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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?"

41 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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    1. Re:Incorrect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Zap2it LABS is shutting down their free XML listing service. Zap2it TV listings are a different service, and something completely different. Just like reading TFA and comprehending it.

  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. I could be stating the obvious, but....... by fluffybacon · · Score: 3, Funny

    Television?

    --
    It's not big, but it's clever!
  4. Why free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's wrong with paying a couple bucks to get the listing data? Someone somewhere had to pay to provide the service. I don't see why everything, everywhere has to be free, free, free.

    Oh damnit - I forgot. This is slashdot. Paying for stuff = bad.

    1. Re:Why free? by timmarhy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I pay for it already when i'm forced to watch crumby ads for panty liners and erection problems.

      --
      If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    2. Re:Why free? by schon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What's wrong with paying a couple bucks to get the listing data? Nothing. However the problem I have with SD is their "Agreement" - in order to get the listings, you have to agree to some pretty damn onerous things, including "not doing anything to piss off anyone at Tribune Media Services, even if you didn't know it would."

      This is a completely untenable clause, because they don't tell you what things might piss them off, nor do they explain their relationship

      For example, complaining on /. (or any other forum) could theoretically make TMS unhappy, which would cause you to be in violation of the "agreement" - and yet you wouldn't know it until after you get your account terminated (or worse, dragged into court.)

      I have no problem paying for it (in fact, I had my credit card out to sign up), but it's some seriously fscked-up shit - too much for me.
    3. Re:Why free? by thejeffer · · Score: 5, Funny

      And let's face it, nothing will create an erection problem like a panty liner full of crumbs.

  5. 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
    2. Re:www.schedulesdirect.org by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      Wow, they're not exactly marketing geniuses are they? Announce plans to make a very large discount on you service as soon as enough people sign up at the original inflated price? Yeah, that'll pull a huge number of customers in at your launch.

      That's because they're not trying to make a profit, and they're just passing on the reality that they'll have to have a sizable subscriber base in order to defray their fixed costs enough to reduce the fee. They expect that their target audience will understand these issues. Not only that, but both prices are low enough that the costs aren't going to be an issue for their target market.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  6. They're still available for a small charge. by binaryspiral · · Score: 4, Informative

    The service is available for a quarterly charge of $15...

    http://www.schedulesdirect.org/

  7. Titan TV by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Informative

    One option is Titan TV listings. They are free (add supported) via a Web interface and are designed to work with PVR devices.

    1. Re:Titan TV by jbr439 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The web interface doesn't appear to support Canadian listings. This makes it unusable for a number of people (like me). I'm using Schedules Direct now; and as someone else aptly put it, I can think of worse places to send my money.

  8. Pay for SchedulesDirect--they're good people by Noksagt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Suck it up and use Schedules Direct just like everyone else. It isn't free. The opening cost is $15/3 month (with a 7 day trial). However, compiling schedules is not free. SD purchases them Tribune Media Services. But SD is a nonprofit company & they are free/open source friendly, having been formed by people involved with MythTV, XMLTV, and MacProgramGuide. I can think of worse places to send my money.

    Free/open source PVRs are more functional than most proprietary competitors & the software itself will always be not only gratis, but free as in speech. If you want the cheapest possible service, you'll do better to get something with a lifetime subscription to guide content. But I prefer my freedom to a full pocketbook.

    It'd be nice if the guide data would eventually become free/open. But who's going to provide it?

    If you don't like SD, I guess you can try their competitor (if they ever release something for Linux). Or screen scrape for no cost.

    1. 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.

  9. XMLTV by DrXym · · Score: 4, Informative

    As long as there are TV listings in the world, there is the means to rip them. One example is XMLTV. This rips listings from certain sites and produces an XML schedule file that you can feed into MythTV. I assume that once a free service disappears that you'll see scripts for XMLTV that do pretty much the same.

    1. Re:XMLTV by UncleTogie · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm sure there are literally hundreds of TV listings sources to choose from.

      Name even two whose terms of service allow schedule scraping...

      --
      Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
    2. Re:XMLTV by /dev/trash · · Score: 3, Funny

      hell the NFL even forbids me from calling a friend and telling them what the score is.

  10. Re:That's easy by S.O.B. · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'll just pay for the service, and create a simple proxy script that grabs the crap through my subscription for however many friends I have that want to use it.

    Exactly the attitude that forced Zap2It to stop offering the free service.

    In the case of Zap2It there were people reselling the free listings. In your case you want to provide multiple subscriptions and only pay for one. I hope your friends (both of them) appreciate your theft.
    --
    Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
  11. Re:That's easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So you're saying Zap2It stopped offering their free service because not enough people were using it?

  12. No more listings for US users you mean... by gilesjuk · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are Mythtv users outside of the US. In the UK the listings are carrying on as normal.

  13. We collect our own by Skapare · · Score: 3, Informative

    For local broadcasters, we can collect our own. Many broadcasters may be willing to provide their schedules for free. Someone in each city would have to be the "point person" to encourage the stations to provide them in a usable form with no distribution restriction. Then they would be submit them to central databases (can be more than one) where they would be merged and others can then download in bulk. The national networks might be harder to get them from.

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  14. Re:This bends my brain banana by Quarters · · Score: 4, Informative

    People have been paying for TV listings (TV Guide) for decades. Having to do it for PVRs doesn't seem that outrageous to me.

  15. The BBC makes it nice and easy by l-ascorbic · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...even though it's their commercial, for profit arm: http://xmltv.radiotimes.com/xmltv/

  16. Wow, good going Slashdot by PolyDwarf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here goes some karma...

    Reading through the comments, I'm struck by one thing, really.. The utter deviation of the posters, versus the "normal" mode of Slashdot.

    Why is it an utter crime to want to get free tv listings? Why is it considered mandated that you must pay money to get them, where before they were free? Is it because it is the ScheduleDirect people? Or is it because it's "only" 5 dollars? Or is it because the word "Free" is bad? Seriously, tell me. I can download Linux for free, but I guess that's bad? I can read Slashdot for free, but I guess that's bad?

    The ScheduleDirect people are offering a paid service. More power to them. I have a little nagging doubt in my head that they will degrade other methods of program acquisition (EIT, direct inserts into the database from a scraper, etc), to "facilitate" SD (otherwise known as rope people into using their paid-for service, and nothing else). Those fears may or may not be unfounded, but why shouldn't I be worried and looking for alternatives?

    Why shouldn't people want to find out about any free listings that are out there, just like has been offered for years from the Zap2It people?

    1. Re:Wow, good going Slashdot by Aladrin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I assume it's because they are sick of people asking. Google is GREAT for finding things that exist. The fact that you -can't- find this on Google is a huge hint that it doesn't exist. Let's not forget that the last service to provide this for free closed down because of all the abusers, even after they were asked not to abuse the system. What other service in their right mind would take their place?

      I admit, I think $5/mo for TV listings is a lot. TV Guide provided that service, plus interviews and articles, for less. (At least, last I checked.) There's free TV listings in the paper each week. (Again, last I checked.) And you can always look stuff up on tvguide.com and other sites for free, they just don't provide an easy-to-use feed for automated abuse. Err, use. I don't even pay that much for services that do a -lot- more work.

      Some day, TV will get on the ball and start providing the service people want, instead of trying to force things down our throats. Europe has tv-via-satellite that seems to work very well, except it's not HD. The HD over-the-air works well, if you aren't stuck in a valley like I am and can't receive any signals without a ton of equipment.

      No, some day, someone will see the light and provide TV over the 'net, with an electronic guide that mythtv or other programs can use. (AT&T, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?) Maybe they'll even have TV-on-demand and eliminate the need for a DVR altogether... If I could stream TV shows any time I wanted, instead of having to know ahead of time, I'd be willing to pay for that. (More than I already pay for HD & DVR cable, I mean.)

      We seem to have hit a phase where companies are trying to force us to want what they want to sell us, instead of trying to sell us what we want. It's backfiring left and right and they're soon going to have to open their eyes.

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    2. Re:Wow, good going Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Here goes some karma...
      No, but it is nice that you've fished for "insightful" mods by prefacing your statement with this.

      Why is it an utter crime to want to get free tv listings?
      It isn't a crime. Nobody said it was. They just said that payment for a service provided by F/OSS devs is reasonable.

      Seriously, tell me. I can download Linux for free, but I guess that's bad? I can read Slashdot for free, but I guess that's bad?
      Nice strawman. You can also read tv schedules online for free too (or at least in the same fake "ad supported" free that you read Slashdot).

      I have a little nagging doubt in my head that they will degrade other methods of program acquisition (EIT, direct inserts into the database from a scraper, etc), to "facilitate" SD (otherwise known as rope people into using their paid-for service, and nothing else). Those fears may or may not be unfounded, but why shouldn't I be worried and looking for alternatives?
      Given the reputations of those involved with SD, this is somewhat insulting. That being said, the reason you have nothing to fear is that the code to process XMLTV listings already exists & is open source.

      There are more pragmatic reasons too--multiple F/OSS projects are collaborating on providing SD & even more will be encouraging their users to get their listings from SD.

      Why shouldn't people want to find out about any free listings that are out there, just like has been offered for years from the Zap2It people?
      They can want whatever they wish! But they aren't going to get it soon. Only two companies compile guide data & they sell it to other businesses. Some of these businesses (like SD) charge at least enough to pay for what it costs them to provide the listings. Others put it on the web & use ads to pay for it. Payment must come from somewhere. Z2It was free because they were a subsidary of Tribune.

      If the data comes from one of the two "mother" listings, it will cost money. Period. No one will give you a free lunch. (Or you can violate TOS by scraping it.)

      If it doesn't come from these "mother" sources, someone would have to form a third listing generation service (but this would cost significant setup & operating $$$ that they'd want to pass on).
    3. Re:Wow, good going Slashdot by evilviper · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why is it an utter crime to want to get free tv listings?

      Because it costs money to get them, assemble them, and distribute them.

      Linux is free because a bunch of volunteers put it together for free. So why aren't you volunteering to call up numerous TV networks, every few days, to get a list of their schedule, and input that into a public database for others to use, for free?

      How about calling up every cable network in the country every month, to see if they've made any changes to their channel line-ups? And checking on every FCC action to see if broadcast TV channels have made any changes.

      Somebody needs to do it. In absence of a huge and sustained mass of unimaginably dedicated volunteers, somebody needs to get paid for doing the hard and thankless work. Otherwise, you're just being a leech.

      Why is it considered mandated that you must pay money to get them, where before they were free?

      Zap2It was being charitable, nothing more. It was costing them money, but they put up with it for quite a while anyhow. No one else has, nor will do so again. There's just no profit in it, and it's not sustainable.

      I'm sure you can think of many other examples of some software or service that started out free, but was merely a loss-leader or other marketing ploy, before it went commercial.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  17. 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.

  18. 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.

  19. Let's not get melodramatic by p3d0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Patrick Doyle
    I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
  20. Re:That's easy by gral · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Schedules Direct site is setup as a Non Profit. They are running it like a co op. The more people sign up, the lower the price for everyone. There express purpose is to get the price down to $20 a year for the service. They have to pay for the schedules from Zap2It, just like everyone else. It is a set fee, and Schedules Direct doesn't know yet exactly how much it is going to cost to provide the service.

    I actually "Appreciated" what Zap2It did, and stated several times on their survey they should be charging a little to offset the cost.

    I now have my Schedules Direct service setup, with NO loss of schedule. Very seemless. I don't use MythTV because it is Free as in beer, I use it because it is a pretty damn good system for what I want it for. Paying a small amount for something that would take me awhile to program myself, or scrap from a site, makes sense to me.

    --
    Scott Carr
  21. Re:That's easy by JWW · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here.... http://www.schedulesdirect.org/

  22. New distribution model needed by CountryGeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Until a new distribution model for the listing is devised, services like labs.zap2it.com are going to spring up, then close down due to the cost of running a bunch of servers. It's hard to monetize the data with adds, since the data in interpreted by MythTV/ReplayTV/whatever.

    Several posters have mentioned that they have programs that scrape data off of web pages. IIRC, this is the original method used by MythTV. When the load becomes great on the pages that are being scraped, those pages will change or go away.

    We need to agree on a standard (ala Bittorent) for distributing this type of static content among the users. Each MythTV user can spare some bandwidth late at night to seed others. Assuming that the cable and television companies allow it to succeed....

  23. Can I by akijikan · · Score: 3, Informative

    get modded informative for mentioning http://www.schedulesdirect.org/ like everyone else has?

  24. Re:I blame education by blurfus · · Score: 3, Informative
    I'll bite to this troll...

    You're absolutely right. We Canadians merely have to pay thousands of dollars every year whether or not we walk into a hospital. Great deal. I haven't had to use the health care system for 15 years but I've already paid the equivalent two major surgeries.

    That is no different than paying health insurance in any other country. If you don't need it, it seems like a waste. If you need it (or should I say WHEN you need it), you WILL be glad it is there. Truly, the system is heavily subsidized (from what you pay, and the services provided for the monies paid), it does not have a limit (as opposed to some insurance companies who impose lifetime maximums on certain items in their policies), and currently it is a right to every citizen and resident of the country. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

    And Canada's health care system is fabulous...so fabulous that not one nation on the planet has adopted it. Oh, and we're one of three nations on the planet -- North Korea and Cuba being the others -- that has banned private health care. Fuck profits! Yeahhh!

    I guess you missed the part about other countries' "health care system where the lives of citizens are but a minor consideration in a money-making enterprise." I think not many countries have the balls to stand up to those corporate bullies nor the wealth to absorb the costs of such heavy subsidies if a switch to public health care were to take place.

    You also neglect to mention the benefits of Canada's Health Care System: how about life expectancy? how about infant mortality rates?

    "In 2001 Canadians paid $2,163 per capita versus $4,887 U.S., according to the Los Angeles Times[...] According to Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington in Seattle, Canadians do better by every health care measure. According to a World Health Organization report published in 2003, life expectancy at birth in Canada is 79.8 years, versus 77.3 in the U.S[18]." *

    But more relevant to the topic, I will say: "yes, fuck profits by the big corporations preying on the ill, the person in need, or even the average person when they are down to their last resource (their health)"

    *source

    --
    will work for Karma
  25. appreciate your theft? by oliverthered · · Score: 3, Informative

    doesn't that depend upon copyright law.
    If the site is saying that the TV listings are facts then there not covered by copyright.
    All you have to do is transform the layout into your layout and then give them to your friends.

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  26. Re:That's easy by jridley · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because last I looked, zap2it wasn't selling subscriptions to individuals, they were talking to companies to bundle their services to many subscribers.
    That's basically what schedules direct has done; they're an interface to tmsdatadirect for free software users.
    I signed up on Sept 1. Their goal is $20/year. Right now they're higher so they can get started, and I didn't have any problem paying that little extra to help them get going.

  27. Re:That's easy by Scott+Atkinson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Couldn't agree more.

    I'm the news director of a small tv station in upstate New York, and I can back what some other posters have noted.

    There is significant (well, as significant as tv gets...) work at the tv station end in compiling and - most of all - updating schedules. I'm guessing it's half of our program director's work week.

    There are only a couple of big companies in the schedule game at this point, and my impression is that their money is in keeping everything compiled, updated and orderly - the 'writ large' version of what we do.

    So the schedules direct service (which I immediately signed up for, btw) strikes me as a good community solution for keeping a superior dvr, MythTV, from suffering a big setback.

    So it's not free as in beer - it does strengthen something that is, and free in other important ways as well.

    Scott Atkinson
    WWNY TV
    Watertown NY

    edit - In some part of the threads on this topic, someone opines that broadcasters don't want this because MythTV lets you easily skip commercials and - evil people that we are - we want to head that off at the pass.

    Fergit' it. The issue of commercial skipping is too far removed from what we deal with day to day to influence our decisions, (in other words, we don't see the consequences in the bottom line in any way we can measure)and besides, it's not clear that dvrs lead to large scale commercial skipping.