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MythTV Scheduling Service Reveals Pricing
An anonymous reader writes "A group of open source developers have been working behind the scenes to create a new service known as Schedules Direct to provide affordable scheduling data for North American users of MythTV. Today, they've announced an initial pricing plan of $15 for a 3 month block, non-recurring. Details are still fairly light at the moment, but there's a mailing list and a FAQ available on the site — one notable tidbit is that the developers 'expect pricing to drop by the end of the initial term. Our goal is $20/year.' This comes weeks before the planned shutdown of Zap2it Labs' Data Direct service mentioned previously."
Hmmm... that's what I pay for my TiVo.
That is WAY too much for an XML feed, and rivals the cost of DVR service from my cable co.
We've scraped screens before.
I'd be willing to pay to get a machine-readable schedule of shows. But I'd certainly be willing to pay more for a machine-readable record of exactly when the commercials were.
Not that that's likely to happen any time soon.
So you pay for satellite or cable TV, but the television networks are un-willing to provide a few bytes of information in the form of scheduling information for future programming? I mean, do they want people to pay for their content and watch advertisements or not? $5/month for the few kb worth of data you receive is ridiculous as far as I'm concerned. The TV networks should just get together and standardize on some television scheduling format and release the data themselves.
After all, it would be in the best interests of their customers, the viewers.
It was hard enough to set things up in the first place, I finally have things where I want them, and if I have to scrap it all and start over just to get a program feed I may have to cry...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My cable co charges $7.50 a month for DVR service. I'll pay the extra $2.50 not to have to deal with building my own. And if it brakes they give me a new one.
I have to return some videotapes...
Whilst a pay service might work well the fact is that site scraping can be very effective and provide very good results.
Australian users have never really had guide data available to them, so we have basically relied on either IceTV, a (very well done) for-pay data source, or ozTivo. Recently Australian users have had a new resource, Shepherd.
Shepherd is basically a bunch of scripts that are automatically updated and designed to read quite a few websites and data sources (including IceTV and ozTivo) and provides the best quality data I've seen so far. The set up is relatively easy, if you can get MythTv set up you can certainly get Shepherd set up, and doesn't require ongoing maintenance, once you get it working the script will keep itself up to date.
The TLDR version: Site Scraping can and does work well.
This is supposed to be an improvement over TiVO and others by *how*?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Check out knoppmyth. I set it up a little over a year ago, and all I had to do was tweak the remote buttons.
You could use a modern distro that has package management facilities. Then it's a matter of one command or a few clicks (if you prefer GUI)
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
But before you do, let me just fill you in on how the Australian experience went, and why paying may not be such a bad thing.
Historically, there's been no XMLTV guide data source for Australians. So there have been a litany of screen scrapers that downloaded guide web pages, massaged them into XMLTV format, and passed them on to MythTV and friends.
The only problem is, the program guides are controlled by the TV networks, and the TV networks hate us. Ouch, but true. They've made the leap of logic that, if we had program guide data on our DVRs, we can skip the commercials.[2] So they've been arguing that they own the copyright to the guide data[3] and any unauthorised use of it (i.e. screen scraping) is a breach of their terms.
The only commercial company to publish guide data for DVRs is IceTV and they've been a lawsuit magnet from abovementioned TV networks. Not many people would pay a monthly subscription to something that could be killed at any time.
Meanwhile, in screen scraping land, it's been a game of cat-and-mouse. Find a web site that publishes guide data. Write a screen scraper (or wait for someone else to). In a few months, notice that nothing's been scheduled for a few days - the screen scraper has broken because they've (intentionally) changed the format to deter this. Find another web site. Repeat.
They did all sorts of things to deter us. Obfuscation through JavaScript. Only allowing n page views per hour. After they converted all the guide details to GIFs, we gave up. Most people have moved to IceTV or ozTiVo.
The ozTiVo guide is an interesting idea. It's essentially a wiki that people manually fill in with guide data. Then you can use its XMLTV interface to get guide data out. You're reliant on other people to fill it in, and (due to above copyright issue in Australia) a lot of program details are generic or omitted. But it's workable. This is a model which other people may be interested in setting up.
Fortunately for IceTV, in the last few days, it won its court case and is now happily legit.
So, to sum up, we in Australia are actually happy to pay for quality guide data. Because we know the alternatives. If someone wants to set up a screen scraper, good luck to you - we fought the good fight and lost, but maybe you won't.
--
[1] Ladies too!
[2] No, I don't know how they came up with that either.
[3] In Australia, this has historically been a grey area.
Wait a second, you're complaining that it's not so easy to install, but you're compiling it from source? WTF? Install it from binary packages ferkrissakes!
The Debian and Ubuntu packages Just Work for me.
Myth isn't an application, it's an appliance operating system that happens to borrow a lot of Linux code. Seriously. Unless you like pain, don't screw around with installing it, just get one of the "Myth-based appliance" distros (Knoppmyth or the Red Hat one if you swing that way), and dedicate a box to it. You'll be happier.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
When you have youtube!
How many times must it be said? The viewer is the product, their time watching adverts is what is sold to the advertisers.
I finally gave up on MythTV. Just never worked quite right. I bought a ReplayTV 3000 (similar to tivo) used for $10, popped a 80gig i had lying around, downloaded the replay TV software to the new hard drive and booted it up. Works great and the wife loves it. To download the TV shows it hooks into the phone line, in this case Vonage and dials up a local number to download the show info / tvguide. All the replay 1000, 2000, and 3000 devices all have a lifetime subscription. When I got it running,, the messagges inbox had mail from 1999 the lasttime it was used so im not worried about replaytv shutting me off. If they did, i paid $10 for the unit. Big whoop. MythFV was fun, but this old unit always works,, gets free lisitings and i dont have to mess with the software.
If you're willing to use a Windows box for DVR, I'll eagerly suggest BeyondTV.
I had tried all the free alternatives -- MythTV, GB-PVR, Mediaportal... none of them were particularly friendly to work with or stable, for that matter. And what good is a DVR if it crashes before it can record your shows??
IMO, the Zap2ItLabs discontinuation was one of the best sales pitches for BeyondTV. One-time software purchase, and no subscription fees. It works flawlessly with my HDHomeRun dual tuner (also highly recommended), and even came with a "free" RF remote (looks like they're still running that special at snapstream.com).
Yeah, there's no capturing encrypted signals, but I have the MOST basic cable package anyway, just to get all the major networks, plus Discovery & a few others.
Many folks (even Comcast's cable monkeys) don't realize that the cableco's must (according to FCC) transmit the rock-bottom basic cable package *in the clear* (so no special cable box is needed); you get this digital signal when you order the most basic analog package. So for 18 bucks a month, I can receive/record all the major network digital HD goodness I can stand, with commercial skipping in BeyondTV. Place shifting? No problem. It's my MPEG2 file...
My one little way of giving the Finger To The Man.
What you want is irrelevant; what you've chosen is at hand! - Spock, ST VI
and you're compiling from source... don't. Don't compile from source then complain that installing it is difficult. Use a modern distro and install via packaged binaries - which can usually be done with one command (or a few clicks).
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I really do hope this succeeds.
My biggest problem with the MythTV route was reliable scheduling information. I don't want to have to bother with the tedium of tweaking screen scraper scripts every other day. I gave up on the homemade TV box a long time ago and went with a TiVo. I bought in on one of their deals that with a three year commitment, the box was free. I like the TiVo method...tell it which programs I want at the start of the season, and then I can forget about it.
If there were a *reliable* alternative for scheduling information that I didn't have to tweak every time I turned around, even if there is a fee, I'd be tempted to try MythTV again.
But until then, my TiVo is my best friend.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Why do we keep getting comments like these?
We HAVE software to manage all dependancies, they are called package managers and almost every distro has one. You can use apt, portage, yum or whatever and I guarentee that anything that is stable and complete enough for "Joe User" to be bothered using is in there. MythTV for example is in at least Debian, Ubuntu universe, Gentoo and I'd confidently conjecture most of the other ones too. You either type the name of the piece of software, or click on something in your graphical package manager and you get it installed, simple. Face it, package managers are the standard way software is installed in Linux, if your doing it any other way either you're using alpha software that Mr J User should not use, you don't know how to use a package manager (point and click nowdays), you're an expert with special requirements or you've got one of those stupid hangups that only geeks seem to get.
Joe User CAN install MythTV, the fact that you can't, really doesn't reflect on anything but yourself.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I was going to choose mythtv over Tivo so that I _wouldn't_ have to deal with any additional ongoing charges over and above my regular cable bill. My cable company already has listings on its website... I wonder how difficult it would be to make changes to mythtv so that it could scrape my cable providers tv listings.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Now, I use Vista Media Center (I know, I know, and it's not the point of this post) for watching TV on my Hauppage NTSC/ATSC dual-tuner, so I don't have to worry about losing my guide data for that. However, I use Zap2It's data for other purposes. Namely, I have an e-mail bot written so where if you send it a message (in my case, usually a text message) with the channel number and a time, it will tell you which show is on. Some times when I'm out and don't have access to a TV guide (like out at dinner) and I want to know when a show is on, I can guess a few random times. Unfortunately, with the loss of Zap2It's data, XMLTV is rather useless for me and I'll either be unable to use my tool or have to find a new data source.
Two words, man ... Myth Buntu. Oh, wait, it's just one ... Mythbuntu. Either that or install ubuntu-minimal then apt-get install the frontend and / or backend.
Put identity in the browser.
Please mod the parent down. If it's not a troll, it sure sounds like one.
First it appeals to "Linux developers" as if "Linux" was developed by one company or group. Then it goes on to complain about compiling stuff from source! Hey, we've had these things called package managers for over a decade now. Debian has APT, there's YUM and a few others for various distros. If you want to compile stuff from source instead of just installing some binary packages, that's your problem. Don't go blaming the mythical "Linux developers" for your own stupid mistakes.
I've actually just finished building a MythTV box on Ubuntu and for the most part found it *very* simple to install and configure. Except for the TV card, which was a bit of an arse but I knew that going in but deemed it worthwhile (and besides, the proceedure was well documented) (Hauppauge PCI dual DVB-T tuner) :)
Thankfully here in the UK we have a few options as far as guide data goes - including EIT (Event Information Table) data embedded in the freeview transport streams themselves gives pretty complete data for 7 days into the future - combine that with Myth's smart scheduling capabilities for series-link and MythWeb for remote access and its pretty much covered
Getting Myth working was a lot more work than getting Windows MCE going was, but the outcome is *infinitely* more satisfying - in terms of capabilits and functionality it's lightyears ahead - as well as TV PVR I use it as a DVD jukebox and playing all manner of downloaded videos - it quite simply rocks.
Here in the UK we don't have any of these problems of TV listing availability and complicated html parsing scripts which break every week. The BBC have a special web page just for XMLTV downloads, and it doesn't just cover BBC channels, but practically every channel you can receive in the UK (check the channels.dat file for a full list). The only restriction is that the data can only be used for private non-commercial purposes.
Of course, most of this is probably being paid for from our TV license fees which I know many Americans regard as being a terrible communist plot (some funding may come from the cover price of the Radio Times magazine).
The downside: You'd need to update it whenever you cable company changes its web site. No such hassle with the paid service.
"Why on earth won't Linux developers create a script of some sort that analyzes the system and takes care of ALL dependencies? MythTV from its screenshots looks wonderful and fully capable...getting it installed and remaining sane afterwards is almost impossible at least in my opinion."
Because thats the boring and hard part of application development and often the difference between hobby work and professional applications. The later ones comes with a price tag, but also with proper installation, documentation and support other then an IRC channel kicking you for beeing annoying.
I'll sign up for the $15. Their announcement was honest and direct. They expect a $20 a year cost but they need to "over-charge" the first quarter to help guarantee coverage of their start-up costs. I understand that. I've started a business before. It's a gamble. It's a gamble for me too to support them.
For me, it's only $15 to "see what will happen" and to support the community. If the cost drops to $20 a year like they anticipate I'll gladly pay a reliable data feed. 5 cents a day to "stick-it" to the cable companies and the advertisers and at the same time supporting the OSS community? It's a no brainer.
If the costs stay at $5 a month then I'll need to re-think my cable needs. But still, if I'm going to pay $5 for Tivo with commercials, why not $5 for MythTV without commercials? Either way, I'll pay the $15 to get started and to see what happens. I've spent that much buying a friend and I coffee at Starbucks. I'll continue to support them if the cost drops to $20 a year. That's cheep for the return I'm getting.
-[d]-
If MythTV didn't make for you, I can't figure out for the life of me what you've broken on your system, but it has to be something you've done. It compiles on out of the box Slackware 11, which is over a year old, and is a notoriously "pain in the ass" system even for compiling applications, as there's always some dependency missing. It has ZERO package management apart from the equivalent of "Stuff it in the tarball and hope", so there's got to be something you're doing wrong.
Seriously, something like VLC would be a valid complaint, it has about 50 or so dependencies on slackware that are missing (seriously! it really does take that much), but myth has ZERO missing.
My wife used to buy TV Guide. I forget how much it costs to have it mailed to your house...something like $60/yr? I know it's a buck or so a week, if you buy it at the supermarket.
Anyway, it was always wrong, full of ads, stuff I never cared about, and hard to use. Comcast used to provide a free guide channel, but they took that away and replaced it with another useless (to me) ethnic/religious/shopping channel. You can only get schedule data from them now, if you convert over to their digital service.
So this looks like a good option for me, even better than any of the commercial ones. I don't mind $5/month at all. I pay $100/mo to Comcast for cable/internet. I've never objected to paying a fair price for information I can use.
Thanks to the people who took the initiative to set up the system to keep the schedule data flowing!
I know when things are coming on and I'll manually set the times.
They say that they buy their data from Tribune Media Services. Where does TMS get the data from?
There's lots of room for competition here. Others can buy from TMS. Or from where TMS gets the data. Or from TMS competition (who is that?).
Or use a P2P system like the old CDDB. If tens of thousands of people enter data for the next few days TV listings, then each person will have to enter only a few listings at random on average each day or so.
"What's on TV?" are facts about the real world, like the days the circus will be in town. They should be as copyrightable as any facts. Copying a complete, value-added compilation of them in bulk to another medium by one person could conceivably be prohibited. But one person posting a couple-few facts is too prohibitive. Especially when the listings are advertisements for the shows.
And there's the question of how to catch each person entering the data. Even if source listings include defects, fake data that can be copyrighted more strongly than can reports of fact, the sheer numbers of P2P can provide redundancy to eliminate those defects in automated data quality assurance techniques.
And what's to stop people from just pointing their own MythTV at free schedule data like IMDbTV? Why should the TV schedule publishers be unhappy that we've got automated ways to consume the exact same content in their index, but probably even more because it's easier to navigate and control our TV?
--
make install -not war
I dunno. I've set it up at least 7 times now. apt-get install mythtv-frontend and backend... run mythsetup... enter the database password (it's like setting up any other MySQL app), and you're good to go.
mythsetup does a pretty good job of walking you through selecting the TV tuner.
The main hard part is getting your video output working right. Just because NVidia has a bunch of weird options in xorg. But that's fine, 2 minutes later it was working.
Not a big deal.
I'll second this. I've been using linux since slackware 0.9, and I never could get Myth working right (even though I went out and bought parts per Myth HowTo recommendations) until I used KnoppMyth.
Backstory: When I moved into my house last year I wanted a DVR from Comcast (I had one when I was with Cox and loved it), but they were out of stock at the time, so I went with digital cable figuring I'd upgrade later. To save money, since I didn't have the DVR, and because I wasn't watching the channels above 100 anyway, I switched back to analog service - but I never returned the digital cable box.
I still get the guide and all the conveniences of the box. I can't access the On Demand channel, nor the channels above 100. The picture looks to be a digital signal, if the blocks that become visible when there's a lot of motion on screen are any indicator. Meanwhile, the analog tuner I have in the MythTV box works just fine, so the data coming into the cable box must be analog (or transmitted as both digital and analog).
I have a MythTV system set up, with two tuners, but I don't have a machine connected to the TV, so I don't use it a lot; I'd rather be on the couch when watching TV instead of sitting in front of the computer in an office chair. It does record The Simpsons for me religiously, though.
Digital TV standards tend to provide for meta-data to be broadcast along with the video data, E.g. DVB channels tend to carry an Electronic Programme Guide data stream and all the FTA DVB-T channels in the UK seem to provide it. The US ATSC standards apparently provide for this too (no idea whether US digital broadcasters transmit such meta-data though).
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Like many others, I have built a simple, stable piece of hardware to host the system. The only time I have to spend time to 'maintain' it is if I *feel* like upgrading to add new features. Which, btw, sure is nice since the cable co's DVR is a complete piece of shit. Its dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to scheduling, it crashes periodically, and it doesnt delete commercials. Feature upgrades are something you cant even pay for in that case, but you can do on your own time if you have Myth. What's that make it? Priceless? The time I have saved in not having to see or fast forward through commercials by using Myth has FAR FAR FAR outweighed the time spent installing the software. That's the bottom line, and thats why I swear by Mythtv.
Some of these posters are NOT from English speaking countries. And even those that are, may very well be speaking it as a 2'nd (or even 3rd, 4th, or even 5th) language. Your attitude is why so many from EU want to put down Americans all the time. Grow up.
Keep in mind that Zap2It (and I presume Schedulesdirect) provides more than just the name of a show and the broadcast time. There is a program summary and a program ID sufficient for myth to know which episodes it has recorded. My understanding is that the summary at least is added by the commercial schedule providers.
You're right of course that OTA broadcasters could and should provide free program listings in some common format. However as things have evolved there is so little demand for such a service that there's been no incentive for them to do so.
The comment above may be a bit like jumping out of your seat yelling with excitement when you figure out a problem in your accounting class but modding it "troll" is missing the point. (somebody with points should at least get this to +1)
The scheduling info is free. No one is trying to hide it from you because the people who operate the channels want you to watch their stuff and they even pay (advertising) to let you know when their shows are on in the hopes that you will watch. This info should be freely available for FREE.
I suspect the real reason for this being relegated to being a pay service is that the cable companies are usually setting the schedules and are in the business of selling Tevo. They have no interest in letting a line of revenue being cut. God love the corporations! Making life better for everyone!!!
THE POINT of my criticism WAS NOT the poor spelling, it was that this person seemed to demonstrate a remarkable lack of self-resourcefulness that characterizes the average Slashdot reader. You ignored the relevant context and chose to obsessively focus on the spelling comment. We have just a wee emotional overreaction to poor-spelling references, do we? Check your emotional baggage at the door, please.
I can't speak about the state of Myth installation *today* but I can speak about it as of one year ago on Debian. It was a PITA. The basic install scripts invoked through apt-get were broken and many of the guides and install tips available online were outdated. Fixing it required a lot of futzing and delving into what the setup was trying to do. I came very close to attempting an install from source.
This was not just my experience -- check out the AMICUS project on sourceforge. OTOH, my impression is that kernel updates may have improved things significantly (pcHDTV cards now are detected automatically, for example).
I say this as someone who now has a correctly-working myth install on two machines. It is a terrific piece of software. But that lightning-shaped scar on my forehead (from banging it against the workbench during my myth install) still throbs every time I see the myth logo.
First of all, I commend the work the schedules direct folks have done and intend to subscribe, but not until the price drops. $5/month is too damn much.
For the next three months, there are a couple of free options that have been created for gbpvr: one gets guide data from Yahoo and one that gets data from TitanTV.
http://forums.gbpvr.com/showthread.php?t=27491
http://forums.gbpvr.com/showthread.php?p=205143
I know the TitanTV option does not screen scrape, it uses a SOAP interface to TitanTv. I'm not sure about the Yahoo option.
Both of them are windows-based and output a normal xmltv file; you do need to have a windows machine or use virtualization. I haven't gotten them to run under Wine (yet).
Dont think of Myth as an application, think of it as part of an appliance operating system that happens to borrow a lot of Linux code.
I've been interested in this whole TV-on-the-PC scene since I first witnessed it on one of those infamous Toshiba desktops. It was cool back then, and it is still cool today.
I used Media Center for about two years, and basically loved it. I purchased the extender for my Xbox and enjoyed that too. During this time I was watching Myth and hoping it would come along and improve the experience. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get it to run. It didn't like me, and I didn't particularly think much of it. We needed counseling...
A friend of mine tipped me off to Ubuntu at about the 6.06 point. I was a die-hard RedHat fan, still pining for the days before Fedora was born, when things were simple, etc. Switching off of my bastard children of CentOS and Fedora was not looking too likely. Until that is I used Synaptec to install MythTV. It 'just worked'. Seriously. I've tweaked and tweaked and tweaked it since then, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't any more or less difficult for me than MCE was.
The features that I'd miss from Myth, were I to switch are:
1) Different sources have different schedules. I have ONE cable box, and a dedicated tuner just for The channels lower than 74 are captured by a separate dual-tuner card. This way the wife gets her movies, and the kids still get Spongebob and Pokemon. I get to have my cake and eat it too.
2) Choice of endpoints. I can watch Myth content via the web (with a flash-mod to Mythweb), on my Ubuntu partition of my laptop as a frontend, on my Windows stuff with the MythTV player, and probably in a lot of ways I haven't thought of yet. There's no vendor standing there telling me 'no', and I love it.
3) Freedom in general. I didn't like Myth's built-in-DVD player, so I use an external player. No one cared. No hacking was required. I just changed it. Likewise, I didn't want to stream gigabytes across the tubes, so I modified Mythweb to convert to flash videos instead. Much smaller and easier on the pipe-joints. I have a myriad of other choices waiting my preference should the default not fit my needs anymore. I LOVE that.
4) Commercial skip. Annoying at times, but generally super pleasant. If you've been watching Fox lately, you might be aware that there's a Simpson's Movie in theaters. That is, if you've been watching Fox's commercial space it was likely tattooed on your eyelids. I back-spaced into one once to see the trailer and was shocked. That stuff was absolutely pervasive! I thought it was a nice testament to Myth that I mostly didn't have to endure that particular media blitz. And that's just that one show...
5) Love. Myth to me still seems young. It reminds me of my kids. In that way, I feel like I'm watching a teenager enroll for his freshman year in High School. I'm a proud papa of my Myth solution at this point, and don't want to see it die or fade into obscurity.
So yeah, I'll pay it. I'd love to see it go down, as it used to be free, but I understand that things with value are often exchanged for cash. Services included. And that's okay...
MythTV is just an application. Specifically, it is a KDE mysql application.
You can even run it in a Window next to openoffice and firefox if you really want to.
Something like Ubuntu is really a better approach. The really tricky parts are the
hardware support for things like ivtv or lirc. For that you are much better off
with the level of polish and active development in something like Ubuntu or Gentoo.
The larger community is also there for you if you have trouble.
When they make an Ubuntu 7.10 based appliance distro for MythTV maybe that will
finally be the holy grail of automated Myth installs. Right now, they aren't quite
there yet.
You're still better off with a real distro for when things don't quite go right or
you want something that the vertical distro maintainers didn't account for.
Easy access to the debian or ubuntu repositories are also very handy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is just FUD.
The whole point of Debian is to have EVERYTHING that's free software pre-packaged.
This includes the esoteric stuff that other distros have forgotten about or never really paid any attention to it. It may be a work in progress, but to claim that it isn't being addressed due to the whole "hobbyist" thing is simply not factually correct.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I figure it's the same way in this case. The information is perfectly free. What you are paying for is having the information assembled and presented in a way that you can use easily. You can always do the same yourself, but what's cheaper? Your time on a regular basis or $5 a month...
Hmmm. Don't think so.
Aggregating and giving the data away for free made it not-important-enough for Zap2It to keep providing it.
Paying for it provides a motive for these guys to keep providing the service - and it IS the service you're paying for, not really the data:
Since all the data is public and published in newspapers and TV Guide and on the web, you're free to maintain a screen-scraper or type it in yourself and not give these guys a cent.
Rather not do that and have someone else do the leg work for you? OK, Pony up, bud!
jddj
Don't be a maroon. Sure the info is free, but aggregating it and putting it into a format usable by a particular service is not necessarily so. They have to spend the time to develop the software to put it together for you, and the bandwidth to feed it to you. If they want to attach a very small fee to that service, why are you so angry about it? You could always write the software to do it and pay for the bandwidth to do it yourself.
That's correct. The "assembly" done by Tribune Media Services (which runs Zap2It Labs and the old DataDirect service) is a largely manual process. Studios, local stations, etc all actually pay for the privilege of having their data listed, but they don't compose it in a friendly, terse format, or organize metadata (episode number, actors, original airdate, etc) in a standardized, convenient way. That task is left to TMS' peons, and subscribing to that data can easily run several hundred dollars per month, per market (think "Greater Los Angeles", which may have a dozen different content providers, hundreds of local stations, etc).
Frankly, $5/mo sounds like they got a great deal. If they can get it down closer to $2/mo, that sounds like one of the best deals in the industry for free software.
Exactly. MythTV provides you the ability to have unlimited storage for the cost of a simple hard disk (mine has >800GB), easily accessible recordings, multi-tuners, an MP3 player (one of the primary uses of my box), a game player, a IP phone, etc.
Of course it's gonna suck not being free, but these guys, who started their repective projects for the fun/love of it, are starting their own data feed, which they have to pay license fees to do. Nobody is paying them, they still offer their projects for free, and they're dealing with TV info, which is regulated by the FCC, right? I give them lots of credit. I hope it works. I'll pay. If it helps open source projects, that's great. I'll have to pay for Tivo or DVR anyway.
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
It is interesting that it's all pay for service. I went about trying to get Myth running on an old box to see what it was like, and gave up after a week of frustration. The whole idea was (a) minimize the box cost (extsing HW) and (b) eliminate the recurring costs.
After spending a dozen hours, and reading about the transition, it occured to me that TiVo is offering not just the data, but a software maintenance contract. As with all non-do-it-yourself projects, the black box approach is somewhat limiting, but if I were to value guide data at $5/mo, then TiVos s/w maintenance would be about $11/mo at full-fare, or $3/mo on a 3 year "contract". Since I am an american, I both understand the contract (cell phones, sat service) and I'm eligible. And based on the time spent^wwasted on my vain attempt - $3 seems pretty affordable to hire out the ugly work.
And now, getting a tivo hd box up costs less than even a bargain myth box that isn't built from old parts. Personally, I'd like to see TiVo drop their per-month prices to their "extra box" or "long term" rates ($7 and $8, respectively) - or at least figure out a way to do so, perhaps with auto- or e-billing. Of course, I'd like unfettered video extraction, too...but then we're off into "I want a pony" land for the commerical products.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I know I'm feeding the troll here, but:
Redhat.
Kthx bye.
Specifically, it is a KDE mysql application.
It uses qt, but it's got nothing to do with KDE.
Bye-Bye Myth!!! Thanks anyway! I guess that untrusting feeling I've had which made me leave my TiVo active despite having MythTV finally makes sense! >:-\
I'd read somewhere that Directv broadcast their guide data (for DirecTivo use) as paid programming at night on the Discovery channel but I've been unable to spot it. Does anyone know exactly when/where it's being shown?
This is their news from July^
Maybe it's just me, but I don't call 15$ for 3 months a "smooth" transition. I call it an ass-raping.
Aside from MythTV, nearly every Linux based TV info grabber is powered by the xml_tv parser (as well as some ***dows and Mac based grabbers).
So now all those software titles are useless to people in the US who can't/won't shell out money for a service that's been provided for quite some time.
Fact of the matter is this sort of service should be bundled with cable TV/Internet subscriptions.
This way the consumer is already paying for the information and can use it in more ways than just through the cable box.
That's my 2cents.
You can't take the sky from me.
I'm very big into my HTPC, but I only use Myth for the occasional HD antennae recording. And I only get two channels in good enough to record. I will never pay (not even $20/year) to receive a measly two channels worth of guide info that I might check out once a week and never in the summer.
This sucks (hadn't heard about the free service going away till now) but then I haven't been all that impressed with Myth anyway (the interface/UI that is). I guess I'll have to write my own solution that scrape websites. Not ideal, but at least it'll finally look like what I think a DVR should look like and not some poor mans Tivo clone.
I don't understand why I should have to pay for what is effectively an advertisement to watch advertisements. The networks should be providing these feeds gratis to anyone who wants them. I guess they'd rather we download the shows than watch them live.
Now that this source is going away, people have two options, if they want to stick with MythTV: They can either get the same high quality data for a fee, or they can roll their own screen scrapers (or hope somebody else does) to get their data the same way overseas users have been doing it all along. I went about trying to get Myth running on an old box to see what it was like, and gave up after a week of frustration. The whole idea was (a) minimize the box cost (extsing HW) and (b) eliminate the recurring costs. I can't comment on your specific issued, of course, hwoever I got Myth running on a 600 MHz (or something like that, not sure of the exact speed) PIII without anything worse than your regular linux multimedia setup issues. Took me a couple of nights of tinkering, but that was mainly because I chose to use Gentoo - a friend of mine used Konoppmyth instead and was ready within an afternoon. After spending a dozen hours, and reading about the transition, it occured to me that TiVo is offering not just the data, but a software maintenance contract. [...] And based on the time spent^wwasted on my vain attempt - $3 seems pretty affordable to hire out the ugly work. Sure - at this point, initial MythTV setup still isn't nearly as simple as plugging in a TiVo. As a German, I don't have much of an option - there's nothing like TiVo over here. If I had, I probably wouldn't have bothered building a Mythbox. Or maybe I would have - because it can do prettly much all I would want from a TiVo and then some. Of course, I'd like unfettered video extraction, too...but then we're off into "I want a pony" land for the commerical products. Exactly - and that's one of the big advantages MythTV (or any computer-based DVR solution) has over something like TiVo. If money were no problem, I would probably go for something like a Mac mini with EyeTV and a Drobo attached. As it is, MythTV fits the bill for me quite nicely. YMMV.
This is part of the reason I'm not eager to pay for guide data. A fucking trained monkey could run the system and keep it accurate, but it's often wildly inaccurate anyway.
I'll pay. $5 a month is not a bad price, seeing as they have to recover their capital.
Remember, their goal is $20 yearly.
"...or are relying on an xmltv grabber to scrape some websites..."
Barring the embedded data (which I belive is in the US ATSC OTA broadcasts), screen scrapers seem to be the norm for cabletv work. It's a preocess that's a bit hands on - time from my life or money from my pocket. I'm not a programmer (not since I was in grade school), so it's more efficient to pay someone.
Your machine spec almost mirrors mine - PIII/550, and I went with Knoppmyth. Unfortunately, I found that I would need a new video card (and PCI at that) and a new capture card to get the capture and output to a TV. A actually ran into a couple of network card issues during hte install, and I'm not really comfy in linux, and the knopp install wasn't too friendly wrt tinkering. I considered ubuntu, since I use that on my daughters laptop, but I was hoping for a less complex solution. With the two cards and a stock-compliant network interface (had to be USB - only 2 slots in the PC I had) that would mean close to 3/4 the cost of a TiVo, just to get it working on an "underpowered" box. Yikes.
You can definietly do more with your own box than a TiVo. Actually, I have satellite and a hacked TiVo I use for video extraction. It's an older, orphaned unit, so I'm just hoping it lasts, but at the same time the new TiVos do more. *shrug* Nobody will manufacture the box I want, for fear of it being used to steal content. Heaven forbid those of us who are willing to purchase content should have an easy time of making things simple.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Since I used to work as a programmer for a couple of years and had always wanted to take the time to build my own DVR, this was a nice hobby project for me, and from what I've researched, MythTV seems to be the most powerful DVR solution out there. However you're absolutely right: At this time, it's not something that you can trust the average "I-just-want-my-DVR-to-work"-person to setup without getting frustrated.
It may work, if you happen to have have the right ditro and the right hardware, but as soon as you encounter any setup glitch, you've got to deal with Linux issues - which is not necessarily something people want to do when setting up a DVR.
Looking at the way, Linux matured over the past few years, that's hopefully going to change sometime soon, but as for now, a new MythTV DVR is a project, not an appliance. A rewarding project, for sure, but one that might involve tinkering, a learning curve, and require time not everyone can spare.
That said, as soon as it does work, it's one cool toy.