[mythtv-users] tv guide line-up free

[Michael T. Dean]

On 09/03/2007 10:41 AM, Chuck Dock 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! 

For only $15, I'm getting 3 months of my TV listings free:

  - free of concern about the legality of the automated use of the
listings service
  - free of concern about the legality of copying potentially
copyrighted data into my database (definitely copyrighted when talking
about SD data)
  -- free of concern about breaking terms-of-service agreements by
"repurposing" listings paid for by purchasing certain hardware or  other
services
  -- free of concern about whether the listings service will change its
layout and break a cobbled-together web scraper that I'll then have to
spend my time modifying/updating/whatever to work with the new layout
  -- free to use the last 3 1/2 years (
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/19659#19659 and
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/20769#20769) of
recording history (including DataDirect-specific episode ID's) so that
Myth knows what I've recorded and what I've watched
  -- free to have the exact same high-quality data that's a significant
portion of the cost of a TiVo subscription or a cable-company PVR STB
rental cost

I have enough to worry about in my life, so when paying a reasonable fee
for extremely high-quality listings data gives me so many fewer things
to worry about than a zero-cost approach, the fee is worthwhile IMHO. 
Thanks for setting me free, SD!  (I will admit that I don't have a lot
of things to worry about in my life, but I guess there's a reason for
that. :)

Soon, I'm likely to get the same listings for only $20/year, but still
just as free.

Just my $0.02.  (No you only need $14.98 more. :)

Mike