No More TV Listings For MythTV Users

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?"

Comments

MythTV already has alternatives. WTF!?

[urbanriot]

MythTV already has an alternative with Schedules Direct - http://www.mythtv.org/ . How did this make front page?

Re:Ha

[satoshi1]

Paying for the listings is cheaper than paying for a Tivo. Especially if you already have some old hardware to stick MythTV on or something.

http://www.schedulesdirect.org/

[Icemaann]

I am surprised the submitter did not mention Schedules Direct. It is not free, but it should have been mentioned.

Anyway, check it out.

Re:Let's not get melodramatic

[loganrapp]

They are a victim of theft. Because of it, a lot of people are out of TV Listings. They took what wasn't theirs to take, and people who rightly had access to it now no longer do.

Re:Let's not get melodramatic

[westlake]

I understand you believe the GP's suggestion to be unethical, but there's no need to misuse the word "theft" for this. What the GP is talking about may be freeloading, or copyright violation, or breach of contract, but to call this "theft" belittles the victims of actual theft.

Intangible property is still property. Theft of services is still theft.

The service disappears. The provider goes out of business. There is a victim.

Re:Let's not get melodramatic

[zerkon]

It was free as in beer, not free as in speech. People abused that by reselling and redistributing the information which was against the TOS. As a result the company stopped offering the the service to everyone, including those who played by the rules. There is are many victims (including myself) who paid the cost of spending a few hours changing all the settings to get schedules direct to work, and $15 every 3 months. All because some jerks couldn't play by the rules and decided instead to make money off something that wasn't theirs.

So yeah, it is theft. Even if it was free for the taking, there were some caveats. To put it in /. terms, just because downloading GPL'd code is free doesn't mean you can use it however you want, you are required to follow the rules of the GPL.