[mythtv-users] Scraping

jack snodgrass mrlinuxgroups at gmail.com
Tue Jul 10 00:20:08 UTC 2007


On 7/9/07, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> jack snodgrass wrote:
> > On 7/9/07, Billy Macdonald <billymacdonald at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 7/9/07, Kevin Slater <kevin.slater at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On 7/9/07, Rich West <Rich.West at wesmo.com> wrote:
> >>>> I fear asking this after having read through the piles of email related
> >>>> to the zap2it panic, but since the need has arisen (I can't get guide
> >>>> data, and I expect that things will get even less stable as we approach
> >>>> September), I was wondering if anyone has made any efforts toward
> >>>> scraping data off of the DirecTV site for DirecTV subscribers?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> When I log on to my DirecTV account page and go to the listings, I see a
> >>> block indicating flash is needed. (I have a flash blocker turned on by
> >>> default.) I think screen scraping that would be a lot more difficult than if
> >>> it were just html.
> >>>
> >>> I just tried it anonymously with my zip code using Lynx (ncurses command
> >>> line browser - no flash) and while I can see some listing data I can't get
> >>> any sort of usable details.
> >>>
> >>> The other problem, as have been previously noted, is that it's likely a
> >>> violation of your contract with DirecTV to screen scrape the listings for
> >>> use on some (any) other system.
> >>>
> >>> ...Kevin
> >>>
> >> If I were paying for DirectTV I wouldn't feel bad at all about
> >> scraping their site.  You give them plenty of money each month for
> >> their service.  I can see how scraping a third party site that relies
> >> on ads could be an issue.  But a paying subscriber to directtv.....
> >>
> >> I won't have any problems (morally, technically maybe :) ) scraping
> >> Cox's site if it comes down to that.  (Even though it's really hosted
> >> by zap2it.)  My $xx for cable includes the listings in my view.
> >>
> >> Billy
> >
> > I'm taking a different approach.. I've got several tivos that I pay the tivo
> > service on. I'm going to get my guide data from my tivos' mfs file system.
> > but I'm not sure how I'm going to get it into my mythtv database... I see
> > mention of xmltv as the expected format... I seem to recall reading about
> > that one day... assuming I can go from tivo -> xmltv.format... how do I get
> > that into the mythtv database?
>
> That almost certainly violates the TiVo EULA, just in case you hadn't
> thought of that.
>
> BEWW

Fine... let me re-phrase my question... assuming that I have an XMLTV
formated ( http://xmltv.org/wiki/xmltvfileformat.html ) file of show
data... how do I get it into my
mythtv box?

As for EULAs in generall... I violate lots of those on a daily
basis... I still pay my $$$
and no one seems to care..... Tivo  ( for instance ) knows that I
replaced my drives
with 250Gig drives... knows that my tivos are networked, probably
knows that I have
HMO enabled on my DirectTV Tivos.. and I still get service.... I
really don't see this
being an issue as long as I don't go out and sell the information that
I get from
my tivo.

jack


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