mythtv users rejoice!

[Patrick]

So shouldn't it be simple to just ask them to provide this information in standardized format? Then all that is needed is to aggregate it (relatively easy). Why isn't the "ideal"/"target" price $0 rather than $20? But, I don't think even that should be necessary -- the providers have every reason to cooperate: has anyone even asked them?

In a perfect world it would be available to everyone at no cost. Unfortunately it's not. The commercial PVR solutions have negotiated a price with the data providers and passed it on to the consumer as part of the price of purchasing the software. Go look at the tivo subscription rates. With F/OSS that's not the case. It would be great if the new solution was $0 instead of $20 but there are costs associated with setting up servers, paying bandwidth and paying the data providers to be "legal". The reason why zap2it pulled the plug is that commercial MythTV sellers where simply having their customers sign up for free accounts.

[deptrai]

It would be great if the new solution was $0 instead of $20 but there are costs associated with setting up servers, paying bandwidth

Granted, but gzip'd XML TV-listings aren't high-bandwidth or medium-bandwidth, they're extremely, extremely low-bandwidth. There's no way that it costs anywhere near these guys' rates just to support servers and bandwidth.

paying the data providers to be "legal"

But this is exactly the point of my previous post! This should be $0. Legal??? Is it illegal to redistribute listings without permission??? Is there some difficulty in getting permission??? Am I missing something? This is not proprietary IP that the "owner" is trying to protect. They make their money not by charging for their listings, but by having people watch their programming... which is accomplished by having the most people possible having access to the listings. So it seems perverse that they (the programmers, who are the original creators of this data) either charge anything for the listings feed or in any way inhibit its free redistribution. Is this really the case? It seems like the most bizarre business decision that I've ever heard. Am I the only one who sees this? My head is exploding.

[greggh]

Am I the only one who sees this? My head is exploding.

Try not to let your noggin go boom. Ask yourself this. If people didn't find that collecting and presenting all the television information in one place a value added product then why has TV Guide been in business since 1953?

[snarkout]

It would be great if the new solution was $0 instead of $20 but there are costs associated with setting up servers, paying bandwidth

Granted, but gzip'd XML TV-listings aren't high-bandwidth or medium-bandwidth, they're extremely, extremely low-bandwidth. There's no way that it costs anywhere near these guys' rates just to support servers and bandwidth.

paying the data providers to be "legal"

But this is exactly the point of my previous post! This should be $0. Legal??? Is it illegal to redistribute listings without permission??? Is there some difficulty in getting permission??? Am I missing something? This is not proprietary IP that the "owner" is trying to protect. They make their money not by charging for their listings, but by having people watch their programming... which is accomplished by having the most people possible having access to the listings. So it seems perverse that they (the programmers, who are the original creators of this data) either charge anything for the listings feed or in any way inhibit its free redistribution. Is this really the case? It seems like the most bizarre business decision that I've ever heard. Am I the only one who sees this? My head is exploding.

I pretty much completely disagree with your opinion.

These people are providing a service. They want to, or possibly have to, charge for it. If you find the idea of exchanging money for services distasteful, don't buy the service. You might also look into providing free listings for people who want them and see what the real costs involved are - it may be, as you say, something of little value that costs nothing to distribute. It would be interesting to know.

Also, you are forgetting that there is a huge lobby group working to make myth tv and its ilk illegal and looking for ways to cripple it. Television stations don't really give a rat's rusty if you watch their programming - they want you to watch their commercials. If television execs had their way, they would not show any content, which they pay for, and would show 24 hours of ads, which they are paid to air. Myth makes it easy to completely skip commercials. This has been called robbery by some people.

Either way, I'm frankly a little astonished at the level of vitriol you seem to be able to muster considering that w/o this project, myth users would be optionless, or at the very least one option shorter. I'm having a very hard time seeing your side of the argument.

[Patrick]

Myth makes it easy to completely skip commercials. This has been called robbery by some people.

Commercial skipping in MythTV is the killer feature for me! I hate commercials. I can't listen to commercial radio anymore because of them. Well that and shitty top 20 play lists.

[Vogateer]

Snarkout has pointed out yet another idea twisted by corporate newspeak, calling commercial skipping "robbery" which is the most ridiculous thing ever. Just like there's really no such thing as "intellectual property," only patents and copyrights (and maybe trademarks?).

If you watch some television programming, then you're at least getting some of their commercials inside the program itself, and even with commercial skipping, I see more commercials than I ever did with regular TV (since I just wasn't bothering to watch before MythTV). I didn't mind commercials until they started showing 4 to 5 minutes of them at a time, blasting you out with the ludicrous increase in volume during the commercial break, and making sure that each hour of TV is 1/3 commercials, 2/3 actual programming. I even like some of the commercials themselves. I just don't have enough time in the day to waste it with that many commercials, since no program is worth 20 minutes of waiting around so you can get 40 minutes of content. If the TV stations stop projects like MythTV from working, you'll just see me checking out library books like mad, or going back to using the antiquated VHS, since I will NOT go back to watching regular TV. Ever.

Oh yeah, charging for schedulesdirect is completely fine by me, particularly if they can get it down to something like $20 a year, then I'll be very happy with it.

[deptrai]

These people are providing a service. They want to, or possibly have to, charge for it. If you find the idea of exchanging money for services distasteful,

I don't; in fact, almost every dollar I've ever earned was in exchange for services that I've provided.

don't buy the service.

Right, and I don't reckon that I will buy this one (because I really have no need for it, I use the cobbled-together cron-script method and it's met all my needs to date), but I was just posing the question.

You might also look into providing free listings for people who want them and see what the real costs involved are - it may be, as you say, something of little value that costs nothing to distribute. It would be interesting to know.

That's a good idea, and I may try it, little by little as I have time -- but before I do, I just wanted to pose the question to see if anyone could provide an easy answer without my investigating it. Just to clarify, I never said that it is of little value, only that it seems to me like it should be of little cost to obtain and distribute. To the extent that I've investigated obtaining listings from the source (for my cron-scripts), they've been easily available at no cost, but I've yet to look into getting permission to redistribute.

Also, you are forgetting that there is a huge lobby group working to make myth tv and its ilk illegal and looking for ways to cripple it. Television stations don't really give a rat's rusty if you watch their programming - they want you to watch their commercials. If television execs had their way, they would not show any content, which they pay for, and would show 24 hours of ads, which they are paid to air. Myth makes it easy to completely skip commercials. This has been called robbery by some people.

That's a good point that I hadn't considered... that's why I kept posing the question to the forum, "am I missing something," and maybe that's it. But it seems that no one has actually confirmed that TV stations in fact prohibit free redistribution of their listings, whether to try to prevent people from skipping the commercials or for some other reason that I've also missed.

Either way, I'm frankly a little astonished at the level of vitriol you seem to be able to muster

Oh, I didn't mean to offer any vitriol at all -- I hope that you actually meant "vehemence" -- if anyone took my comments as vitriolic, I apologize, and assure you that it was not intended: I wanted to see if anyone could help me to connect the dots and I mentioned in every post that "maybe I am missing something." I am a newbie to this forum and have no desire to get started with offensive posts.

I'm having a very hard time seeing your side of the argument.

I'm not sure how to restate it, but your point about TV stations thinking that redistribution of their listings in a standardized format may assist people who wish to skip commercials does enlighten me a little as to why they might want to extract money from people who do it. On the other hand, the listings themselves don't really enable that: devices such as Tivo and Myth do; the listings only help people who operate those devices to find the programming that they want to watch and otherwise might not watch. Some of those people may still watch the commercials, so I'm still not sure that it isn't in their best interest to allow the listings to be freely redistributed, but maybe that's why I don't run a TV station.

Actually, thinking about it another way, TV stations don't (or shouldn't if they are rational) really care if you watch their commercials or not; they just want to maximize their revenue, which I believe the advertisers pay based on ratings. I think that the older rating systems would not register time-delayed viewings of a program but perhaps these days they try. The advertisers, on the other hand, may not be happy about paying for advertising that may be getting "skipped", so they may only want to pay for non-time-shifted viewings, or better yet try to actually monitor whether people watched the commercials or not, both real-time and time-shifted viewers. I get the impression that the advertising industry is in a period of transition -- it would be interesting to find out from an industry insider how all of this stuff is working these days.

[snarkout]

Yeah, vitriol was the wrong word. You just seem to have a stuck bit on the issue and it seems like people are having a hard time understanding why.

[dann]

I really don't think, but I could be wrong, that the networks and companies consider their programming line up of much value to with hold from the public (in fact, you can get all this from the web). I think it's more of a demand issue, or lack there of. Face it, I doubt that 95% (and that is probably a conservative number there) of the people are looking for this information in a form other than tv guides or from their website. I doubt most of the population would want an xml feed.

Chances are this information is already in existence somewhere, just not announced publicly due to the lack of interest. I'd be interested to know, though, of those who contact local providers to get their station listings what the response is.

If anything, I could see the cable and satellite companies wanting to keep this information to themselves so they could sell you more services.

[greggh]

Plus the fact that they incorporated as a non-profit, I think shows that these guys are not in it to get rich by providing this service...

http://www.schedulesdirect.org/aboutus

About Schedules Direct

Schedules Direct is a non-profit organization whose mission is to advance the state of the art in providing low-cost television program guide listings for end-users of Open Source and Freeware applications. Our aim is to build upon the foundation that Tribune Media Services has created with their DataDirect product and utilize our expertise in web services and database design to bring that information to a wider audience.

While we are incorporated as a non-profit and plan to apply for federal 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, no portion of the proposed membership fee (at least for now) will be tax deductible as a charitable contribution.

[Patrick]

Schedules Direct has announced it's first price cut of $15 for 6 months. Existing subscribers automatically get their subscriptions extended for another 3 months:
http://forums.schedulesdirect.org/viewt ... ?f=3&t=315

As soon as enough people subscribe the price WILL drop to $20 a year!

[Patrick]

Schedules Direct has reached the $20 per year subscription goal!:
http://forums.schedulesdirect.org/viewt ... ?f=3&t=360

Congrats to the SD people and to the community for hitting the tipping point.