"Unbelievable!" is all I can say to those who feel $15/quarter is too much.

Stop watching TV people and get a job!

Abby

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

EDIT: I didn't follow the "look and read before you post" rule. I found the answer in another thread... /EDIT


Here is an obvious question:

If Schedules Direct is the replacement for Zap2It. How do I make it work? Will there be a new KnoppMyth version that has it scripted in? If not, will I have to upgrade to the latest version to get a "patch" to work? I am a few versions behind and don't really see a need to upgrade... yet.

I'm not complaining or winning... just wondering.

I love my settop box and the community that supports it AND I don't have a problem with spending a little money for the tv listings.

Mike & Cecil,

For all your hard work in this forum I would gladly pay your SchedulesDirect fees for you.

I'm progressively getting more PO'd about the level of cheapness I see here. People are complaining that a cable company PVR is $4 and SD will be $5. Give me your address and I'll mail you the DOLLAR. How do people become so cheap?

Abby

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

Hi Abby,

Your kindness out shines your good looks I don't mind the few dollars as it is nothing compared to the 5 collage tuitions I have to look forward too,, again.

I just need somewhere to mail my check

Again thank you for the thought however there are many more that deserve your offer. Cecil & Dale would be at the top of the list as without them, we would not be here.

Mike

Hear! Hear!

I've been surprised all along at how ANGRY people are getting at SD for DARING to charge money. How dare they charge money for the data TMS wanted to stop giving away for free? WTF? How is this SD's fault?

My wife's office has BBQ every Friday in the summer. Some day her company is probably going to stop that practice. Do you think her co-workers will get mad at McDonalds for charging for what they used to get for free?

C'mon People! Let's get a little perspective here. I say Thank You to TMS and Zap2it for all the Free data I've gotten over the last couple years, and Welcome Schedules Direct, and Thank You for the promise to keep costs as low as possible.

The "real reason" escapes me. If it's certain users that are not abiding by the terms of usage, then why don't they just lock down those accounts? It also doesn't make sense that zap2it won't offer an account conversion to a "pay" plan. Maybe not enough to fit into their business plan. It has been kind-of-a long road for a "free account" system just to drop it like a rock. It just smells like there's something else that they are not saying. Is MythTV such a threat to the commercial PVR system providers, that they threatened cut out zap2it from the real bread & butter part of their business?

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// Brian - Hardware:
ASUS P5P800 - P4 3Ghz, 500 GB PATA HD
ASUS P5K-V - P4 Core2 Duo, 500 GB SATA HD
Hauppauge PVR-350, IR Blaster, Comcast Digital Cable
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/KnoppMyth/
KnoppMyth R5F27 >> R5.5

I've been curious about just WHO is abusing the service, and the lack of named-names is astounding, leading me to believe those saying that "commercial abuse" is a BS excuse.

The best of the "Conspiracy Theories" I've read on the web simply says that Zap2It was costing TMS money. They pay developers to maintain the site, the accounts, the interface to the database etc. Point is, Zap2It wasn't free for them to run. They're also apparantly planning some sort of database change, possibly a schema change, that would require them to do some upgrading of the code used by Zap2It, and they don't want to pay to do it. I'm sure there was probably some commercial abuse, but that was probably WAY behind simply not wanting to fund Zap2It anymore.

As I understand it, Zap2It was founded because TMS's website was getting hit way too hard by screen scrapers; they tried to foil the scrappers by changing formats, but they couldn't keep ahead. So it was a case of "If you can't beat 'em join 'em" I'm sure the people who want to NOT fund Zap2It lost sight of what the scrappers were costing them by what was essentially a never-ending DoS attack by a non-malware botnet of listings consumers.

Why doesn't TMS/Zap2It REALLY want to convert to a Pay Service themselves? I imagine it's because paying customers demand service. I don't know about everyone else, but it wasn't unusual for me to not get listings for several days in a row, and my lineups were dropped at lest 2-3 times while I was a Zap2It "Customer." PAYING customers would want money back for outages. If they went fee-based they'd have to have much better system stability, tech support, billing people, dispute resolution...

The SD solution, allows TMS to collect Fees by charging SD. They shed money-losing Zap2It, they don't have to deal with us directly anymore (and face it, we can be pretty annoying.) SD becomes just another customer in their existing (profitable) business model, and SD should keep most of the scrapers off their web servers. From a business point-of-view it's very clever for them. They're basically outsourcing Zap2It to SD. They can't lose. Hell, SD seems to be taking most of the flames for charging for listings, even though their stated intention is to break even on the deal. (my interpretation of them being a nonprofit org.) So TMS is already ahead of the game. Seems to me, they would be stupid to become a fee-based service.

That's the bit that annoys me when people start bitching about having to pay for their guide data. Somebody has to pay for the service, servers don't come for free.

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Paul Turpie
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<--Is your location in your profile? Why not?

I'll have to admit.. in the two years that I've been running, I've had next to no problem.. a few minor listing glitches that corrected themselves without a wimper. With the two week look-ahead, missing a day or two now and then has not been very tramatic to me. (then again, it's only television .. 500 channels and nothing on!) I wouldn't have any reason to ask for a refund.

Sorry to those that can't afford to pay a few bucks. I don't work for free, so I don't expect those that provide a service to work for free either. Without a schedule provider, MythTV works like the old VHS method of getting the programming that you want to watch... and that pretty much sucked. (I guess that makes me a crack-addict for my myth-box!)

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// Brian - Hardware:
ASUS P5P800 - P4 3Ghz, 500 GB PATA HD
ASUS P5K-V - P4 Core2 Duo, 500 GB SATA HD
Hauppauge PVR-350, IR Blaster, Comcast Digital Cable
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/KnoppMyth/
KnoppMyth R5F27 >> R5.5

A casual search didn't find anything on this (and I haven't read the whole thread), but doesn't it seem a little bit coincidental that Zap2it/Tribune Media Services/Tribune Company would make this change right during the sale of the company? I follow the business press every day (at least on CNBC) and it's been pretty big news for several months that financier Sam Zell (one of the board members) is buying the company and taking it private (with his private equity firm). I've been through a lot of big corporate mergers and changes usually don't occur until after the deal is completed, but who knows, they might have just put out an edict to cut costs prior to the sale announcement (as it was well known for some time that the company was for sale). They're also selling off the Chicago Cubs as part of the deal and I don't know what else so maybe other divisional changes are just part of the company sale. I know a little thing like these free tv listings probably wouldn't have been an explicit part of the big company deal, but cost cutting may be and this would be an easy thing to cut for Zap2it/TMS.

I dunno, just a thought....

Steve

I don't think Zap2it is going away... Schedules direct has a Zap2it logo beside my listings...:

Lineup Image

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LinHES 8.3, 1 BE, 3 FE

No, Zap2it isn't going away. Data Direct which Zap2it provided however is going away.

So is there any answer/fix yet? September first is coming soon.

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16190

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LinHES 8.3, 1 BE, 3 FE