Free EPG?

[sterlicious]

So I only accidentally stumbled upon this whole Zap2It closing today. Is Schedules Direct the only option for now? Are there any free alternatives? It's kind of annoying to pay $5/month for Schedules Direct when I could just as easily rent a DVR for that much and get rid of my loud computer.

I'm also wondering if it would be cheaper (long-term) to just buy something like Beyond TV?

[sub]

ScheduleDirect is the easiest option, and will be cheaper than the current $15/month within no time. Their target is $20 per year, but they need the numbers to sign up before they can commit to a lower price.

There are some alternative free EPG options, but they require quite a bit more work on your part. You can find a summary here: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manual/EPG

Otherwise you could do as you suggest and rent a cable company DVR or buy BeyondTV.

[ahx]

While GBPVR is awesome there is no substitute to the simplicity and stability of a cable/sat dvr imo. i use gbpvr for everything else.

[sterlicious]

Thanks Sub. I hadn't checked the Wiki...

[-Oz-]

Let us know if you have any issues with the free EPG makers

[5058]

Reading on Schedules Direct's website , they state that they have already got enough subscriptions to meet their "break even" point so I suspect they will adjust pricing soon. $5 month is ok. I prefer GBPVR over the cable companies for many reasons , mostly stabilty and the ease of doing what you want with the recordings (burning to DVD etc)

[antialias]

I haven't used many of the commercial DVRs, but a GBPVR/MythTV setup is worth it to me JUST for the automatic commercial removal and not having to skip forward manually. If you didn't already have a PC setup, then I might consider going to a commercial solution, but otherwise it's a step backwards.

If you're worried about sound, you can spend less than $100 and make your PC nearly silent.

[gangaskan]

i'm using the yahoo EPG scrapper and it works great. you can do epg updates as soon as you configure it.

[User]

I almost went with Yahoo scraper but decided to support schedulesdirect. I feel supporting the non-profit and shareware community will help ensure a long life of the projects. Yahoo could pull the plug at any time.

[sub]

Reading on Schedules Direct's website , they state that they have already got enough subscriptions to meet their "break even" point so I suspect they will adjust pricing soon. $5 month is ok. I prefer GBPVR over the cable companies for many reasons , mostly stabilty and the ease of doing what you want with the recordings (burning to DVD etc)

They've told me they'll look at the pricing three months after the service starts, so a price change is not going happen for quite a while yet.

They still need a lot more users before they'd be able to support the target $20 per year, so I'd encourage users hoping to use Schedules Direct to not hold off in hopes of a price drop (otherwise the price wont drop, or not as much).