[mythtv-users] Zap2It fiasco - what can we as users do?

Jay R. Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Fri Jun 22 15:00:48 UTC 2007


On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 09:46:54AM -0500, David Lonie wrote:
> I think the best advice given so far is to not panic.

/me preens

>                                                          The devs will likely 
> strike up some deal. Whether they do or not, we should find an alternative to 
> Tribune Media to prevent this from happening again. I agree with the idea 
> that this is an opportunity rather than a crisis. I'd like to see this thread 
> used for discussion of what we users are able and willing to do to set up a 
> free (both beer and speech) database of tv listings. 

This is akin to my Mooting thread, but more administrative than
technical.

> Some of my ideas of what we can do now:
> 
> 1. Discuss, propose, and approve a form letter that we users can send to our 
> local stations requesting that they post their listings on their website, 
> preferably in an RSS/XML feed (If someone has an idea for a better format, 
> feel free to comment). Keep up with the architecture thread to know what data 
> we need to request of them.

I guess we need to look at XMLTV's format, and see if the schema is
comprehensive enough.  And yes, posting it to a standardized URL on the
station's website is a good first step.

> 2. Write some examples of the format to send to the stations. Maybe
> even write up a simple interface for them to enter the data in that
> will automagically format and post it.

See my comments elsewhere about broadcast automation software
providers.  They won't want to enter it twice, and we don't want them
to.

Hell, the interface may already exist.  I've just sent off a query to
Sundance, and we'll see what category of response I get.  My community
access facility is a customer of theirs.

> 3. Once that we have decided on these, we the user send out requests
> to the stations, which should include reminders that we are proposing
> a free alternative to Tribune, etc (someone mentioned that they
> actually charge the stations to list them?). Also we will provide
> the listings free to anyone via a easy to use website (maybe give an
> analogy to wikipedia).

Crafting the sales pitch finely will likely require the help of station
personnel; anyone know any?

> 4. I think it violates the spirit of OSS to charge users. A
> wikipedia/freenode/bittorrent style donation system is a neccessity
> for a project this size. The idea of advertisements should be
> discussed, though I am not particularly in favor of it. Although it
> wouldn't be too big a deal to put a banner or some google ads on the
> webpage.

I have no problem with people being able to subscribe to, say,
Supernews, to pick up the feed -- some people will likely make it
otherwise available anyway; see the other thread.

> 5. Discuss the implementation of a bittorrent tracker for the listings
> for EPG users. This is the exact kind of thing bt was made for, and it
> would be a rare treat to see the technology used in a widespread legal
> manner :).

Oh, *please*, not BitTorrent.

No, this is almost *entirely* not what it was made for; the impedance
mismatch would be horrific.

> 6. Discuss a format and perhaps come up with a prototype for the
> website. Perhaps the user base/devs can come up with a crossplatform
> reader for users who want the EPG but aren't able to actually build a
> full mythbox. Shouldn't be too hard to rip out the existing mythEPG
> and release it as a separate program. Another opportunity for ad
> revenue, but only if push comes to shove.

Well, if we can break the listings loose from the sources, someone
could put *up* an ad-supported website that transformed them into human
readable schedule data, as a separate project...

> Let's get to it! Any other ideas? Right now a lot of us are obviously
> stressing out about this. Lets do something productive with that
> energy instead of sitting around whining :)

"Mooting architecture for a DataDirect replacement".  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com                     '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274


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