[mythtv-users] tv guide line-up free

[Robert Current]

Chuck Dock cjdock at gmail.com wrote
> I've been looking at the mailing for
> about a week now and it would seem like
> some of you super smart folks out
> their have come up with a way to get our
> tv guide line ups for free.
>  What would be cool is if people reply
> to this email with either ideas or
> scripts that have written to fix this
> problem. It's not that I'm against
> paying for a service.....ok, that's a
> lie! I do want it free, there must be
> a way!

Ok, for the sake of discussion only, legality aside, it's just an
idea.  I'll throw out an idea.  I'm sure this has been discussed
before, but I don't remember, and I'm sure Chuck the original poster
of the question hasn't heard this idea.

So, there are multiple data sources…  just assume that for a moment,
like people who pull complete 3, 7, 20 day EIT data from Dish Network.
 People who pull data from scrapers.  People who download the data
from Zap2It with a working UUID.  The already mentioned Yahoo to Go
links…  Just assume there is data, from somewhere…

Ok, If there was data, regardless of the source, a simple script could
be written to export and import the data.  Pull it out of the
mythconverg database and into a file, most logically, an sql file that
can easily be re-imported by another user.

Then (here comes the flame-bait), that file could very easily and
quickly be distributed as a torrent, hopefully with some logical name.
 For example:
2007-7-14-to-2007-7-21-Yahoo-Local-Boston-Cable-4myth.torrent
I'd guess that torrent would be 7 days of mythconverg listing data
that came from Yahoo listing data for local cable in Boston, wouldn't
you?

Import and export scripts would be easy…  Would the download rate of
the torrent cripple this concept?

Please, legality aside for the moment, because no one can assume the
data source is legal or illegal, we are already assuming that this
would work with ANY data source, so you can't claim it wouldn't work
with legal data, or that it would only work with illegal data.

If the basic scripts can be done, then surely this could become an
automated plugin.  It may take interaction from the user to select the
data they need, but other than that, the rest could be automated.