[mythtv-users] Hidden Silicon Dust channel guide wonderfulness

[Dan Wilga]

At 4:54 PM -0500 11/24/09, Eric Sharkey wrote:
>On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Dan Wilga
><mythtv-users2 at dwilga-linux1.amherst.edu> wrote:
>>  My point is that the very presence of a listing (and a channel) is
>>  predicated upon there being a user who receives the channel and leaves the
>>  feature to send data to SiliconDust enabled.
>
>It must be opt-in not opt-out, mustn't it?  How would they know your
>provider and zip if you didn't manually enter this information?

Yes, it's an opt-in, technically. But, as I recall when I set it up 
on a PC (which I've hardly used for this purpose since) several years 
ago, you're encouraged to enter your ZIP code in order to get channel 
lineups. The software doesn't specifically warn you that by doing 
this data will be sent back to SD during off-peak hours--even if you 
never use the PC software again. The lack of warning may have 
changed, or I could be misremembering its absence, though.

This is one of the few cases where I don't really care if a company 
gathers information from a device I own, since they're only using it 
for this page, and the data is gathered during times when the HDHR 
isn't doing anything else, anyway. I disabled the feature since I 
didn't want it using my network bandwidth and, like most Myth users, 
I don't have any use for the device's channel lineups.
-- 
Dan Wilga                                                        "Ook."