[mythtv-users] Supporting schedulesdirect.org

David Brodbeck gull at gull.us
Thu Aug 9 16:43:33 UTC 2007


On Aug 9, 2007, at 6:22 AM, Jeff Simpson wrote:
> - Apart from the terms of agreement, what prevents a user from signing
> up for an account, downloading the data every day, and allowing others
> to get the data from him for free?

Technically, the question isn't "what prevents a user from doing  
it?"  The question is, "how do you catch a user who's doing it?"   
What prevents them is a credible threat that their account will be  
disabled if they do it.

>
> - Are accounts per-machine, per-household, or something else? What
> prevents me from pooling together a few thousand of my close friends
> on mythtv-users to get one account?

My guess is if we're all a little patient and wait for the terms of  
service to be posted, much of this will become clear.

>
> - Since labs.Zap2It and MythTV were both free services, anything that
> went wrong was considered just another expected glitch in the free
> software world. If schedulesdirect is going to be a paid service,
> expectations are going up. What kind of customer service, reliability
> and data quality should we expect for our payment?

Again, I think we need to wait for the TOS.  But my guess is that if  
something goes wrong, SchedulesDirect will have a lot more leverage  
with TMS to get it fixed, since they're a paying customer.  I've  
never dealt with TMS, but I've dealt with other service providers,  
and you wouldn't believe the difference in service when you're  
calling as a corporate customer instead of as an individual.   
(Comcast, for example, will often actually *connect you to someone  
with technical knowledge who knows what's going on*, if you're on a  
corporate account.  I was amazed the first time this happened. ;) )

> The biggest thing I'm worried about is being undercut by TIVO. The
> draw of mythTV is flexibility and cost. If the schedulesdirect fees
> end up being the same or MORE expensive than a Tivo fee, I expect that
> I and many others will be switching to tivo.

The unofficial post earlier said $15 for three months at launch, with  
that figure expected to go down as more people sign up.  Does a TiVo  
subscription cost less than $5/month?  I honestly don't know.

>
> When are we going to have a working system to test with? We're only a
> few weeks from the blackout date, and it would be nice to have some
> parallel systems in place so that we can make sure everything is
> working before "going live".

Patience, young grasshopper. :)





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