[mythtv-users] tv guide line-up free

Robert Current robert.current at gmail.com
Wed Sep 5 23:24:46 UTC 2007


I don't think it would cripple it, but I'm not sure torrent is the
> right tool for this particular job.  BitTorrent isn't so hot for
> files that are less than a dozen megabytes or so in size, because it
> has so much startup overhead.  I know when I grab a BitTorrent file,
> it usually takes several minutes for it to locate peers before I get
> *any* data.
>
> What you really want is a way to randomly pick some other user to
> download from.  The size of any single transfer is small, but you
> need to spread it out so not everyone grabs from the same person.
> BitTorrent is aimed more at the situation where you're moving a
> single large file.
>
> I thought the discussions of using USENET for this were interesting,
> actually.  I'm not sure if USENET is the right tool, but I think it's
> better than BitTorrent.

Hmm, I thought bit torrent because of a few reasons.  One, I think I
saw a bittorent client plugin for MythTV somewhere already?

Next, it's commonly understood and used, making the user acceptance
hurdle much smaller.

But if the overhead outweighs the benefits, I'd listen to other ideas.
 I've poked around with import/export scripts to do this already, it's
not real difficult, I've heard others have done it also...  I think
someone even wrote one to pull the DirecTV data off their DirecTV Tivo
already too…  Assuming, in theory, that's the easy part…  There are
only two questions left…

One, Distribution.  Bittorrent?  USENET plugin for myth?  Would people
be less likely to post the data fearing the traceability and legal
liability?  What are the benefits and detriments of each?  Would
someone really want to build a Usenet plugin for MythTV?  That's over
my head, I'd be unable to contribute to that, but would be happy to
see it.

Second, data standard?  Would these data files best be XMLTV, or
straight MySQL dumps?  I'd say the sql data is more straight forward,
but maybe less standardized.  I could probably work writing an sql
script myself.  However, maybe that rules out people that might
contribute data and use data from projects other than MythTV, and
XMLTV might be a much better standard?


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