Zap2It... Argh...

[nowalmart]

Some of you know that for a while now I have been developing a web-based interface to eyeTV. The idea solution would allow me to not only schedule recordings from any machine but, more importantly, to also program in a "Season Pass"-like ability.

For those not in the TV-geek crowd, about the best way to get television listing data was in an XML format from zap2it.com. Zap2it.com offered these listings free of charge for hobbyist use such as the rinky-dink program I was developing.

I had gotten the coding done for retrieving the data and getting it into a format to allow me to start coding the "record this" and "Season Pass this" part of the project. A couple of weeks ago, though, zap2it.com announced that effective 1 Sept. 2007 they would no longer provide these listings free of charge.

Now I am faced with a decision - do I start paying whatever zap2it is going to charge for listings, do I try to recode the project using whatever free EPG data I can get online (including possibly figuring out how to get EPG XML data from titantv.com, a site I do have a free account with), or do I completely rethink the project, trying to use the data that the eyeTV software already has.

Anyway, there are no easy answers at this point. I just wanted to rant a bit.

Comments

[bigpeteb.livejournal.com]

There's always XMLTV, a collection of screen-scrapers for various countries. Their current one uses the Zap2It Labs, but I'm sure they will put something together to use Zap2It's free TV listings page.

[nowalmart.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The annoying thing is that I considered using XMLTV when I first started writing the project, but decided to go with zap2it since it seemed like an unneeded step.

XMLTV does seem to have better documentation, but now I wonder if I should just wait until mid-August to decide upon a direction, in order to make sure XMLTV ends up with an acceptably alternative for US/Canada listings.

It is probably the direction I will go, but it now means an annoying pause in development, along with a rewrite of the code I have put together now.

TitanTV

[(Anonymous)]

Does TitanTV offer something you could use?

~b

[ http://briandigital.com ]

Re: TitanTV

[nowalmart.livejournal.com]

I am still trying to find out. They do not seem to offer an XML download, but clearly eyeTV itself is getting an XML feed from titantv.com

Easy TV Data

[mothrog.livejournal.com]

The MythTV guys are trying to work out a service similar to zap2it labs at www.easytvdata.org. I'm hoping there's a solution, too. I don't want to go back to screen scraping.