[mythtv-users] tv guide line-up free

Robert Current robert.current at gmail.com
Wed Sep 5 23:15:14 UTC 2007


On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 06:22:20PM -0700, Robert Current wrote:
> > The PVR market IS their business model and target market, unlike
> > Zap2It.  As far as I can tell, some of those partnerships seem to be
> > with shareware and freeware PVR software, provided your using a
> > partner hardware product also.
>
> Their target market -- I was on their first beta team; this is first
> hand -- is TV station websites.  They get the data from the stations,
> populate the database, and then provide the entire schedule page back
> to the station.
>
> PVR's are a secondary market, and to the extent they are one at all,
> the money comes, almost certainly, from selling "what did people
> schedule to record" data back to other people.
>
> Cheers
> -- jra
>

Your entire discussion hinges on if the data can be used legally, to
which you conclude no one is 100% sure.  I'm not saying your wrong.
Just that it seemed tangent and redirecting from the original
question.  That wasn't really ever asked, but seems to be the focus of
everyone's reply.

There is data there.  That was the question that was asked.  Can it be
used?  Sure, if someone works on an application to apply it.  That was
asked too.

Scrapers are not the ONLY source, there is what would be called
"Direct Data."  So, data is there, and to pretend it's not is to hide
your head in the sand.  To misdirect and say it won't allow you to do
things like schedule recurring recordings is complete lies.  To
increase the signal to noise ratio of the thread with legality when
it's totally unclear and no one even asked in the first place is
disruptive and unproductive.

Legality wasn't asked.  I'll still say no one has proven all data is
illegal, at best they say it's not clear.  But no one even asked that
question.  And, I'm sure everyone has heard more than enough times now
that the legality is unclear to some of you.  That isn't the topic…  I
thought this was MythTV Users list, not the "list of unclear legal
theory."

Data?  Yes, multiple sources other than Schedules Direct.
Implementations?  None for Direct Data other than Schedules Direct,
yet.  To change that takes people able to point to and discuss the
merits of each data source, and then willing to write code for use of
that source.

To USE the new sources, at THAT point users might want to consider
legality of using the data... but we aren't even anywhere near that
point or that discussion yet.


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