[mythtv-users] Schedules Direct DataDirect replacement service testing

[R. G. Newbury]

On 02/10/14 09:41 AM, Bill Meek wrote:

> My observations:
>
> One issue *could* be that the new server doesn't respond to pings. For some
> reason, I seem to remember an old thread where someone mentioned using a
> wrapper script that did a ping before calling mythfilldatabase. That would
> fail. It could also be my imagination.

That was probably a comment made by me. I have a particular problem with 
Rogers Cable internet services. After a period without activity, DNS 
services seem to suspend/go to sleep. Any activity which needed DNS 
would silently fail to complete. -> no mythfilldatabase results!

The ping is NOT against the SchedulesDirect or TMS servers. I just ping 
another local ISP, being outside the Rogers server system computers.

So please do not ping any SD or TMS servers.

*************************

Just to make one point especially clear on this thread:

There are TWO different substitute services.

Robert Kulagowski's MFDB-JSON replacement uses a different Gracenote 
data source than the present DataDirect service. The data source has 
more data (Series and Episode numbers! internal fan-art etc) about the 
shows and covers a large chunk of the world. The mfdb-json service 
itself uses an efficient download strategy, so that you only call for 
and only get new data. The program is really quite stable and present 
testing is really looking for corner cases, and load handling.


Robert Eden's DD replacement uses yet another Gracenote data source, and 
parses out the equivalent of the DataDirect service feed. It then 
translates that into the correct form, and hosts it at a different site. 
Thus the URL sleight of hand.

Both are, to a certain extent, still experimental.

Whichever way you choose to move, you WILL have to choose. Gracenote/TMS 
has talked about killing the DataDirect service for some time, but the 
timing was always vaque. Until we received notice of a hard date of 
November 1, 2014. Thus the apparent and not so apparent scrambling. 
Coding of the two substitutes has actually been going on for quite some 
time by the two Roberts, so things are not as bad as you might assume.


R. Geoffrey Newbury			



PS; The 'R.' actually does stand for Robert... there seems to be a 
surfeit of us around!