[mythtv-users] Data Direct Subscription Expires?

[Brad Templeton]

On Mon, Jan 03, 2005 at 10:41:08PM -0500, David Levine wrote:
> Zap2It, at least in my neck of the woods (Westchester, NY) on
> Cablevision, is the provider of the "on screen program guide" on
> channel 15.  This is for ALL cable viewers, whether or not they have a
> PVR.  It seems like the simplest thing for Zap2It is to maintain and
> provide the exact same data over DataDirect that they show
> "over-the-air".  Or are you saying that stations might provide them
> with multiple sets of data covering the same time periods, with
> instructions that one set of data is for online use and one set of
> data is for their on-screen program guide?

No, I don't think it's very likely, while of course anything is popular.

But if, as you suggest, the stations are subsidizing the distribution
of the data, then it seems strange to me that they would like to
subsidize most the PVR users, who don't watch their commercials, while
the other users (newspapers, cable/satellite on screen guides) have to
pay for the data.

In theory, if the TV stations are really paying the bills here (which
still surprises me if it's true) it certainly makes sense they might
tell Tribune not to give the data to PVR users at all, or at least
to charge them (more) for it.

If the stations did this, then of course a market would be created
for other sources of data, not provided directly by the stations.  Because
of the need to recreate it and no subsidy, it would cost a bit more.

And of course there would be screen scraping for more ad-hoc methods
like MythTV, though again, if they wanted to make screen scraping be
a nightmare to keep stable, they could do that.

All I'm saying is that eventually things have to follow the money.
Of course, this demographic data is worth something right now, and
it doesn't really cost much to provide data downloads, so perhaps
that will be enough.  (Frankly, I am rarely keen on getting stuff
free in exchange for my demographic data, it usually turns out to be
a bad deal for me.)