[mythtv-users] Alternative to Zap2It?

[Michael T. Dean]

Donavan Stanley wrote:

>On 4/21/05, Preston Crow <pc-mythtv05 at crowcastle.net> wrote:
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>>Ultimately, however, going straight to the source should get you the
>>best data with the fewest licensing issues. 
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>Except for the other technical hurdles, and the fact that 100
>different sources means 100 diffferent versions of series/episode IDs
>and the like (if they're even there).
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>>I don't care about the mass market.  I'm in the do-it-yourself market.
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>Do-it-yourself doesn't need to mean half-assed.
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If you really mean, "do-it-myself," nothing is stopping you. ;)  You can 
use XMLTV to download DataDirect data to an XML file, write your own 
screen scrapers to pull data from your local channels and Comedy Central 
and put it into XMLTV format, then use XMLTV tools (i.e. tv_cat) to 
concatenate the files, then use "mythfilldatabase --file" to import the 
data.  You could do this manually every day, or write some scripts to 
automate the process.

Unfortunately, since the XMLTV data does not always include as much 
information as the DataDirect data (depending on grabber--and especially 
until the grabbers start using the 0.6 DTD), you'll find that you lose a 
lot of useful/valuable information over downloading using the built-in 
DataDirect support in mythfilldatabase.  If the benefits of this 
approach outweight the cost (information loss), the you just need to 
continue to maintain your screen scrapers and scripts.  If the 
information loss is too great a cost, you could always modify the 
mythfilldatabase source to support conditionally pulling more data from 
XMLTV files (provided it exists in the file); however, since much of the 
extra information can only be properly represented in the 0.6 DTD, you 
may find yourself updating the XMLTV grabber to provide 0.6-formatted 
XML and updating mythfilldatabase to support the 0.6 DTD all the while 
maintaining your scrapers and scripts...

If, instead, you meant the more general "do-it-yourself"--i.e. 
someone-else figures out how to screen-scrape the websites, writes the 
code, compiles the code, and, when it comes to installing the RPM's, I 
"do-it-myself"--good luck finding the people to do the first few steps.  
:)  Few people include very much "do-it-myself" in "do-it-yourself," so 
if--when confronted with the prospect of maintaining all that extra code 
"myself"--it doesn't seem quite so worthwhile, you're starting to see 
things from the viewpoint of the MythTV/XMLTV developers...  :)

Just my 2 cents.  Note that I'm not trying to attack anyone 
personally--just trying to present some of the issues in a 
"close-to-home" approach.  (Since I've been away from the lists for 
several months, this is probably a very bad way to start getting back 
into them...)

Mike