zap2it: 13 Days of Data Available Again

[capone]

(try to show some restraint and wait for your next scheduled update, and not pour through the reopened floodgates)

13 Days of Data Available Again

Based on the feedback we've received from the scale-back to 3 days of data, as well as our data analysis, we have reset Zap2it Labs DataDirect to allow downloads of up to 13 days. This change was implemented at 4:15 p.m. on Monday, 2/13/06.

We did lessen the strain on our servers with the move to three days, but on balance, we felt that the adverse impact to end user applications outweighed our performance/availability gains.

Importantly, the underlying technical issues are not addressed -- we are simply delaying things a bit by returning to the previous settings. We will be soliciting the input of you, the Zap2it Labs community, on ideas and possible changes to the service to improve performance/availability. Look for that discussion in another thread. Thanks for your feedback and patience in this process!

[bhays]

Yahoo...I am going to change my automatic update time to try and be a good citizen...any recommendations as to what a non-loaded time is?

[daphatty]

I think it is time to develop a primer for Zap2It. A way to not only explain the nuances of the EPG but also how to be a responsible leecher. After all, we are leeching.

[pBS]

hmmm,on that note,i was wondering if it would be good incentive to split the processing?
meaning, why do most people schedule processing in non-primetime hours?
cuz they don't want it to mess with watching tv...but downloads aren't very taxing on the system, processing is...i believe we could download while watching tv without too much interference, and delay the processing till the middle of the night and make everybody happy
was thinkng about switching to xmltv interface to allow this cuz the built-in zap2it interface doesn't..[plus i could keep the new channels from self adding..lol]
[would be better if had a seperate selection in config for both times..d/l and process.]
any thoughts?

[capone]

Yahoo...I am going to change my automatic update time to try and be a good citizen...any recommendations as to what a non-loaded time is?

I think the site says somwhere, but if I remember, it was busiest from 3am-8am, or something in that range. The most helpful thing would be to go from 12pm-10pm I'm guessing.

[Lucas_24]

I'm not positive on this, but it also appears that the data is downloaded for each tuner. I have 4 tuners with the same lineup, it would cut my leeching by 1/4 if the user name for the account was considered when downloadeding the lineup. keep the data around during the update process in case another tuner has the same lineup.

If this is NOT how it works disregard, for some reason I thought I saw it doing this when reinstalled my sytem about two months ago.

[User]

I set my update time to 2:00pm U.S. Pacific time, I did have it set to 2:00am. If everyone would shift their update time the problem for their servers would be lessened. I think this may be the lesson they are trying to drive home.

[ydekmekji]

What timezone are we talking about when we say the site is busiest between this time and that time?

[chud]

people should also probably not set their d/l times to XX:00. creates big spikes on the hour. better to use XX:32 or something which appears more random.

[turkey]

people should also probably not set their d/l times to XX:00. creates big spikes on the hour. better to use XX:32 or something which appears more random.

how do you set gbpvr to do this? Every time i try to set the minutes in the config utility, it just changes the hour instead. I tried in the config xml as well and that didnt seem to do anything.