Zap2it Closing Down

[madcat]

There is a service call TV-Now that you can download 1 month of data from. It costs $30 a year. I downloaded the free program but it looks cheezy. I am not sure if we can get to the data or not. You can get a test download of data by e-mailing them. It is part of the TV-Guide family. Here is a link. http://www.tv-now.com/whatis.htm

Also no Canada...

[flyswatta]

If the yahoo app is running GBPVR can not use the tuner. This will really suck because I think you have to have Yhaoo set to "record in background" to get teh aut EPG updates. With that running, GBPVR can't use the tuner.

I'm installing it now. What happens if I choose not to configure a tuner? It seems to be downloading the data just fine without a tuner configured. (still no locals - I had to go with the national Dish Network listings).

It's taken over 20 minutes and it's about 40% done configuring the listings. I should have delselected all of them, and only selected a few for testing. Sheesh.

[soccerdad]

$30/year seems like a reasonable price to me. However, if I'm paying for the data, I'd be pickier about availabilty, accuracy of listings etc.

The thing that interested me was this statement "The schedules are downloaded into your PC to use whenever you need them. (Windows and DOS versions available. Sorry, no Mac.)" With that said, I don't see how they could have an issue with you using the data for what ever you want.

I still think the DVB solution may be the best once sub can breath and work out the Dish EPG. A nice clean native solution would rock. It likely would also work for Canada (but you would need a dish etc...) We have time and it looks like there will be a few short term solutions to use.

[flyswatta]

I ended up killing the process and re-running the wizard with only 10 channels selected. It took about 3 minutes to complete. I noticed that you can't minimize the app - it went full screen. I did a "show desktop" which minimized it. I still haven't configured a tuner so the app won't let me see the tv guide listings.

The docs say they will update the data every day, so I'm going to leave it minimized and see if it updates the tv listings. Also, since I didn't configure a tuner, I was able to record on both of my PVR150's.

[ioan]

one more question for the tv schedule masters :-)
look at the start_time, what do you think it means? I suppose 1326 is 1:26 PM, but then what -54 means??

Code:

- <Schedule>
  <program_id>5546106</program_id>
  <station_id>14013</station_id>
  <start_time>1206</start_time>
  <end_time>1266</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>5391316</program_id>
  <station_id>14013</station_id>
  <start_time>1266</start_time>
  <end_time>1326</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>1165159</program_id>
  <station_id>14013</station_id>
  <start_time>1326</start_time>
  <end_time>1446</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>1185504</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
[B]  <start_time>-54</start_time> [/B]
  <end_time>126</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>3764263</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>126</start_time>
  <end_time>156</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>1133218</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>156</start_time>
  <end_time>276</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>1196935</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>276</start_time>
  <end_time>456</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>3764263</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>456</start_time>
  <end_time>486</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>15292</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>486</start_time>
  <end_time>516</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>1840003</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>516</start_time>
  <end_time>636</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>1132959</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>636</start_time>
  <end_time>726</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>4909003</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>726</start_time>
  <end_time>756</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>
- <Schedule>
  <program_id>4909003</program_id>
  <station_id>14086</station_id>
  <start_time>756</start_time>
  <end_time>786</end_time>
  <hd>N</hd>
  <stereo>N</stereo>
  <cc>Y</cc>
  <tv_rating>TVG</tv_rating>
  </Schedule>

or is that value connected to BaseTime?

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <ProgramDataCollection xmlns="http://www.titantv.com/services/dataservice">
  <ErrorCode>0</ErrorCode>
  <ErrorDescription>OK</ErrorDescription>
- <ProgramData>
  <BaseTime>2007-06-22 19:54:00</BaseTime>
  <ProviderId>A_62018</ProviderId>
  <StationCount>71</StationCount>
  <ScheduleCount>1990</ScheduleCount>
  <ProgramCount>1326</ProgramCount>
- <Stations>

Thanks,
-ioan

[madcat]

going back to the Canadian options for a sec...
I looked a bit further at http://couchville.com

it shouldnt be rocket sience to scrape and convert it XMLTV. But there's one thing concerns me:
There are two types of request. One is "GetEpisodeTiles" which seems to return a bulk of titles (not sure yet how to get what, but it returns lots of them at once). But the other is "GetEpisodeInformation" which has to be run per each program.

That means, even looking at a day-worth of data (assuming on the long run we run only incremental days or something), and even with my poor 70-something channels, this is on average:
70 * 24 * [2 shows in hour on avg?] = 3360 requests.
that's 23K a week...

do you guys think this by itself should stop me from investing in this?

[sub]

That means, even looking at a day-worth of data (assuming on the long run we run only incremental days or something), and even with my poor 70-something channels, this is on average:
70 * 24 * [2 shows in hour on avg?] = 3360 requests.
that's 23K a week...
do you guys think this by itself should stop me from investing in this?

No. The NZ xmltv grabber does a similar number of requests. It's probably worth implementing some sort of cache directory though so that after the initial population you're only updating listings for the next 24 hours and the last 24 hours, or something similiar.

[pastro]

one more question for the tv schedule masters :-)
look at the start_time, what do you think it means? I suppose 1326 is 1:26 PM, but then what -54 means??
-ioan

I'm guessing 54 minutes before midnight. 11:06p.
All times are probably gmt and need to be adjusted for timezone and DST if applicable.

[ioan]

I'm guessing 54 minutes before midnight. 11:06p.
All times are probably gmt and need to be adjusted for timezone and DST if applicable.

Found the answer myself, start_time is minutes *from* the base time. if is negative value, that means the show started before the base time.

Thanks!
-ioan

[ram4x4nut]

So far i think the yahoo app is not going to work, and I really don't like that it will end up being a semi-manual operation. Personally I think the TitanTV route is the way to go. I was looking at Titan's website and it looks like anyone can create an account to use the service, no need to be a Haup card owner.