[mythtv-users] Zap2It needs our help

[myth at petedavis.net]

> Request a listing?  It's not just a list of channels for a particular
> region/provider.  My listing has a bunch of channels removed (HSN, ESPN,
> etc) that I will never watch.  The only thing the request says is "hi,
> I'm xris, give me lineup number 1"..   Even if you were proxying the
> entire request, you'd end up storing EVERYONE'S personal lineups, since
> the specific data isn't passed back and forth.
>
> Oh, and the whole point of connecting datadirect and downloading stuff
> daily is because stuff changes on a daily basis.  So if you're caching
> my specific file for more than a day, it's useless to me.  And if you're
> only saving it for a day, then all you've done is become a middleman for
> the download, and wasted bandwidth by proxying something I could just as
> easily have downloaded directly.
>
> If they get so many people downloading that distributing the download
> times is still too much of a problem, they'll upgrade the server, or add
> another.  That's how businesses work.
>
> -Chris

Chris,

   With the current protocol, yes, you're probably correct, but with some
minor additions to the protocol, this wouldn't have to be the case.

    Instead of holding your particular lineup, a proxy/mirror, would hold
the data for a region and perhaps even just a subset of channels. You would
got o Zap2It. It would authenticate you and you would make your request for
your lineup. It could then figure out which mirrors have the actual listing
data that meets your lineup requirements and then pass the actual transfer
of the lineup off to those mirrors.

    By doing this, the authentication point stays with Zap2It, but the
actual transfer of the data is handled by mirrors.

    If a mirror didn't have the actual data, it could then go back to the
Zap2It server for the data, but since other people would be asking for the
same channel data at some point down the road, the mirrors would effectively
remove that load from the server.

    For this to work, the Zap2It server would clearly have to be modified
since it would also have to periodically ping the other servers to determine
if they're still up, among other things. You don't want to be sending people
off to dead servers.

Pete