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

Jay R. Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Wed Jun 27 21:27:10 UTC 2007


On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 05:23:56PM -0400, brian wrote:
> Victor Perez wrote:
> > On 6/26/07, brian <turbo at talstar.com> wrote:
> >> A deal with TMS or any other listing provider (if any) is not good 
> >> enough.
> >>
> >>    Says who?
> > 
> > 
> > Me, (IMHO) as long as mythtv depends on a third party commercial entity to
> > work we risk these situations happening.
> 
>    In the US (and Canada), most of the television stations are, themselves,
>    "third party commercial entities", and MythTV is dependent upon them to
>    supply content for recording in the first place.

"As long as MythTV depends, for it's ability to intelligently schedule
advance recordings, on an organization through which all the listing
data is funneled, who have a completely different set of goals and are
not beholden to us the viewers..."

Are you happier now that we've shown our work, brian?  ;-)

> >>    They (the devs) seem to have managed the entire MythTV project, thus
> >> far,
> >>    without need of your (or any user's) stewardship.
> > 
> > 
> > And look where they've taken us.
> 
>    ... to the point of meeting or surpassing the capabilities of most of
>    the commercially available alternatives to MythTV.  Shame on them!

Yeah; how dare they.  Some people.  The nerve.

>    and, while you're up there on your mount, let me shout up the
> following query:
>
>    What situation would, for example, Tivo, be in if their listings
>    provider suddenly yanked the rug out from under them, and gave them
>    a 60-day "drop dead" date for their listings data? Would their devs
>    be working on an alternative? (ans: probably so) Would their users
>    be demanding a daily status of their progress? (ans: probably so,
>    but in that case, they'd be _paying_customers_ who might reasonably
>    make such demands)

Yup; that's the major difference.

> > And before you all jump with "if you don't like it do something
> > about it", I'm already on it. More on this later.
>
>    please, oh, please don't be "solving" the "bandwidth issue"
>    (again), and (basically) ignoring the fact that bandwidth issues,
>    *if they existed*, will be immediately solved by the lack of data
>    to transport, if that issue isn't addressed first and foremost.

The issue isn't "bandwidth". It's "centralized 'smart' servers that
someone has to pay to support".  Bandwidth is an issue, but horsepower,
moreso.  We don't want to have to be eBay, or Google.

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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