[mythtv] zap2it 'labs'

[Isaac Richards]

So, it seems the people at Zap2it at least partially launched their DataDirect 
service as part of their new Zap2it Labs website ( http://labs.zap2it.com ).  
They said to share the new user activation info with interested other people, 
including mailing lists, etc, so....

The datadirect stuff is basically just a way to download program listings 
directly from zap2it in an XML (not XMLTV) format instead of scraping the 
zap2it tvlistings website.  I've not done more than grab a day or two worth 
of data, yet, but it's much more complete (actor names, better categories, 
better episode info) and much faster than the data we currently get with 
tv_grab_na.  It _seems_ to be a free service so far - the FAQ on their forums 
indicates that all you have to do is fill out a survey form every 3 months to 
'subscribe' to things..  Dunno how long that'll last or whatnot, but, still 
seems to be pretty decent..

Anyway, while this isn't useful with mythtv _yet_, I'm hoping someone with 
some extra time on their hands will write some code to allow mythfilldatabase 
to grab the listings and understand their XML format.  I'll get to it myself 
eventually, but if someone else can contribute support code for this, it'd be 
a most welcome addition.  I don't think it'd be terribly hard, but full 
support will probably require some database schema changes.  Regardless, I 
want better data =)

If anyone's interested, the certificate code for new users to sign up that 
they gave me is:    ZIYN-DQZO-SBUT

Isaac