Slashdot Mirror
Zap2It Labs Discontinuing Free TV Guide Service
QuijiboIsAWord writes "Zap2It Labs, which provides free TV listing data for personal use, has long been the main source of program guide information for users in the US and beyond. They've announced via their webpage that,
due to abuse of the service, data will no longer be available after September 1st. There is no other direct source, and no option to pay for the service even if the users wanted to. Without a data feed of this type, users will be reduced to scraping websites at best. Is this going to be a killing blow for MythTV?"
This was an invaluable service - makes me wonder who's putting the pressure on them :(
12:50 - press return.
How, exactly, does one go about "misusing" TV schedule listings? Is this really because Zap2It was making all other forms of TV listings obsolete while not making any money at it? The announcement is quite vague. Does anybody have details on what's going on?
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
This will be the killing blow for MythTV and other open source DVRs? I think not. MythTV predates Zap2It and managed to do okay. Yes, it relied on screen scraping, but it worked. Furthermore, I know I'm perfectly prepared to pay a small monthly fee for a good data source. Maybe $5 a month? Since a company offering such a service doesn't need to recoup costs for selling hardware below cost (as Tivo does), such a price should be feasible. Since Zap2It was free, there wasn't much incentive for someone to offer the service, but now there is. I'm hoping the free market will see the opportunity and we can work something else.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
No. For us, all you had to do was register with labs.zap2it.com and then you can get the listings for private non-commercial use. So we (mythtv users) weren't abusing the system. I imagine that the abuse they are talking about is people signing up for the service and then reselling their data (that they themselves aggregate from other sources).
--Ajay
Shouldn't Google or Yahoo or Microsoft or any of the other big media / tech companies of the 21st century provide this information as a free WebService? Seems like something Google would jump on top of since their mission statement is to organize the worlds information. Well, TV listings is information.... get on that Google!
This was always MythTV's achilles heel, more than even HDTV. For all the talk about "Unlike Tivo, MythTV can NEVER be shut down or crippled," MythTV always had this dependency on a third party, for profit service. It's possible someone could replace them, but they're going to want SOME form of revenue (and since no one is going to tolerate ads on their MythTV, or pay for the service, this is unlikely).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Isn't there any way to obtain this information in an "open-source" manner?
The best way to get the information is from the stations and cable operators.
Unfortunately, MythTV and other PVR users are in the game of cutting out ads; TV programming is purely to sell ad space, and always has been, save when programs were entirely paid for by one company and the show was branded in their name. What motivation do TV stations have to assist people who are purposefully going out of their way to cut out the ads?
Please help metamoderate.
I can give you TiVo's occasional recording of repeats, although a little working with the Season Passes will avoid most of that, but WTF are you talking about with inserted commercials and fast-forwarding?
Now there's just the question of who? Who is expert at spidering the web? Who likes to provide new cheap-to-free services in their quest to take over new markets. Who would love to put yet another spike into Microsoft's side by removing yet another possible revenue source for them? Who doesn't have to worry about financing such a small, cheap service alongside their already multitudes of underutilized servers and bandwidth?
Google?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Google needs a TV Listings aggregator!
Of course it would be the best ever... With version numbers for each day and diffs available that only contain the changes. The whole thing would be available as an rss feed and would be free, of course.
and since no one is going to tolerate ads on their MythTV, or pay for the service, this is unlikely
Given the choice between:
1. paying Comcast's fees, DVR service, etc
2. paying Tivo or
3. paying for a subscription to an XML TV Listing service, and keeping my MythTV box
I'll take #3.
People will pay for it as long as no free alternatives are out there.
For those folks with DirecTV, that's not an option. In fact, at this point, we have no options at all other than writing a guide scraper for TVGuide.com. Fortunately, their website data is fetched in Javascript using xmlHttpRequest, so it is probably straight XML in some dialect that could be converted into the same format as Zap2It uses with very little effort. If done carefully (request the entire schedule exactly once, then only refetch the current day each day and fetch any new days added to the schedule), it might not add enough server hits for them to even care.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"MYTH TV offers everything TIVO does"
With a TiVo, you can plug in three cables and press power, at which point you are done but for the watching. You're claiming MYTH can do this too?
So no, it does NOT offer everything TiVo does.
Like many others, I'm a little surprised that they aren't moving to a subscription model. Clearly they know better what their available resources are, and what they are and are not capable of handling, but it seems like a missed opportunity to walk away from a situation where their servers are getting hammered, and start charging a small fee. Many, many of the MythTV users would happily pay a few dollars a month to have a steady stream of information. Sounds like it could be a million dollar annual income right there, and that's got to be very hard to walk away from for any company.
As for commercial abuse, if they know it's happening, they presumably are taking steps to quash it as well, without much luck. Probably like playing whack-a-mole.
Let's all hope Google comes to the rescue.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
You forgot being able to watch a recording on your laptop while on the toilet. I'm puzzled as to why MythTV doesn't advertise this feature a bit more, since it's one of my favorites.
That being said, you can't honestly suggest that MythTV is always a better choice than Tivo, unless you've conveniently forgotten about the teeming masses of people who couldn't install a capture card if their life depended on it. Ease is the killer feature for Tivo and bundled PVRs.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
They rely on advertising to make money and aren't going to freely help people with a device that most people are going to use to skip advertising.
They seem to forget that a substantial chunk of those viewers wouldn't be watching at ALL, if it weren't for DVRs. I like a show that's on when I'm usually playing with my kids. If I didn't have a DVR, I wouldn't watch that show period. Yes, I skip through many of the commericials during playback, but not all of them, and not if the commercial catches my eye, or is for a product I'm interested in. I even rewind to watch a commercial from the start (like if I skip into the middle of a Mac/PC ad I haven't already seen) etc.
Before I had a DVR I hit mute and/or pipped the commercials while I browsed the channel guide, or checked on the hockey game, or something. Its not like I was sitting there 'attentively watching' all the ads before.
I expect advertisers are probably losing eyeballs overall as people adopt DVRs, but its probably not nearly the issue they think it is.
"It seems fair to start charging, but odd that they're just shutting it off. They say they're willing to license to other companies,..."
The infrastructure required to sell to businesses/institutions and the infrastructure required to sell to individuals is completely different.
In one model, salespeople develop personal relationships with contacts at the customer locations, discuss their needs with them, put together a custom package, and then make a small number of large transactions. Also, in the B2B model you don't need to provide the front-line "my computer's coffee holder broke" level of support to end-users: the customer deals with their users first, and only passes on to you the customer support they can't solve easily. In this model you advertise in trade journals, trade shows, and relevant conferences.
In another model you are advertising via mass media, processing a very large number of much smaller transactions. You have to keep track of a lot more customer data-- and if you offer online purchasing, then you don't have the easy answer of keeping customer data secure by just not connecting it to the internet. You have to offer a much higher volume of customer service calls from a much less technical variety of enduser.
Switching from B2B to B2C (or vice-versa for that matter) is a huge expense in terms of money, time, and energy, but generally not much chance of reward.If you're good at one of these two models, then you have no reason to switch to the other; if you're bad at the one you're doing now, then you aren't very likely to survive the costs and turmoil of the switch.
Thus, as someone that works for a company that sells to institutions but not to individuals, it doesn't surprise me in the least that they aren't changing their entire business model.
That may be true, the the broadcasters don't give a crap whether or not you watch or care about their programs. The programs are only there to make you watch the ads - it's the only way they make money. The eyeballs watching ads are the only eyeballs they care about, not the ones watching shows. Programs *cost* them money.
Some people might find this hard to belive but on the business side of things, the commercials are considered content and the programming is considered filler.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Yes, and more generally, MythTV's client-server architecture opens up a lot of possibilities. If you have a busy household (e.g. big family), build yourself a monster MythTV backend, and stash in in your basement. Then install MythTV thin clients everywhere in your house, and everyone can watch what they want when they want.
I also use the MythVideo plugin. I've copied all the DVDs I own to a big file server (so I have all my movies "on-demand" via MythTV). My girlfriend said it would be cool to install another MythTV system in a spare bedroom. Then when we had guests, they could watch a movie before going to bed (or when they get up in the morning, whatever).
Yeah, it's definitely not trivial to setup. But I always thought someone could make a business out of setting MythTV up for people. Charge a big upfront fee, and it's free after that. (Of course, you expose yourself to risk like this Zap2It debacle!)
I think you're trying to suggest that Slashdot readers are, generally, hypocrites because they don't care if new technology or business models drive old ones out of business. Of course, that's utter nonsense. This isn't about Zap2It's business model being harmed by new technology or new business models. This is about Zap2It offering something to individuals for free out of simple generosity. This generosity has been abused and does threaten their business model, so they going to stop being generous. Zap2It doesn't suffer in the slightest, only those who benefited from their generosity do.
Now, if a third party started giving away television schedules without relying on Zap2It's data, harming Zap2It's business model, then we'd be on the same ground. Of course, if that happened and Zap2It whined about it, I don't think you'd see much sympathy here.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Open Source doesn't mean that a company can't charge something. Look at Redhat. They sure as hell don't give everything away for free.
No, but CentOS does.
Open source means a change from a product-based market to a service-based market, at least to a FAR larger extent than is acknowledged by the typical "look at Red Hat" line. Remember, Red Hat makes most of its money because people want support. That's fine if you want to be in that business and can come up with some value to add to the product that only you can provide.
If you have something like TV schedules, there's no service there, unless you want to talk about providing the bandwidth to you to get it. If Bob generates the schedules and Fred buys them from Bob and starts giving them out, what's the incentive to go to Fred and pay for them? I certainly can't think of any added value Bob can give. So if Bob spends a good bit of money compiling the listings and the only people who actually buy them from him are those who want to actually support Bob while the people who just want the listings go to Fred, that could very easily be a losing proposition for Bob.
Unlike printed guides, which have to limit show descriptions to one or two lines at best, digital guides can be as detailed as you wish. By providing your own RSS feed of your schedule, you could increase the information given, which should increase the number of people willing to watch your channel. Even though I have a DVR I still watch (interesting) commercials, so don't completely write off my viewership.
And here's how you can directly make money:
By providing your own guide information, you can insert sponsorship lines and charge for them.
"Tonight on Lost, sponsored by Coca-Cola, Jack and Kate have more awkward sexual tension, while Hurley tries to cheer everyone up, Sawyer acts rudely, and Sayid kills someone with his feet."
Even us DVR users will very often look at the guide information. Voila, you've just sold an ad!
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Maybe they are. If they had instead announced that they would start charging then people would rebel and complain about them being greedy pigs. This way they just take it away, then respond to the outcry by saying "OK, OK, we'll bring it back as a small subscription service."
Thank you for being the first to thank them.
It sucks that it' shutting down (I use it for GB-PVR)- but they did do it for free for years. Let's not demonize them, no matter the reason, and start looking for alternatives.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I think you are on to something. I've been keeping tabs on the NZ Mythtv forums & mailing list (am about to move there) and EPG seems an ongoing issue for them.. I've often thought what you've suggested would be their answer.
People further down in the thread suggested that TV channel EPG is right up Google's alley, and I agree... just how do you persuade them???? Hopefully there are a few Mythtv users in the Googleplex that have the sway to pull this off. Google have the funds to purchase the EPG data, AND the customer base to insert ads in the stream (however ads would not be click-able).
Google... please buy ZAP2IT LABS!!! please!!!
1. paying Comcast's fees, DVR service, etc
2. paying Tivo or
3. paying for a subscription to an XML TV Listing service, and keeping my MythTV box
I'll take #3.
I don't want to sound like a Microsoft shill, but if you already have a MythTV box, isn't there the option of installing Windows XP Media Center Edition or Vista Home Premium (both around $130 OEM) on the MythTV box's hardware? Most MythTV hardware should have MS Media Center drivers, right? Microsoft's program guide comes free (no subscriptions) with the OS.You seem to be overlooking the simple fact that tv listings are very localized and channel lineups change with your cable/satellite service. Trying to P2P that would be a clusterfuck.
Clearly, you've never used CP/M...
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?