[mythtv-users] Scraping

[Brian Wood]

jack snodgrass wrote:
> On 7/9/07, Billy Macdonald <billymacdonald at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7/9/07, Kevin Slater <kevin.slater at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 7/9/07, Rich West <Rich.West at wesmo.com> wrote:
>>>> I fear asking this after having read through the piles of email related
>>>> to the zap2it panic, but since the need has arisen (I can't get guide
>>>> data, and I expect that things will get even less stable as we approach
>>>> September), I was wondering if anyone has made any efforts toward
>>>> scraping data off of the DirecTV site for DirecTV subscribers?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> When I log on to my DirecTV account page and go to the listings, I see a
>>> block indicating flash is needed. (I have a flash blocker turned on by
>>> default.) I think screen scraping that would be a lot more difficult than if
>>> it were just html.
>>>
>>> I just tried it anonymously with my zip code using Lynx (ncurses command
>>> line browser - no flash) and while I can see some listing data I can't get
>>> any sort of usable details.
>>>
>>> The other problem, as have been previously noted, is that it's likely a
>>> violation of your contract with DirecTV to screen scrape the listings for
>>> use on some (any) other system.
>>>
>>> ...Kevin
>>>
>> If I were paying for DirectTV I wouldn't feel bad at all about
>> scraping their site.  You give them plenty of money each month for
>> their service.  I can see how scraping a third party site that relies
>> on ads could be an issue.  But a paying subscriber to directtv.....
>>
>> I won't have any problems (morally, technically maybe :) ) scraping
>> Cox's site if it comes down to that.  (Even though it's really hosted
>> by zap2it.)  My $xx for cable includes the listings in my view.
>>
>> Billy
> 
> I'm taking a different approach.. I've got several tivos that I pay the tivo
> service on. I'm going to get my guide data from my tivos' mfs file system.
> but I'm not sure how I'm going to get it into my mythtv database... I see
> mention of xmltv as the expected format... I seem to recall reading about
> that one day... assuming I can go from tivo -> xmltv.format... how do I get
> that into the mythtv database?

That almost certainly violates the TiVo EULA, just in case you hadn't
thought of that.

BEWW