Zap2it Closing Down

[nitrogen_widget]

I really think we should just buy Sub a TV-Guide subscription & some really good OCR software so he can create his own guide for us to use.

[sub]

I really think we should just buy Sub a TV-Guide subscription & some really good OCR software so he can create his own guide for us to use.

I'll leave that as a project for one of you US/Canada guys - get it into xmltv format and you'll be able to use it in GB-PVR.

Did I mention I've got listings, so I'm sorted

[sub]

Since the only way to get data into GBPVR now is through XMLTV files, I have a few questions relating to that. XMLTV's format seems to consist of the two following things:

<channel id="I10021.labs.zap2it.com">
<display-name>254 AMC</display-name>
<display-name>254 AMC DITV518:-</display-name>
<display-name>254</display-name>
<display-name>AMC</display-name>
<display-name>AMC</display-name>
<display-name>Satellite</display-name>
</channel>

Best to only use one <display-name> tag. The "254 AMC" tag most closely matches the format used previously by zap2it, though the rest of the world seems to use the "AMC" format with the channel number separate from the name (which is also my preference). Its best to make the channel id="254" (and in corresponding programme tags), since GB-PVR will be able to use this to prepopulate the channel number.

For a channel, and..

<programme start="20070616013000 " stop="20070616020000 " channel="I30017.labs.zap2it.com">
<title lang="en">Nets Magazine</title>
<desc lang="en">Highlight show of the New Jersey Nets; interviews with players and coaches.</desc>
<category lang="en">Sports talk</category>
<category lang="en">Basketball</category>
<category lang="en">Newsmagazine</category>
<category lang="en">Limited Series</category>
<episode-num system="dd_progid">SH539087.0000</episode-num>
<audio>
<stereo>stereo</stereo>
</audio>
<subtitles type="teletext" />
</programme>

Its not going to use the <audio> or <subtitles> tags, so these arent required. The lang="en" part isnt needed. It'll also read a <sub-title> tag if present.

[fender]

I love the fact one of you complained to WelltonWay about my unethical comments here classic lol

Oh my goodness. I'm sorry sub, some people just don't have a clue.

It speaks very highly of your character that you got a laugh out of it. I hope the WelltonWay chaps enjoyed the same chuckle.

[jch]

I'm concerned about any new system and whether Canadians will be able to log into the system.

Yahoo Canada has Canadian TV listings:
http://ca.tv.yahoo.com/listings

.../j

[sub]

It speaks very highly of your character that you got a laugh out of it. I hope the WelltonWay chaps enjoyed the same chuckle.

I'm sure they didnt chuckle as much as I did (they are swedish remember ).

In my opinion, scraping listings from websites is less than ideal for many reasons, but if its the only option available to people, then they're going to do it. I scrape my listings from websites, as does every other user of a PVR application in New Zealand, and many other countries around the world - so it would be hypocritical of me to have any other view.

[Braklet]

I love the fact one of you complained to WelltonWay about my unethical comments here classic lol

Some people need a life.

Conspiracy Theory Alert!

Tribune has internal issues, and won't want to bleed from their own cash-generating information streams. (Why they never put any effort into gathering survey info is anybody's guess.) But they also wouldn't want to bleed their own commercial partners.

I bet that SageTV or someone from SnapStream got bent out of shape at GB-PVR and put pressure on them to tamp down labs.zap2it.com.

WelltonWay MMC is exclusively Scandinavian (or at least their EPG is) so it has absolutely nothing to do with the labs.zap2it.com kibosh.

[fender]

This whole topic is thoroughly depressing. I guess this is what you expect with hobbyist projects though

[jackelmatador]

As far as a solution if someone or some group could scrap data from various website then publish that as an XML file redistributed via bit torrent it would seem we have a solution. That way we won't have to worry about hitting too many servers hard, and there would be data for all groups e.g. GBPVR, Media Portal, MythTV, etc. I know the data gathering would be a slight pain, so I would be willing to pay a small one time fee or donation. The biggest problem would be there would need to be 100s of different XML listings for all the different TV franchises and what they show locally.

[kaizen]

As I posted in the BYOPVR forum:

Well I know what they said about the abuse and wanting to limit it, but I believe it's a lot of BS. At my job, I work with payment processing & membership systems. Hell, I'm even a co-designer of some of the new membership subscription/recur billing stuff we use at our company -- so I know how easy it is to do/setup.

Basically all they need to do is get a merchant account & payment gateway (generally obtained through the same company), subscribe to the membership service offered (many offer once through their payment gateway services), then password protect the folder where their EPG scripts are located, setup a few payment plans & put the join page on their site. Believe me when I say that its actually much much easier then it sounds. I do these setups all the time with clients (setting up password protecting membership services on existing sites, with both new startups, mom&pop shops and even very large companies) and literally it takes only a few hours to put in place, as long as the server info they provide is accurate. In many cases, the company the merchant hires to handle the payment stuff, is generally the same company which password protects their site's content with their membership system (like with my employer) -- unless the merchant elects to go with some off the wall custom job (like I have also seen). And its also easy to put automatic password protection on the site, to prevent against account sharing abuse and login password attacks.

Since i know this stuff pretty well, I know its not as complex, hard, time consuming or expensive as they claim it is. And I'm speaking from 8 years of personal experience doing this every day. I mean, if a new 2 person startup site can setup/use this type of stuff, then a site like Zap2It site can do it as well. Its not exactly rocket science. Honestly, I think creating/maintaining their app which tracks all that EPG data is 1000 times more complex this doing this.

Of course, this is just my viewpoint.

Well, if you look at the Zap2it Forums you'll see me saying almost the exact same thing and further pointing out that it's not they the CAN'T do it, but that they WON'T do it and why. I just finished an ecommerce subscription project and am beta testing a CMS plugin that does it. As you said, it ain't rocket science.

And then after I posted that, I immediately created another Zap2It account in case they tried to cancel the one I posted under (:p , I'll STILL get my listings!)