[mythtv-users] Alternative to Zap2It?

[John Sturgeon]

Preston Crow wrote:

>On Thu, 2005-04-21 at 11:26, Joe Votour wrote:
>  
>
>>As much as I hate to say it, if Zap2It stopped
>>providing the free data, then (likely) one of two
>>things would happen:
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>2. We'd go back to using screen scrapers (back before
>>the first version of MythTV that natively supported
>>Zap2It).  This was somewhat painful, as I remember
>>guide downloads were taking up to 20 minutes per day,
>>and it was a real bandwidth hog to Zap2It (which is
>>why they gave us direct access in the first place).
>>    
>>
>
>What I would really like to see if we go back to screen scrapers is the
>ability to use a separate one for each channel. 
>

That would be a nightmare from a coding standpoint.  There's no 
accounting for Timezone information, and no standard way to parse the 
metadata for the shows.  You'd have to manually map the data from each 
page to the database, and whenever somebody decides to change the URL or 
the page layout, your guide would break, or load incorrect data, etc...

The only way screen scrapers can be successful for the mass market is if 
they scrape guides, which already aggregate the data quite efficiently.

-- 
John Sturgeon <><
http://www.sturgeonfamily.com/mythtv.php