[mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Sat Jan 7 17:31:47 UTC 2006


John Biundo wrote:

> <rant>
> Of all the parts and pieces of MythTV, this has been the hardest to 
> deal with, the most frustrating, and the scariest.  My cable provider 
> isn't listed at zap2it labs, though apparently they WERE there up 
> until a few weeks ago when, according to another subscriber's post, 
> they mysteriously disappeared.  I've had ZERO response from zap2it 
> despite patient, polite e-mails and posts on the forum.  I remain very 
> nervous that my $800 + 30+ hours investment in MythTV is riding on 
> this very shaky foundation.
>
> Right now I'm working through a procedure to hack my database to 
> generate the right listings for my cable provider from a nearby 
> competitor of theirs.  This has been most frustrating, and is 
> complicated by the fact that now, apparently, I can't even get 
> reliable downloads from zap2it.
> </rant>

In the interest of fair time...

That being said, I have to say that TMS has greatly exceeded my 
expectations when it comes to DataDirect.  Whereas most companies 
dealing with an open-source project that's screen-scraping their HTML 
pages simply keep changing the HTML to break the screen scrapers (can 
you imagine having to upgrade XMLTV once a week to the most-current 
development version?), TMS added the new DataDirect service as a win-win 
solution, instead.  DataDirect gives us more data than the HTML pages 
did, and the data is far more reliable.  And, they're not charging us 
for the use of that service (other than a survey linked to a 
username/e-mail).

There are a lot of things that TMS could have done instead of 
DataDirect, but I'm thankful they've allowed me to continue to use their 
data.  I realize that it may be frustrating to be unable to get Myth 
working for the first time because of a temporary outage of DataDirect, 
but overall, since TMS set up DataDirect, it has been extremely reliable 
and has helped to make my Myth box very useful to me.

Mike

Oh, and BTW, please make sure you're not screen-scraping zap2it (or any 
other TMS-owned TV listings site).


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