thelinuxlink.net

http://labs.zap2it.com/ztvws/ztvws_logi ... -1,00.html

It's on the MythTV wiki front page. This is a real shame. I imagine someone will come up with something, even if there has to be screen scraping done to get the info, but I've just fallen in love with my Myth box, and I imagine now I'll have to do some upgrading and probably have interruptions and mistakes in the recordings in the future.

I've posted to the Zap2It forum, voting that I'm willing to pay for the service, but we'll see how that goes.

Well that stinks. Luckily we have until the beginning of September for an alternate setup. I wonder if the commercial Myth boxes had anything to do with this?

I blame Pat. Thanks a lot man, for ruing it for the rest of us. If only you did not abuse your zap2it service. Why I ask you, why?

Patrick wrote:Well that stinks. Luckily we have until the beginning of September for an alternate setup. I wonder if the commercial Myth boxes had anything to do with this?

It sounds like that was exactly the problem. Cookie-cutter boxes with one login for every box completely messed up their business model for the site, which was supposed to let them associate one login with the answers to the survey questions in return for giving you the data. Some commercial companies didn't abuse the system, apparently Dragon did it the right way, but enough companies did to screw it up for the rest of us.

You know, I may write on the Myth mailing list or something, but it sounds like DataDirect/Zap2it wants what Google always wants, information. I'm big on privacy about some things, but certainly not with watching TV. I wouldn't mind at all if the MythTV program just uploaded my TV viewing and recording habits straight to the Zap2it labs. I'd imagine that sort of information would put that little survey to shame.

Ditto. I'd also be OK with pay to play. I imagine 90% of the linux world wouldn't, though. What's really interesting is that the businesses who apparently screwed the system up have screwed themselves out of a market. No zap2it means no one buying 4sale myth boxen, most likely.

I think the cable providers should foot the bill. it is expensive enough as it is. if you can not know what to watch, then you will probably will not see commercials that make the cable provider money.

You'd think it advantageous for the networks to get their information out as much as possible. After all, if MythTV stops working correctly, I'm not going to go back to watching regular TV again. I might record a few shows on the VCR, but I'll only record two a week instead of about 4 or 5 a day. I've actually rewinded to watch a few commercials as well, and seen far more commercials than I ever did before Myth.

In a way, I'm thinking it's a win-win situation. Without good info for Myth, I watch less TV, and have more time to read great books and learn how to program.

I watch hardly any TV (mostly do netflix for my viewing pleasure), but even my wife is at the point where she's ready to give the OK to build one just to get rid of all the goddamned commercials on kid's tv stations. It's evil how much complete garbage they cram down the throats of children in the name of making a buck off the parent.

That selling to kids remark reminds me of a South Park episode I'm fond of called Chinpokomon or something like that.

I'm sick of the number of commercials, too. It's insane. I was looking through a Heroes episode, and must have marked at least 20 minutes of commercials if not more. I think I'd rather get a Netflix account and just watch them when they come on DVD than sit through that many commercials. Even before I built my MythTV box (and oh, man, is MythTV ever a beautiful thing) we were recording everything on the VCR.

The setup with the VCR was atrocious, we'd have to program the TV to come on to the right channel at the right time, and then program the VCR to do the recording from the TV output. That was the only way we could get the HDTV signal to the VCR, which only recorded standard VHS quality of course, but at least we didn't have a snowy picture like with analog over-the-air broadcasts, and the VCR playback was stretched back out onto the TV so that we got the widescreen aspect ratio. Often times I'd mess up either the TV or the VCR, missing the recording entirely, and I only got one shot for the day. I could set up one recording because the TV could only be set to turn on at one time and on one channel, and that was it, so I had to do that every time I wanted to record something.

You know why my wife and I went through all that trouble and were willing to give up the nice HDTV signal for very bad VHS? The commercials.

We both refuse to watch 20 minutes of commercials so that we can see about 40 minutes of content. We just don't have that much time, and don't care enough about the shows to bother sitting through that many ads.

The funny thing is that I actually like some commercials, too. I wouldn't mind watching a few of them to know about new stuff coming out, but there's one more thing that makes them unbearable: The ridiculous volume increase. I cannot stress how much this pisses me off. On the rare occasion that we actually watched live TV, the commercials would blare us out of the room, and we'd both dart over to the remote just so we could mute it. I can't even describe the sense of relief when I hit the mute button and spared my ears that painful experience.

Yeah, I don't want to go through that again; I just don't like TV shows that much, really.

Has anyone seen any sort of resolution for this? I have been searching but havent found anything yet

As a last resort, I have been thinking of using ocr to scan in something like the local tv guide and then converting it to a database.we just need a national database,

riddlebox wrote:Has anyone seen any sort of resolution for this? I have been searching but havent found anything yet

There has been a lot of activity on the mailing list, and the devs are obviously working on it. The non-US users of MythTV have never had the option of using something like Datadirect, and have been scraping for years, so you know it can be done even though that's far from ideal.

The front page did say, "Don't Panic," which is good advice. They've been working on Myth for years, so you know it won't just disappear, though I've accepted the idea that I may not get the accurate information I would prefer, and may miss shows. I'm no coder, and can only offer money to the project, so I'll just adopt a wait-and-see attitude, and enjoy what I have at present.

It may be completely made up in my head, but I thought I heard someone mention trying to work together with Yahoo or Google to get something going. As it is now, if Datadirect goes ahead with their plan to cut off the listing, I doubt anyone in the open source community will ever again think of them as a reliable source for anything.