Zap2it No longer available Sept 1, 2007

[glensh]

I haven't seen any discussion in the forums regarding the announcement that Zap2it is ending it tv listing service for personal use on September 1, 2007.

I think many users (inlcuding myself) would be willing to pay a small fee every month for the service if that would help keep it up and running.

What are the other options for TV listings for North Americaout for GBPVR? XmlTv?

[sub]

There is a thread about it in the General Discussion forum: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...post203374

[paperchaser]

Just in case a reliable solution isn't found in time...can someone refresh my memory on how to schedule programs if the tv guide is empty?

In our house we pretty much just rely on automatic recordings, i.e. same channel, same time, same day, week in week out. If we were temporarily without show names and descriptions we can live with that. just by the date and time of the file i'll know which program is which.

But can we still have those kinds of scheduled (channel, time, day) recordings with the gbpvr recording service or do we "gasp" have to go back to the hauppage scheduler?

I was thinking that if gpbvr couldn't do this, I could create a "dummy" xml file of listings to import...basically just a copy of old listings with new dates so scheduled recordings would still go...

[elite]

Just in case a reliable solution isn't found in time...can someone refresh my memory on how to schedule programs if the tv guide is empty?

Manual recording (in the recordings page)

In our house we pretty much just rely on automatic recordings, i.e. same channel, same time, same day, week in week out. If we were temporarily without show names and descriptions we can live with that. just by the date and time of the file i'll know which program is which.

But can we still have those kinds of scheduled (channel, time, day) recordings with the gbpvr recording service or do we "gasp" have to go back to the hauppage scheduler?

Yes, just change the record type when setting up the manual recording

[paperchaser]

Are you talking about the web-based interface?

[sub]

No, he's talking about the 'manual rec' button on the Recordings screen.

[UncleJohnsBand]

Just read all 15 pages (current count) over at Zap2It......I am smelling a marketing ploy to move from a free to subscription/service fee model.....which I think is a good idea.....probably overdo....

They have effectively done what the banks did with the cards that let you get money out of a machine.......

--- We want you to use this free card because it will help reduce our costs so we don't need to have as many tellers. You can get money anytime you want at any machine.....the savings we will receive in lower personnel and administrative costs will help us provided better services and better rates.......

Then after the cards became part of the social environment and people really could not function effectively without them they introduced the dreaded "access fee". People pay this all the time for the convenience of the service. ---

Since it worked for the banking industry I am sure it will work for Zap2It labs as well.

[pcostanza]

Just read all 15 pages (current count) over at Zap2It......I am smelling a marketing ploy to move from a free to subscription/service fee model.....which I think is a good idea.....probably overdo....

They have effectively done what the banks did with the cards that let you get money out of a machine.......

--- We want you to use this free card because it will help reduce our costs so we don't need to have as many tellers. You can get money anytime you want at any machine.....the savings we will receive in lower personnel and administrative costs will help us provided better services and better rates.......

Then after the cards became part of the social environment and people really could not function effectively without them they introduced the dreaded "access fee". People pay this all the time for the convenience of the service. ---

Since it worked for the banking industry I am sure it will work for Zap2It labs as well.

I couldn't agree more! Maybe a month will go by after the deadline and it will be resurrected. By then though, many will have gone the xlmtv route.

[rowle1jt]

Zap2It has come out and said that they are NOT willing to change over a fee based system...

[Braklet]

You have to consider what Tribune Media Services does for a living. We sit here thinking "sure, I'd pay US$5/month, of course they could make money! I'd love to have people paying ME that!" But the commercial licensing fees are a couple orders of magnitude higher than that, and TMS still demands a cut per user or market. TMS isn't interested in serving Joe Blow PVR user directly.

I honestly believe that this move was partially due to their current commercial partners (M$, SnapStream, SageTV among others) getting irritated at hobby PVR projects and putting pressure on TMS to close the free back door.

I don't believe a new commercial provider of low cost subscription EPG services would get favorable terms from TMS, because of commercial partner dissatisfaction.

What'll happen is that we will start POUNDING all the free web EPGs with new strippers and the EPG war will enter a new phase.