[mythtv-users] Any way to pay?

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 02:41:46PM -0400, Rod Smith wrote:
> > That was very informative. I think your last statement high lights the
> > problem we are having. It's my understanding that there about 6800
> > stations in the US
> 
> I don't think it's quite THAT bad. I recall earlier there was a figure 
> somewhere in that vicinity for the number of registered TV-band transmitters 
> in the US, but the number of stations carrying programs we actually care 
> about is smaller. There are 210 DMAs (television markets) in the United 
> States:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_stations_in_North_America_by_media_market
> 
> Most of these have fewer than a dozen broadcast stations; the 6800 (or 
> whatever it is) figure includes transmitters that don't carry unique 
> programming. Based on the 210-DMA figure, I'd estimate that the total number 
> we'd need to be concerned about is probably between 1,500 and 3,000, although 
> this is just an estimate.

My reading of Wikipedia's citation of the FCC registration database
says, I think, 2239 is the number we have to be concerned about.

> Hypothetically, if every station would make the data available in some 
> standardized way, it would be fairly easy from the MythTV user's point of 
> view -- you'd just need to configure your system to look to certain Web 
> sites, P2P sites, Usenet newsgroups, or whatever. Of course, this is a 
> pipe-dream sort of hypothetical; I expect it would be an uphill battle, 
> possibly of Sisyphean proportions, to get every station to provide data in 
> such a way.
> 
> A more likely scenario would involve collating data from a handful of sources 
> (direct from TV stations, by scraping TV stations' or satellite/cable 
> providers' Web sites, from third-party TV listings, etc.), massaging it into 
> a common format, and redistributing it. This would be manageable even for a 
> relatively small operation, but there are important legal questions, 
> particularly when it comes to program descriptions rather than purely factual 
> data (for instance, that "Green Acres" is being shown at 3:00 on channel 47).

Nicely summarized, both.  

I'm back from my Heinlein Centennial trip.  More shortly.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
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