NPVR TV Guide

[sub]

Thanks Handyman, but that's the link I was trying and they are dead links. I do however appreciate your help. :-)

I just checked the link, and it's fine here.

[itgreen9@gmail.com]

honestly, yes, Schedules Direct is really your only supported option for tv listings in north America (it's available in many other countries now as well). It's a non-profit paid service setup specifically to provide EPG data to users of free tv software. The data isn't free. When you get tv listing data for free by another means, you're stealing it (ok, violating the license or terms of service).

mc2xml was a somewhat reliable and easy way to mis-appropriate microsoft's media center epg data for quite awhile, and of course many felt that they'd paid for Windows and therefore paid for the use of the epg data however they wanted, nevermind what microsoft's license said to the contrary. but that appears to be over for now.

johnsonx42 first let me say thank you for your response. I appreciate your answer regardless of how I feel about it. And believe me I know you don't make these rules so I in no way am blaming or accusing you...

With that said, I will begin probably my one and only rant. It is in reference to "stealing"... This data is free, 100%. Every single television station wants you to have it. It is part of how they promote their product. I know this because I work for television. This information is located on their websites, in some news papers, and if you call they will fax or email a copy of it to you. This information is also located on sites like tv guide and zap2it at no charge. The whole idea of tv listings being something you have to purchase is BS to me, they are not proprietary in anyway.

The part that may be in question is the software that gets it to the tuner in your device. Now when I purchased my HD Homerun it said channel listings were part of the product. It said nothing about needing a paid service in order to get them into the product. If anything, I was ripped off when purchasing an item that does not do as it claims it would. This claim has not become an issue until now.

Again, I do thank you and I am sure you were just passing on information, but I must stand by principals. I refuse to pay for something that is free. To me, they are stealing from me. If there is no way to pull channels in without giving someone $25/year I will go without. You guys have been absolutley wonderful with all the help and service you have provided.

Thank you.

[itgreen9@gmail.com]

I just checked the link, and it's fine here.

Hmmmm... It leads me here http://www.hostinger.co.uk/?
Perhaps I am missing something.

[sub]

It doesn't redirect me anywhere. I end up at http://zap2xml.hosterbox.net/, which is a page telling you how to set it up, command line options, download links and the change history.

[itgreen9@gmail.com]

Handyman, I do get that page. Maybe then I don't need to download the links at the bottom. So then where is the zap2xml file? I guess I'm confused on how that is created.

[sub]

I'm not handyman, but just below the command line options there are two download buttons, they both seem to initiate a download. I didn't actually download them though.

[itgreen9@gmail.com]

Those are the downloads I'm clicking that take me to dead pages. And I am sorry if I called you by the wrong name. I am doing like 5 things at once ;-)

[johnsonx42]

itgreen9 you say the program guide information is free and that the tv stations want you to have it... I suppose you're right in a narrow sense: the information is indeed available for free. I suggest you call each TV station, ask them to fax you their program information for each week, then manually type it into an .xml file for import into nextpvr. too much work? making it less work is what someone has to pay for. the websites that display the data for free surely had to pay someone else for the data, and they support their website by displaying ads; their terms of use therefore say you can't just scrape the data off their site and skip the ads (obviously it's no big deal if one person does it... but it rapidly becomes a problem if 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 do it). schedules direct has a non-trivial investment in servers, programming time and ongoing labor costs in order to provide the data in the form that you need it; but I guess they're stealing from you.

don't get me wrong, I'm not on my high horse about this, I used mc2xml for a long time and have helped many people get it setup, though I did pay for schedules direct for some years as well. at the moment I use schedules direct courtesy of a free subscription code I received in part so I could help test the new schedules direct api support last year (which must be about to expire, so I will be paying for it again soon).

the larger point I was trying to make is that because Schedules Direct is the only legitimate (licensed, legal, supported, whatever words you want to use) provider of EPG data for north America for use by any random program that cares to implement it's API, it's the only one that can be reliably supported here. everything else is essentially some sort of hack that is prone to breaking because they are accessing data in a way not intended nor supported by the provider. if you can get zap2xml or mc2xml or something else to work and create a valid xmltv file with current and future listings, then great, nextpvr will import that data quite reliably.

(I also can't get either of the downloads on that zap2xml page to work)

[Zeb]

Perhaps your browsers are too modern: The downloads work with good ole IE9, which is the highest Microsoft will allow for much-maligned Vista.

As one of the relative few who had a legitimate claim to the Microsoft legacy data (XP MCE no longer supported anyway, Windows 7 and 8 have a newer guide service), I have taken a somewhat different tack by tracking down and installing the long-lost TV Pack 2008 that Microsoft decided to deny us. Its Clear QAM support and ability to utilize the same new Rovi data as Windows 7 seem to be just what the doctor ordered in my case. In fact I feel no real need for NextPVR at the moment, not being one who thinks TV needs to be streamed to multiple devices (my house ain't that big). However I foresee a Windows 10 PC in my future so I wouldn't want to burn any bridges! I kind of regret missing the whole Windows 7 experience, Windows 8 not so much...

The OP and other mc2xml users may not be fully aware of what has happened: http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/view...d6b8f44b81

This has affected users of other PVR sotware, e.g. MediaPortal: http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/thread...em.131337/

[Handy.Man]

From http://zap2xml.hosterbox.net/ this is the download link I get http://zap2xml.hol.es/?h=gvj3jca

From http://zap2xml.awardspace.info/ I get this download link http://zap2xml.hol.es/?h=h8akuy2

maybe you antivirus is blocking zap2xml.hol.es ...