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No More TV Listings For MythTV Users

Posted by kdawson on from the elephino-what's-on dept.

Ryan Brown writes "As of September 1, the free XML TV guide service at zap2it labs has shut its doors due to misuse issues, as well as internal business issues. Now that Linux users, and most PVR users for that matter, are nearing the end of their last fetched TV guide, what free alternatives exist that can replace this much-needed service?"

8 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Incorrect by FST · · Score: 5, Informative
    FTFA:

    Also, the Zap2it TV Listings are not being shut down -- there has been some confusion about this in comments on other message boards. Submitter: did you even bother to read TFA (which is around 3 sentences, at that)?
    --
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  2. Schedules Direct? by Elgonn · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.schedulesdirect.org/

    1. Re:Schedules Direct? by jerkychew · · Score: 5, Informative

      Updating Mythdora 4.0 to use SchedulesDirect
      Updating MythTV to use SchedulesDirect

  3. www.schedulesdirect.org by stoneymonster · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's subscription, run by the mythtv dev's. Right now it's $15 for 3mos, but they are hoping to change that to $20/yr if they get enough sign-ups.

    1. Re:www.schedulesdirect.org by gral · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you read the site they talk in detail about their plans. $15/3 months with NO renewal, because PayPal doesn't handle renewal changes, and they are VERY positive they will be able to lower the cost once they know what fees and how many people they have.

      They are already at the "Break Even" point, now the cost will go down, because they are setup as a not for profit. If they MAKE a profit, there are charges and fees they will have to pay.

      The leads on the SchedulesDirect site haven't even made a dime. They don't want to. They are trying to provide a needed service, and are doing a great job at it.

      --
      Scott Carr
  4. Free doesn't mean "costs money" -- these are FREE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am glad people have mentioned SchedulesDirect. But, you know, free doesn't mean "costs money", so I'm surprised so many people CONTINUE to post yet more threads on schedulesdirect.

              Found at http://forums.schedulesdirect.org/viewtopic.php?f= 7&t=43&start=10:

    zap2xml
    http://zap2xml.110mb.com/

    YahooXMLTv
    http://forums.gbpvr.com/showthread.php?t=27546

    MSN_XMLTV_scraper
    http://planetreplay.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=143 14

              I am using MSN_XMLTV_scraper, running under Wine personally. To run under Wine, you need msxml6.msi, install that with "msiexec /i msxml6.msi". For GZIP compression to work (which you do want, so MSN doesn't get cheesed and start changing the format...), I had to install wininet.dll into /root/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/ and run regedit, adding in HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Int ernet Settings/EnableHttp1_1=0x00000001 . This is equivalent to checking "Enable HTTP1.1" in the Internet Options with Internet Explorer I guess. More or less, run the app once to set it up, then put in a cron job that runs "wine MSN_XMLTV_scraper_v54.exe /d" and feeds the XMLTV data into mythtv (I have a shell script that does all that.)

              The first run is very slow, but it caches the detailed program info so after the first run it's pretty fast.

  5. Re:Meh by krisp · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or you can scrape their free tv listings service, which is not going away.

    See http://zap2xml.110mb.com/ for a perl-based tvlistings.zap2it.com to xmltv scraper which is a drop-in replacement for the labs scraper.

  6. Re:Pay for SchedulesDirect--they're good people by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Informative

    The more people that sign up for Schedules Direct, the lower their costs will be in the future (or something along those lines). They've already stated that their intention is to have a much lower fee for listings after the first quarter, but that the $15 cost for the first three months was necessary since their organization is just starting up.

    Personally, I find the listings useful enough that I'd (just barely) pay the $5 a month, but I would hold them to a much higher QoS if I had to keep paying that much.

    BTW, one of the SD guys mentioned that they found out that Tribune Media Services, and other TV schedule aggregators, do a lot more than just put together already-available data. They have to cross-reference syndication feeds with local schedules, they have to come up with episode descriptions, and in general, there's work and some original content arising from that. Even local stations have no idea what episode they're showing on a particular day - they just get the episodes from the distributor, possibly with promos, and then run them. TMS already knows how to do this stuff, and they had the infrastructure to distribute it already, but they weren't interested in managing the business of selling the listings. SD acts as a broker in that sense, paying TMS for the listings and collecting the individual fees from the users.