I have no issue giving a few bucks a month. Dam I just got my whole system working after 2 years.

Replaytv might be paid option as they've gone/going software only. They've got listings, accounting and distribution already.

It could be as simple as Tribune Media Services just not caring about a relatively small market. They make hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and even if they had arrangements to sell it to a reseller for, let's say, 200,000 North American MythTV users (which seems high), their revenue would increase by maybe a tenth of a percent.

In discussions on the forum Cecil linked to, someone speculated and then rejected the idea that some companies were setting up zap2it accounts for specific regions/providers and re-using them for other customers. I'm not sure the idea was rejected for the right reason, but I do know that if you do a fresh install and do a channel scan while using a given zap2it account, any unscanned missing channels will be removed from your zap2it account when you run mythfilldatabase. So if a company did try to share zap2it accounts with people, anyone who missed channels in a channel scan would cause problems for everyone using the same account. Maybe this behavior was a reaction by zap2it to fix the problem of shared accounts?

As much as I appreciate Tribune Media Services and Zap2It having provided free channel guide data to the MythTV community for so long, it does bother me that they didn't at least say who was abusing the system and how they know. Even if they didn't have the time to think about how to address the problem, we could have done it for them.

We don't even know if it's MythTV-related, since there are other ways to abuse the guide data commercially. I guess we'll learn more when the pipe is shut off.

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I'm still not convinced that it was an abuse issue at all. I think the "abuse" issue is more of a scapegoat and the REAL issue is their admittance that they no longer see value in applying their admittedly constrained resources against the free service. It's a corporate cost cutting, resource allocation thing, I think...

SageTV has a Linux version that is $80 all in, no subscriptions, they've made arrangements with TMS/Zap2It. But this is probably best discussed in Off Topic...

Human and MisoSoup, I agree: a corporate decision to stop providing the service for whatever reason (financial, technological, political) is more believable than some mysterious entities somehow profiting from or abusing the system.

Maybe some of TMS customers put some pressure on them.

http://www.tms.tribune.com/newsreleases ... nment.html

Nice sleuthing!

Actually when this is all over and options are found, Mythtv will come out stronger then ever. The weakness will become a strength.

That article is dated March 22, 2005

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I've been watching the thread on gossamer, I believe that Chris (lists.forevermore), is one of the main developers, has said that zap2it is talking with Isaac and others at mythtv and from a couple of posts he said that people are making it a bigger deal than it needs to be.
While this sounds like a crushing blow, it doesn't take affect until September, and just like every other road block that has been put in front of linux (and most open source projects) I'll put money down that it will be solved within weeks, if not sooner. That's the beauty of open source and the incredible minds that work in open source software.

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Most of the markets have their own listings online anyway, right? I know that I can view my tv channels from my cable provider: optimum online, via webpages. See, e.g., http://tvlistings.optonline.net/epg.do?dt=1182470400000, which are ironically powered by zap2it. Seems like the devs could write a program to datamine from the web pages and then provide this factual information into the myth database. Not a easy task, but possible.

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Now might be a good time for people on digital cable or broadcast HDTV to check the state of EIT in their area. Last time I tried it, one of my channels had EIT guide data, but the rest did not. I don't know if the limitation is on the channels or MythTV's EIT implementation.

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I don't think that a monthly or yearly fee would be unreasonable. I know that it would be worth it to me.

I believe Daniel posted on the users list about this yesterday or the day before. Basically he said EIT is only really useful in Europe because US cable companies don't transmit any program data. You should get data for broadcast channels via an antenna, but that's about it

I'm certainly willing to convert from "free-subscriber" to "pay-subscriber".

Has anyone looked into http://www.titantv.com or any other site as an alternative?

(also watching: http://www.mythtvtalk.com/forum/viewtop ... ght=zap2it )

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If it is bandwidth that is the issue, here's one solution.

Create an archive that contains all the listings for a given area (maybe all of them??) compress it up and torrent the listings on a weekly/biweekly basis.

If it is people abusing the system, then I'll be willing to put a few $$'s toward a continued listing as long as it was accurate. I don't mind so much when a free service passes along a bad listing (although the wife and kids get annoyed when it misses their shows)...

I can tell you I will mind if I start having to pay for it and they're feeding bad listings... (the listings for South Park in my area have been completely wrong for months). My expectations get higher the more I need to shell out.

just my 2 cents.