[mythtv-users] Zap2It fiasco - what can we as users do?

[Nick Rout]

On Sat, June 23, 2007 3:00 am, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 09:46:54AM -0500, David Lonie wrote:
>> I think the best advice given so far is to not panic.
>
> /me preens
>
>>                                                          The devs will
>> likely
>> strike up some deal. Whether they do or not, we should find an
>> alternative to
>> Tribune Media to prevent this from happening again. I agree with the
>> idea
>> that this is an opportunity rather than a crisis. I'd like to see this
>> thread
>> used for discussion of what we users are able and willing to do to set
>> up a
>> free (both beer and speech) database of tv listings.
>
> This is akin to my Mooting thread, but more administrative than
> technical.
>
>> Some of my ideas of what we can do now:
>>
>> 1. Discuss, propose, and approve a form letter that we users can send to
>> our
>> local stations requesting that they post their listings on their
>> website,
>> preferably in an RSS/XML feed (If someone has an idea for a better
>> format,
>> feel free to comment). Keep up with the architecture thread to know what
>> data
>> we need to request of them.
>
> I guess we need to look at XMLTV's format, and see if the schema is
> comprehensive enough.  And yes, posting it to a standardized URL on the
> station's website is a good first step.

I would have thought it would be a big step to move away from xmltv schema
- extend it yes, start afresh a definite no (IMHO).

Many pieces of software other than mythtv use xmltv. It is a mature
standard. It works out of the box with mythtv. Setting up a new feed (if
necessary aggregating several sources) is as simple as providing a new
tv_grab_na script, as long as it returns an xmltv file it is compatible
with myth. Alternatively it is trivial to cron a script that wget's a feed
and then manually runs mythfilldatabase.

Granted it perhaps takes a bit of setting up, but hey its how many people
have had to do it for years. Not everyone lives in North America and has
had the use of zap2it for so long. Some of us have been screen scraping
for years - feel our pain!

Anyway the point of my email is that IMHO it would be silly to go past the
xmltv format. Think of an aggregation service running an xmltv feed on
several synchronised servers, doing a DNS round robin.

But it has been pretty obvious from these threads that the problem is not
in distributing the data, its in getting it cheaply in machine readable
format.

As an aside, the situation around here has got better lately. In NZ almost
every channel is available on DVB-S from SkyTV, even though many may
actually get their TV delivered simultaneously over analogue, cable or
whatever. Therefore there is an EIT feed for every channel, and although
Sky's viewing is largely encrypted, the EIT feed is not. And it can be
applied to the analogue and cable providers who are broadcasting the same
stuff. Since a good number of people have now got DVB-S cards, the
availability of data has improved, and screenscraping now runs a second
best.

There are a few regional stations that the above do not apply to, but they
seem far more amenable to providing the data themselves anyway.


-- 
Nick Rout