Zap2it Closing Down

[digimon]

It's cheaper just pay your cable company a monthly fee for DVR service. I don't know what I am going to do. I really like GBPVR, but I do not want to pay for the EPG service. Is Yahoo my only other option?

[Ted the Penguin]

or MCE, possibly titantv... but that option is probably gonna disappear soon

[dvasco]

I can't go without commercial skip, being able to play networked video, or an integrated mediaMVP server. My only options will be using the Yahoo Go guide importer or going with SageTV.

[wtg]

It's cheaper just pay your cable company a monthly fee for DVR service. I don't know what I am going to do. I really like GBPVR, but I do not want to pay for the EPG service. Is Yahoo my only other option?

Maybe. Networked gbpvr can serve multiple players, something the cable boxes don't do yet. A DVR cable box in each of my kids bedrooms, on my landing and in my living room where I have TVs would be much more expensive. For $5/month I think the service is a bargain.

[sub]

It'll also get significantly cheaper than $5/month when they reach the required numbers. The goal is $20 a year, ie $1.67 per month, or maybe even cheaper.

[Gameross]

The new schedules direct service sounds good to me. $15/3 months up front with a goal to lower it to $20/year sounds like a very small price to pay to not have to deal with screen scrapers, etc.

No one lowers their price if they're getting it.

[bdgbill]

No one lowers their price if they're getting it.

Schedules Direct is not a profit making corporation. They have applied for 501C non-profit status.

The only thing they can do with any "extra" money is use it to improve the service.

Again.....The people that set this up did not do it as a money making enterprise. They are DIY PVR builders / users who just wanted to keep their boxes running.

[-Oz-]

If you don't want to pay there are other options around anyway. I'll prolly pay to see how SD is but i'm gonna have to use my own free option because I have two different locations with media pcs. Currently i can't even sign up for SD though.

[dinki]

Here's the part that I don't understand. About 8 years ago I bought a copy of Snapstream/BeyondTV. With the purchase of their software you get TV listings free for life. I paid $75 for the program. So calculating that out you get 8 years * 12 months/year = 96 months. $75/96 = $.78 per month cost for both the program and the tv listings. This seems significantly better than $5 per month or even the yet-to-be-implemented price drop of $1.67 per month ($20 per year).

So in the long run you could be much better off purchasing SageTV for ~$80 and continue use their 'listings for life' data with GBPvr. From what I understand you can download XML listings from Sage but BTV does not have XML listings AFAIK.

This is just an alternative way at looking at things. I sure don't need ANOTHER monthly charge no matter how noble the premise behind the business may be. I'm frugal to a fault sometimes though. There's always screen scraping for those who don't want to spend any money.

[sub]

These companies got in and made their agreements with zap2it back in the early days when there were very small markets for this data, and nowhere near as much value attached to this data. That said, I do suspect these companies have seen some increases in the cost of the data, since their prices have gone up and they charge for upgrades these days, but probably nowhere near what Schedules Direct have to pay.

Zap2it know exactly how many people have been using the free service over recent years, and have obviously done the math to see how much they can milk the market for. Schedules Direct have to cover their costs, but will make the price as low as they can, as quickly as they can.

BTW, I'm fairly sure Sage have not said listing for life, and have always said that they reserve the right start charging for listings again (like their early days). I'm sure they'd only do this though if their wasnt enough profit being generated to easily cover their listing costs. Schedules Direct is not selling PVR software, so is unable to do the same by using the profits from this to cover the costs of listings.