Is there going to be a method to get program data for free? This might be premature since I haven't seen what the prices are going to be but will it be possible to go back to the method before zap2it was around?
rkshack

Someone correct me if I am wrong but prior to Zap2ItLabs XMLTV was used, who now uses data from Zap2ItLabs also, so there is no real "moving back to the old way". The only real free way would be to screen scrape off a site with your guide data - I would gladly pay a small amount for the actual data instead of scraping it and constantly making changes when the screen scrape is broken by webpage changes.

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Tuner Card - PVR-150

That was my understanding as well but just wanted to see if I was correct. I am really not interested in paying money at this point. I think I would look into other options first. All depends on the price I guess.

I hope (fingers crossed) P@ypal won't be the only method of payment.

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Bitwise Chat "Kwatt"

Personally, I'm going to support them because I want to get reliable correct information. I am sure that someone will create a screen scraper for certain sites, but most likely it will be a scraper only for their provider and their lineups. Who knows how long that will take, but I am sure someone will create one. There are probably a few already, but they might be timid to release it because the host site will find out they are being scraped and change the site.
The problem with screen scrapers is that if the website is changed the scraper has to be modified. This happened a lot with xmltv scraper. A lot of listing sites are in java and some flash, so that makes it even more difficult to scrape.

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ASUS A7N266 Micro-ATX Motherboard
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Lite-on DVD cd-rw combo
120 GB Western Digital

Schedules Direct just updated again with prices when it comes online ..
$15 for the first 3 months and after that they are shooting for $20/year



I think $5/month (renting the cable DVR is that much) is a little steep but if they can get it to $20/year that is more than reasonable

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R5.50

Looks like they licensed the raw data, then. The pre-processed zap2it-like data is $3/customer/month, so they wouldn't be able to offer it for $1.67/month.

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Personally I think $5 a month is well worth the other features that a Cable Companies DVR cannot provide. From what I have seen I would feel very limited with Comcast's DVR.

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Memo - Corsair VS512MB533D2 512MB DDR2-533
Hard D - Hitachi T7K500 250GB Serial ATA
Wireless - Netgear wg311
Tuner Card - PVR-150

$20 is very reasonable if it means we get consistent reliable data. My cable company charges an extra $20 a month for their DVR and it sucks. This is what tivo charges for their subscriptions:
1 year monthly - $17 = $204 a year
2 year monthly - $15 = $180 a year
3 year monthly - $13 = $156 a year

1 year pre-paid - $179
2 year pre-paid - $299 ($150 a year)
3 year pre-paid - $299 ($100 a year) - you get the 4th year for free

Ultimately no one is stopping you from coding up your own screen scraping scripts. You do run the risk of things breaking every so often. Personally I plan to subscribe to the Schedules Direct service. They're not looking to get rich from this. They're looking to cover costs. The more people that subscribe the lower the cost will become. The free ride is over. Besides many of the people involved are key members of the MythTV project.

So has anyone closer to the developers gotten a chance to look at what changes will be needed to move from DataDirect to SchedulesDirect?

I'm hoping I can get away with something as simple as /etc/hosts hack.

From what I've read, the DataDirect URL is hard coded into the binaries - will this be a trivial matter to implement a patch? Maybe a replacement binary we can download and drop into our systems?

Oh I do plan to subscribe to them. Then when they goto the once a year model it is out of sight out of mind with a year notice to pony up to the paypal account.

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R5.50

While I would also love to see it at $20/year, I'll gladly pay $5/month for a while to support these guys. Shoot, I'd have to spend twice that for just MCE software alone. I'll just eat out one less time a month!

Excellent!

I'm fine with $5 a month for now. I mean, Zap2It is going away, I really don't have another option...

I echo rollit12's concerns. How easy will it be to transition from Zap2It to Schedules Direct?

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LinHES 8.3, 1 BE, 3 FE

I believe the logic for zap2it was hardcoded. Sounds like they're going to release an updated version of MythTV very soon.

Article on the announcement:
http://www.linux.com/feature/118505

Not me. $5 a month is way too much for one special purpose data source, and I don't think we should be encouraging that sort of behavior. I'd say $20/yr is the upper limit.