[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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