas outside the US, that isn't going to be a very reliable option. It is just too prone to being broken by changes in HTML code of the listing sites.

I remember reading that the reason they started offering DD in the first place was to stop all the screen scraping at Zap2it. Anyone else see the irony here???

The beauty of the Zap2it DD listings from was that 99.9999% of the time it worked flawlessly. A PVR that doesn't have accurate guide data is useless.

I know some hold out hope that they'll provide the DD service for a fee. It seems from the announcement and another post made by the sysadmin that there were other considerations besides just unlawful use of the data in causing them to stop the service.

Personally, I think they were tired of devoting time and resources to a free service. It really stinks for the US MythTV community, but you really can't fault the Zap2it. They are in business to make money.

MythTV is 10 times better than MCE (which is what I used before), but MCE starts looking better than Myth if it still has guide data after 9/1.

[sonyfangirl]

is this TV a myth?

[drzeller]

Hmmmm... I see a GoogleGuide be launched any moment now!

Yahoo! does offer listings - perhaps they'll see an opportuinty there. Of course, tv.msn.com has listings as well -- but they probably don't want to feed non-Green Button apps.

D.

[DireWolf08]

Ha, over at the myth main wiki page, they are advising everyone:

In the immortal words of the Guide, DON'T PANIC.

Go to the zap2it forum and voice your appreciation. It seems like there is a rather large contingent of folks who would be willing to pay a bit of money, and that would at least make sure abusers didn't use the service.

[Ryokurin]

Originally Posted by DireWolf08

Ha, over at the myth main wiki page, they are advising everyone:



Go to the zap2it forum and voice your appreciation. It seems like there is a rather large contingent of folks who would be willing to pay a bit of money, and that would at least make sure abusers didn't use the service.

People always say that until its time to pay then they make excuses. Personally, I feel that if they did up and say, "we still have people making money off of this, so to keep giving this to consumers we need to charge $5 a month for it" people would say they are greedy and they won't pay a dime.

[blackoper]

hmm this could get interesting. The mythtv developers are in negotions with zap2it now... just keep an eye out for what they say. If it falls through I can see a new site being created that does opensource tv lineups by getting the data directly from the broadcasters

[afidel]

Originally Posted by Ryokurin

People always say that until its time to pay then they make excuses. Personally, I feel that if they did up and say, "we still have people making money off of this, so to keep giving this to consumers we need to charge $5 a month for it" people would say they are greedy and they won't pay a dime.

Sorry, but for anyone that has a working PVR the hassle and possible loss of functionality of going with an alternative is WAY more expensive than $60/year. I know my MediaPortal based PVR has saved me a lot more than 2 hours of my time and setting up something else would likewise take way more than 2 hours. Btw, I make $30/hour so adjust times for your wages =)

[Lint42]

bummer

[nybbler]

I don't think abuse had anything to do with it. Nobody has been able to come up with an example of an abuser. That's a scapegoat. If they wanted to stop abuse, it wouldn't be all that hard for them to do -- seed the data with subscriber-specific information, and release the lawyers when it shows up in a commercial context.

They have the data, they have a means of delivering it, and they have a bunch of people dependent on it. All they'd need to do is set up a subsidiary or partner with someone to sell the data retail and they'd have a really nice revenue stream.

Why not do so? Most likely, one or more of their commercial customers leaned on them to stop providing the data precisely because it allowed competition with other for-fee PVR solutions.

For digital over-the-air, there's still ATSC PSIP data. Before the new TV season, I'm sure we'll see the return of scrapers from tv listings sites. But this does make setting up MythTV a bigger pain, that's for sure.

[DireWolf08]

Originally Posted by nybbler

I don't think abuse had anything to do with it. Nobody has been able to come up with an example of an abuser. That's a scapegoat. If they wanted to stop abuse, it wouldn't be all that hard for them to do -- seed the data with subscriber-specific information, and release the lawyers when it shows up in a commercial context.

They have the data, they have a means of delivering it, and they have a bunch of people dependent on it. All they'd need to do is set up a subsidiary or partner with someone to sell the data retail and they'd have a really nice revenue stream.

Why not do so? Most likely, one or more of their commercial customers leaned on them to stop providing the data precisely because it allowed competition with other for-fee PVR solutions.

For digital over-the-air, there's still ATSC PSIP data. Before the new TV season, I'm sure we'll see the return of scrapers from tv listings sites. But this does make setting up MythTV a bigger pain, that's for sure.

I had not thought of that, but I do enjoy a good conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, that one is all too likely, you may be right.

[Mac The Knife]

This seems to be a good time to bring up a couple of questions I've had about Myth.

I don't do a lot of recording so manually scheduling recordings is not a hardship for me. So not having a guide service really doesn't bother me.

But I've read some things which imply that Myth requires an internet connection so that it can populate the backend database before it will run. Is this true? Or is it possible to use configure and use Myth without an internet connection?

[wnewell]

Originally Posted by Mac The Knife

But I've read some things which imply that Myth requires an internet connection so that it can populate the backend database before it will run. Is this true? Or is it possible to use configure and use Myth without an internet connection?

It's not true. If you are satified with manual recordings, you don't need guide data at all. And the manual recording options are quite versitile. Single, daily, weekly, etc. to the minute.

[Xayd]

Originally Posted by nybbler

I don't think abuse had anything to do with it. Nobody has been able to come up with an example of an abuser. That's a scapegoat. If they wanted to stop abuse, it wouldn't be all that hard for them to do -- seed the data with subscriber-specific information, and release the lawyers when it shows up in a commercial context.

They have the data, they have a means of delivering it, and they have a bunch of people dependent on it. All they'd need to do is set up a subsidiary or partner with someone to sell the data retail and they'd have a really nice revenue stream.

Why not do so? Most likely, one or more of their commercial customers leaned on them to stop providing the data precisely because it allowed competition with other for-fee PVR solutions.

For digital over-the-air, there's still ATSC PSIP data. Before the new TV season, I'm sure we'll see the return of scrapers from tv listings sites. But this does make setting up MythTV a bigger pain, that's for sure.

exactly. it's very simple to stop abuse. if a user logs in and pulls data from two separate ISPs, ban that username from receiving future data. it would take all of about 10 minutes to implement such a thing.

if they don't have the means to do this they're incompetent. if they do, they're lying about the reason for shutting it down.

[oxothuk]

Originally Posted by Xayd

exactly. it's very simple to stop abuse. if a user logs in and pulls data from two separate ISPs, ban that username from receiving future data. it would take all of about 10 minutes to implement such a thing.

Or even easier, just limit the number of logins per day from any single userid.

[trbarry]

I remember I wrote a screen scraping VS Basic app a few years ago for one of my web stock quote services. I don't remember it being incredibly difficult. Probably a few of thse applications will emerge for various services that output data in some standard format, say like the existing Zap2it format.

Just out of curiousity since I have never looked at a raw zap2it file, about how many bytes are we talking about each day?

- Tom

[greeniguana00]

If we could find a bunch of websites that have TV listings, we could try to access their database using a script of some sort. I've been trying to grab the listings from yahoo, but I'm not having much success.

[greeniguana00]

I did a little snooping and found this: http://www.tvguide.com/listings/data/ajaxdata.ashx

It's not really useful, however. Hopefully I can find how to access all the listings.

EDIT: I need to find out all the files that are in the /listings/data directory of tvguide.com, but I cannot.

[rfisher1968]

What about getting the guide from OTA? I thouht this worked also.

[hackmeister]

Perhaps the real culprit were the commercial MythTV offerings using the zap2it service without paying? Don't sweat it people. The open source community will come up with a good solution before the cut off date. This isn't M$ where fixes are released 3 years later!

[rfisher1968]

i emailed Zap2it about wanting to pay for the service. I also added that I would be willing to continue where they left off via a paid service. I hope to here back from them.

[Ryokurin]

Originally Posted by rfisher1968

i emailed Zap2it about wanting to pay for the service. I also added that I would be willing to continue where they left off via a paid service. I hope to here back from them.

Reading a slashdot thread and the myth wiki says that this is pretty unlikely.

http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/DataDirect

Some reasons and other comments given for the scheduled discontinuance, copied from the forum, copied from the mailing list:

* Continued use of the service to support commercial products, in violation of the agreement.
* Commercial products continued to grow despite previous appeals that this activity stop.
* There are significant changes to the supporting data structure forthcoming and we could not devote resources to the continued upkeep and enhancements of the service.
* Maintenance of the service is impacting our resource pool for other projects.
* We sought alternative options but were unable to find a solution.
* We recognize the hardship this creates for the user community. We are open to alternative solutions and would consider proposals that met the needs of the user community and our company.
* We looked into options to turn this into a paid service however we do not have the infrastructure at this time.

[wnewell]

Well, I haven't even been able to even get to the zap2it forums in a couple of days. no problem logging into the site to change settins, etc., but when i try and go into the forum, it doesn't see me as logged in. and iff I go back and log out and then try to log in a the forum site, it doesn't recognize me. Oh well... I think it's pointless anyway.

[Mark Hoy]

What would a reasonable price be for an accurate guide? Perhaps someone will come up with a business model to support it.
$2/yr
$4/yr
$8/yr
$12/yr