How Much Would You Pay For EPG Data?

[madcat]

Its a form of advert so you can see what they are broadcasting. It's in THEIR interest to have you watching, its how they make their revenue by getting viewing figures for the adverts in the shows.
To extend the logic, EPG data to PVRs provides a more reliable veiwer as it makes sure the viewer gets the program (and adverts) over the "casual" viewer who might miss the show.
You would think that the broadcasters would be pushing for a good EPG service for their product.

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[ACTCMS]

You would think that the broadcasters would be pushing for a good EPG service for their product.

Spot on... let's not miss the point here. Broadcasters have a duty to their shareholders to maximise the value of their investment. Since ratings contribute greatly to this value, I would suggest that thay also have a duty to publish program information in whatever forms are available to them - including EPG. After all most shop bought set-top boxes rely on EPGs. It is incredible that anyone should even consider paying for program advertising material.

comskip

Sorry but IMHO this is not really relevant, since most of the above STBs don't have this facility and I am sure that the volume of STBs in use vastly outnumber our rigs. As to bypassing the commercials while watching recorded content, most people will still reach for the remote (or go get another beer )

If the worse comes to the worst, I'm sure that all the PVR communities could get together and create a wiki based EPG which we could all take turns to keep up to date simply by keying in the data from our local listings mag

[nitrogen_widget]

I allready pay for EPG with my TIVO. errr.

From research on the net, the majority of TV stations send their program data to services that redistribute it to other services like zap2it.

[ACTCMS]

I allready pay for EPG with my TIVO. errr.

That's to do with the way TIVO was designed - remember, they were early to the HD PVR game. Still doesn't mean that the TV companies shouldn't supply EPGs for free.

The trick may be to hold out... I'm UK DVB-T - The first STB (Daewoo) I got had a now/next only EPG, then they started flashing up an offer of a full 7 day guide for a one time fee of £4.99 - for this they would give you a 4 digit code to unlock the facility (well, I tried for months to crack the code, but you only got three goes at it on any one day - never made it :o ). I've since bought another two STBs and they already came with 7 day EPGs and rightly so - after all, UK DVB-T broadcasters publish their info over the signal. I doubt if you could sell a STB in the UK if it didn't have a 7 day.

[goober56]

Thank god for Usenet. I can wait a day or less and DL whatever show I want to watch. (I'm not sure of the legalities of this) However, its in HD already, commercials cut and no overhead on running a second PC.

I am convinced (even only after a couple days past the Z2L announcement) that there will be no easy solution and we'll be jumping through hoops in order to get to work as smoothly as we had previously. Whether its scraping, or abusing some account at some obscure listings service or whatever.

GBPVR is fantastic software, and I'll be sad to see it go from my soon to be ex-PVRPC. In fact I'll be selling my Haup PVR-250 along with my MediaMVP and installing used Xboxs to stream from my exPVRPC.

Sad, sad day. But I wonder how much pressure was put on them to kill the free listings from people like Tivo, and drum up some bullshit remark.

[herrmannj]

you get what you pay for.
I think its ok to pay a little fee for reliable epg data - as I do (german tv movie).

[DaRacerz]

One thing that has me interested with this news, is what about the local providers? Like for instance, I know my local tv provider has TV listings posted on the web for all customers to view for their markets. Granted, this may and probably is not in EPG form. So that may be an option for some.

[nitrogen_widget]

One thing that has me interested with this news, is what about the local providers? Like for instance, I know my local tv provider has TV listings posted on the web for all customers to view for their markets. Granted, this may and probably is not in EPG form. So that may be an option for some.

Well, they obviously put it on their websites dynamically.
Probably via an XML file that the website reads & displays.
They could probably easily make this source file downloadable but don't for some reasons.