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

Jay R. Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Mon Jun 25 14:00:30 UTC 2007


On Mon, Jun 25, 2007 at 03:55:46PM +1200, Nick Rout wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I would have thought it would be a big step to move away from xmltv schema
> - extend it yes, start afresh a definite no (IMHO).

Sure.

> Many pieces of software other than mythtv use xmltv. It is a mature
> standard. It works out of the box with mythtv. Setting up a new feed (if
> necessary aggregating several sources) is as simple as providing a new
> tv_grab_na script, as long as it returns an xmltv file it is compatible
> with myth. Alternatively it is trivial to cron a script that wget's a feed
> and then manually runs mythfilldatabase.

Certainly.  The thing I'm concerned about is semantics.  XMLTV was
designed, as I understand it, to describe scheduled events... but not
necessarily *modifications* to those events.

> But it has been pretty obvious from these threads that the problem is not
> in distributing the data, its in getting it cheaply in machine readable
> format.

Yep.

> As an aside, the situation around here has got better lately. In NZ almost
> every channel is available on DVB-S from SkyTV, even though many may
> actually get their TV delivered simultaneously over analogue, cable or
> whatever. Therefore there is an EIT feed for every channel, and although
> Sky's viewing is largely encrypted, the EIT feed is not. And it can be
> applied to the analogue and cable providers who are broadcasting the same
> stuff. Since a good number of people have now got DVB-S cards, the
> availability of data has improved, and screenscraping now runs a second
> best.

And we may be able to leverage that here, as well.

> There are a few regional stations that the above do not apply to, but they
> seem far more amenable to providing the data themselves anyway.

Yeah.  But the geographic and political landscape of the US for the
last 50 years, which has led to the station count being >2500 and the
network count being ~200, makes the problem different in type, not
merely in scale, here.

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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