Zap2It Labs Discontinuing Free TV Guide Service 569
QuijiboIsAWord writes "Zap2It Labs, which provides free TV listing data for personal use, has long been the main source of program guide information for users in the US and beyond. They've announced via their webpage that,
due to abuse of the service, data will no longer be available after September 1st. There is no other direct source, and no option to pay for the service even if the users wanted to. Without a data feed of this type, users will be reduced to scraping websites at best. Is this going to be a killing blow for MythTV?"
This is quite bad :( (Score:3, Insightful)
Misuse? (Score:3, Insightful)
The killing blow? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Anybody know what the "abuse" was? (Score:3, Insightful)
--Ajay
Google should provide a WebService (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is troubling (Score:5, Insightful)
This was always MythTV's achilles heel, more than even HDTV. For all the talk about "Unlike Tivo, MythTV can NEVER be shut down or crippled," MythTV always had this dependency on a third party, for profit service. It's possible someone could replace them, but they're going to want SOME form of revenue (and since no one is going to tolerate ads on their MythTV, or pay for the service, this is unlikely).
TV stations are hardly interested in helping... (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't there any way to obtain this information in an "open-source" manner?
The best way to get the information is from the stations and cable operators.
Unfortunately, MythTV and other PVR users are in the game of cutting out ads; TV programming is purely to sell ad space, and always has been, save when programs were entirely paid for by one company and the show was branded in their name. What motivation do TV stations have to assist people who are purposefully going out of their way to cut out the ads?
Re:Myth will survive (Score:2, Insightful)
Rather than a Million Screen Scrapers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now there's just the question of who? Who is expert at spidering the web? Who likes to provide new cheap-to-free services in their quest to take over new markets. Who would love to put yet another spike into Microsoft's side by removing yet another possible revenue source for them? Who doesn't have to worry about financing such a small, cheap service alongside their already multitudes of underutilized servers and bandwidth?
Google?
We need GoogleTVListings (tm) (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it would be the best ever... With version numbers for each day and diffs available that only contain the changes. The whole thing would be available as an rss feed and would be free, of course.
Re:This is troubling (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the choice between:
1. paying Comcast's fees, DVR service, etc
2. paying Tivo or
3. paying for a subscription to an XML TV Listing service, and keeping my MythTV box
I'll take #3.
People will pay for it as long as no free alternatives are out there.
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)
For those folks with DirecTV, that's not an option. In fact, at this point, we have no options at all other than writing a guide scraper for TVGuide.com. Fortunately, their website data is fetched in Javascript using xmlHttpRequest, so it is probably straight XML in some dialect that could be converted into the same format as Zap2It uses with very little effort. If done carefully (request the entire schedule exactly once, then only refetch the current day each day and fetch any new days added to the schedule), it might not add enough server hits for them to even care.
No it doesn't (Score:3, Insightful)
With a TiVo, you can plug in three cables and press power, at which point you are done but for the watching. You're claiming MYTH can do this too?
So no, it does NOT offer everything TiVo does.
Make it a paid service (Score:3, Insightful)
As for commercial abuse, if they know it's happening, they presumably are taking steps to quash it as well, without much luck. Probably like playing whack-a-mole.
Let's all hope Google comes to the rescue.
Re:This is quite bad :( (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a good thought, but I think you miss the mark. Data Direct was created as a response to the various screen scrapers that existed before it - scrapers which had to pull down and parse entire HTML documents instead of simply using compact, per-user xml feeds. This service was intended to reduce total bandwidth use, and as far as I'm aware it succeeded at doing so.
It's possible that there has been a shift in management and that this history lesson was forgotten, but if their intention is to save bandwidth it seems doubtful that this is a good way to do so.
Re:No it doesn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Myth will survive (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, you can't honestly suggest that MythTV is always a better choice than Tivo, unless you've conveniently forgotten about the teeming masses of people who couldn't install a capture card if their life depended on it. Ease is the killer feature for Tivo and bundled PVRs.
Re:No it doesn't (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is quite bad :( (Score:2, Insightful)
The top reasons MythTV is better than Tivo (and other commercial DVRs) are: 1. Commercial flagging 2. Editing and Exporting utils 3. media center addons (mythdvd, mythvideo, mythmusic, etc).
Re:This is troubling (Score:5, Insightful)
They seem to forget that a substantial chunk of those viewers wouldn't be watching at ALL, if it weren't for DVRs. I like a show that's on when I'm usually playing with my kids. If I didn't have a DVR, I wouldn't watch that show period. Yes, I skip through many of the commericials during playback, but not all of them, and not if the commercial catches my eye, or is for a product I'm interested in. I even rewind to watch a commercial from the start (like if I skip into the middle of a Mac/PC ad I haven't already seen) etc.
Before I had a DVR I hit mute and/or pipped the commercials while I browsed the channel guide, or checked on the hockey game, or something. Its not like I was sitting there 'attentively watching' all the ads before.
I expect advertisers are probably losing eyeballs overall as people adopt DVRs, but its probably not nearly the issue they think it is.
Re:TV stations are hardly interested in helping... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No it doesn't (Score:3, Insightful)
I consider myself far more computer savvy than the typical "Average Joe", running Linux for over 10 years, yet I cannot be bothered with purchasing, building, installing, and dealing with a MythTV setup when my DirecTivo does everything I need just fine.
Re:No it doesn't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Anybody know what the "abuse" was? (Score:3, Insightful)
"It seems fair to start charging, but odd that they're just shutting it off. They say they're willing to license to other companies,..."
The infrastructure required to sell to businesses/institutions and the infrastructure required to sell to individuals is completely different.
In one model, salespeople develop personal relationships with contacts at the customer locations, discuss their needs with them, put together a custom package, and then make a small number of large transactions. Also, in the B2B model you don't need to provide the front-line "my computer's coffee holder broke" level of support to end-users: the customer deals with their users first, and only passes on to you the customer support they can't solve easily. In this model you advertise in trade journals, trade shows, and relevant conferences.
In another model you are advertising via mass media, processing a very large number of much smaller transactions. You have to keep track of a lot more customer data-- and if you offer online purchasing, then you don't have the easy answer of keeping customer data secure by just not connecting it to the internet. You have to offer a much higher volume of customer service calls from a much less technical variety of enduser.
Switching from B2B to B2C (or vice-versa for that matter) is a huge expense in terms of money, time, and energy, but generally not much chance of reward.If you're good at one of these two models, then you have no reason to switch to the other; if you're bad at the one you're doing now, then you aren't very likely to survive the costs and turmoil of the switch.
Thus, as someone that works for a company that sells to institutions but not to individuals, it doesn't surprise me in the least that they aren't changing their entire business model.
Re:This is troubling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is troubling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Myth will survive (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and more generally, MythTV's client-server architecture opens up a lot of possibilities. If you have a busy household (e.g. big family), build yourself a monster MythTV backend, and stash in in your basement. Then install MythTV thin clients everywhere in your house, and everyone can watch what they want when they want.
I also use the MythVideo plugin. I've copied all the DVDs I own to a big file server (so I have all my movies "on-demand" via MythTV). My girlfriend said it would be cool to install another MythTV system in a spare bedroom. Then when we had guests, they could watch a movie before going to bed (or when they get up in the morning, whatever).
Yeah, it's definitely not trivial to setup. But I always thought someone could make a business out of setting MythTV up for people. Charge a big upfront fee, and it's free after that. (Of course, you expose yourself to risk like this Zap2It debacle!)
Re:Anybody know what the "abuse" was? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're trying to suggest that Slashdot readers are, generally, hypocrites because they don't care if new technology or business models drive old ones out of business. Of course, that's utter nonsense. This isn't about Zap2It's business model being harmed by new technology or new business models. This is about Zap2It offering something to individuals for free out of simple generosity. This generosity has been abused and does threaten their business model, so they going to stop being generous. Zap2It doesn't suffer in the slightest, only those who benefited from their generosity do.
Now, if a third party started giving away television schedules without relying on Zap2It's data, harming Zap2It's business model, then we'd be on the same ground. Of course, if that happened and Zap2It whined about it, I don't think you'd see much sympathy here.
Re:Open Source != Free as in Beer (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but CentOS does.
Open source means a change from a product-based market to a service-based market, at least to a FAR larger extent than is acknowledged by the typical "look at Red Hat" line. Remember, Red Hat makes most of its money because people want support. That's fine if you want to be in that business and can come up with some value to add to the product that only you can provide.
If you have something like TV schedules, there's no service there, unless you want to talk about providing the bandwidth to you to get it. If Bob generates the schedules and Fred buys them from Bob and starts giving them out, what's the incentive to go to Fred and pay for them? I certainly can't think of any added value Bob can give. So if Bob spends a good bit of money compiling the listings and the only people who actually buy them from him are those who want to actually support Bob while the people who just want the listings go to Fred, that could very easily be a losing proposition for Bob.
Re:Myth will survive (Score:5, Insightful)
And here's how you can directly make money:
By providing your own guide information, you can insert sponsorship lines and charge for them.
"Tonight on Lost, sponsored by Coca-Cola, Jack and Kate have more awkward sexual tension, while Hurley tries to cheer everyone up, Sawyer acts rudely, and Sayid kills someone with his feet."
Even us DVR users will very often look at the guide information. Voila, you've just sold an ad!
Re:This is troubling (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe they are. If they had instead announced that they would start charging then people would rebel and complain about them being greedy pigs. This way they just take it away, then respond to the outcry by saying "OK, OK, we'll bring it back as a small subscription service."
Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
It sucks that it' shutting down (I use it for GB-PVR)- but they did do it for free for years. Let's not demonize them, no matter the reason, and start looking for alternatives.
Re:No it doesn't (Score:3, Insightful)
MythTV is not, on its own, a plug-and-play solution. It is a tool used to accomplish a task, and in its current form right now, it is designed for people who want to build their own system and configure it just the way they like. It does not include hardware, and it does not benefit from the economy of scale in manufacturing that TiVo does. If you want the ease of use of TiVo and are willing to put up with the shenanigans of a company who is slowly reducing what you are allowed to do with the downloaded content (which, by the way, is reducing your fair use rights) then I encourage you to buy a TiVo, and stop trolling in a MythTV thread.
Do not confuse "I want it to work RIGHT NOW" with "I want to build it myself". These are very different and, in some cases, mutually exclusive concepts, and they require different tools. We want to build our own boxes. Go away and let us play.
Re:Myth will survive (Score:4, Insightful)
People further down in the thread suggested that TV channel EPG is right up Google's alley, and I agree... just how do you persuade them???? Hopefully there are a few Mythtv users in the Googleplex that have the sway to pull this off. Google have the funds to purchase the EPG data, AND the customer base to insert ads in the stream (however ads would not be click-able).
Google... please buy ZAP2IT LABS!!! please!!!
Re:This is troubling (Score:1, Insightful)
1. paying Comcast's fees, DVR service, etc
2. paying Tivo or
3. paying for a subscription to an XML TV Listing service, and keeping my MythTV box
I'll take #3.
Re:Myth will survive (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is troubling (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly, you've never used CP/M...