[mythtv-users] Zap2It needs our help

[myth at petedavis.net]

> Indeed, overly complex is more like it.
>
> All you'd have to do is write a small SOAP handler that proxies between
> your server an zap2it.   When someone makes a request for a listing, if
> you don't already have that time period / region downloaded and cached,
> then you get it from zap2it. Otherwise, you serve your cached copy. Then
> you just flush old data every few days. It is not that difficult.
>
> The only part that is even moderatly complicated is the fact that data
> direct stores your region on the server with a username / pw. Anyone
> who  wanted to use this system would have to accept that their zap2it
> account data would be cached on the proxy server as well ( as in, first
> time you connect to proxy, it uses your username / pw to download your
> region info and cache it. Then you just update the cache every few days ).
>
> The code behind all this is quite simple. You could even do it on a
> single PHP / Perl CGI.
>

Jason,

  I agree. Using a caching system would probably do the job and would
provide a significant bandwidth saving for them. Again, going to my idea of
having all the requests initially going to their server and redirected to
the "proxies/mirrors", the actual authentication and preferences could be
done through their site. They could distribute different regions to
different mirrors, so that if you redirect people from the same region to
the same set of mirrors, those mirrors would be more likely to keep the data
cached and further reduce their bandwidth issues.

I agree that it doesn't have to be terribly complex, though it might be
beneficial for them to modify their interface slightly to accomodate the
redirection stuff.

If the mirrors only accepted redirected traffic, they would then be able to
maintain control and not have to worry as much about the IP issues of data.

Pete