Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
> Good luck trying to get any info out of the zap2it folks. I've tried > every means I can think of to contact them, with absolutely NO reply. > I've been patient and polite. I've e-mailed, posted, PM'd, etc. Not a > word out of them. They do lead you to believe that they're listening by > setting up a forum where you can post your problems with the data, but > providing NO RESPONSE for 2 weeks? Don't attribute to malice that which can be explained in other ways. Howabout "the guy that handles the primary forum duties was on vacation". I've posted a number of messages in their forum in the last few days and have gotten prompt responses from tmstom, now that he's back. You may want to try again. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
John Biundo wrote: Michael T. Dean wrote: In the interest of fair time... . . . OK, let me put it this way. Anybody thinking about setting up a MythTV box should, BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE, evaluate zap2it. Here I am, having spent lots of $$$ and DAYS OF TIME building and setting up my box. However it's severely limited by the fact that I can't get listings from zap2it. Yes, it's my fault for not checking this before I invested so much. I can only claim ignorance, and I think it's probably the norm, especially considering that zap2it BY AND LARGE seems reliable (as evidenced by the lack of complaints on this board similar to mine), for most people to just assume that if they live in a large metropolitan area, zap2it is going to have their listings. Again, I take responsibility for not researching that in advance, but hopefully this serves as a warning for others who happen to be looking in this direction. If they DON'T have your provider, then you're probably going to be in the same boat as me, which is WAY UP THE BROWN CREEK without a paddle. Good luck trying to get any info out of the zap2it folks. I've tried every means I can think of to contact them, with absolutely NO reply. I've been patient and polite. I've e-mailed, posted, PM'd, etc. Not a word out of them. They do lead you to believe that they're listening by setting up a forum where you can post your problems with the data, but providing NO RESPONSE for 2 weeks? So I'm stuck trying to figure out a workaround, and believe me it isn't pretty. If you're not a SQL wiz, then forget it. Even then, it seems part black magic so far. And the worst part is, even if I get this all working, I suspect that my provider listings, which apparently just up and disappeared a few weeks ago, may just as suddenly reappear, rendering all this work a colossal waste of time. I really only wish they'd reply and let me know whether I should wait for them to fix a minor problem, or that I'm on my own and should keep on plugging with my hacks. And as far as their "generosity" for providing this data for free, I'm sure there are tons of grateful MythTV'ers out there, and I wish I was one of them, but I'd gladly pay a few bucks a months for this service. Especially if it gave me the right to bitch and demand that things get fixed. The fact that they DON'T charge frankly worries me. Their profit model is not very clear to me, which makes me nervous that they may either just pull up stakes one day, or shut down their free service without an adequate replacement in sight. What then? Anyway, just wanted to clarify my earlier rant. John ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users Just a thought but did you try looking around for another zip code nearby that might have the same or almost the same lineup as you? I have no clue if it's possible but if that exists and data direct has the information, maybe it would beat having to hack your sql db. Raphael ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
Michael T. Dean wrote: In the interest of fair time... . . . OK, let me put it this way. Anybody thinking about setting up a MythTV box should, BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE, evaluate zap2it. Here I am, having spent lots of $$$ and DAYS OF TIME building and setting up my box. However it's severely limited by the fact that I can't get listings from zap2it. Yes, it's my fault for not checking this before I invested so much. I can only claim ignorance, and I think it's probably the norm, especially considering that zap2it BY AND LARGE seems reliable (as evidenced by the lack of complaints on this board similar to mine), for most people to just assume that if they live in a large metropolitan area, zap2it is going to have their listings. Again, I take responsibility for not researching that in advance, but hopefully this serves as a warning for others who happen to be looking in this direction. If they DON'T have your provider, then you're probably going to be in the same boat as me, which is WAY UP THE BROWN CREEK without a paddle. Good luck trying to get any info out of the zap2it folks. I've tried every means I can think of to contact them, with absolutely NO reply. I've been patient and polite. I've e-mailed, posted, PM'd, etc. Not a word out of them. They do lead you to believe that they're listening by setting up a forum where you can post your problems with the data, but providing NO RESPONSE for 2 weeks? So I'm stuck trying to figure out a workaround, and believe me it isn't pretty. If you're not a SQL wiz, then forget it. Even then, it seems part black magic so far. And the worst part is, even if I get this all working, I suspect that my provider listings, which apparently just up and disappeared a few weeks ago, may just as suddenly reappear, rendering all this work a colossal waste of time. I really only wish they'd reply and let me know whether I should wait for them to fix a minor problem, or that I'm on my own and should keep on plugging with my hacks. And as far as their "generosity" for providing this data for free, I'm sure there are tons of grateful MythTV'ers out there, and I wish I was one of them, but I'd gladly pay a few bucks a months for this service. Especially if it gave me the right to bitch and demand that things get fixed. The fact that they DON'T charge frankly worries me. Their profit model is not very clear to me, which makes me nervous that they may either just pull up stakes one day, or shut down their free service without an adequate replacement in sight. What then? Anyway, just wanted to clarify my earlier rant. John ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
John Biundo wrote: Of all the parts and pieces of MythTV, this has been the hardest to deal with, the most frustrating, and the scariest. My cable provider isn't listed at zap2it labs, though apparently they WERE there up until a few weeks ago when, according to another subscriber's post, they mysteriously disappeared. I've had ZERO response from zap2it despite patient, polite e-mails and posts on the forum. I remain very nervous that my $800 + 30+ hours investment in MythTV is riding on this very shaky foundation. Right now I'm working through a procedure to hack my database to generate the right listings for my cable provider from a nearby competitor of theirs. This has been most frustrating, and is complicated by the fact that now, apparently, I can't even get reliable downloads from zap2it. In the interest of fair time... That being said, I have to say that TMS has greatly exceeded my expectations when it comes to DataDirect. Whereas most companies dealing with an open-source project that's screen-scraping their HTML pages simply keep changing the HTML to break the screen scrapers (can you imagine having to upgrade XMLTV once a week to the most-current development version?), TMS added the new DataDirect service as a win-win solution, instead. DataDirect gives us more data than the HTML pages did, and the data is far more reliable. And, they're not charging us for the use of that service (other than a survey linked to a username/e-mail). There are a lot of things that TMS could have done instead of DataDirect, but I'm thankful they've allowed me to continue to use their data. I realize that it may be frustrating to be unable to get Myth working for the first time because of a temporary outage of DataDirect, but overall, since TMS set up DataDirect, it has been extremely reliable and has helped to make my Myth box very useful to me. Mike Oh, and BTW, please make sure you're not screen-scraping zap2it (or any other TMS-owned TV listings site). ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
Andrew Gallatin wrote: As an update, it just got somewhat better. Something changed at DataDirect, and they now seem to be sending most of the information. I have most of next week's listings, except for TNT-HD, which I get about 50% of my programming from (one show every day). I guess I get to see how the manual recording feature in Myth works :( Drew, First off, thanks for the help figuring out the wget stuff. Things seem to be in flux there. Which makes debugging my problem a real headache, since one of my questions is whether I've mucked up my database, or the data coming in is bad. Anyway, my wget returned a bunch of program data. Then, I saw your message and reran mythfilldatabase, and I now have data for about 6 out of 72 channels. Argghhh! I guess I need to take a break from this for a while. john ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
Andrew Gallatin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I'm trying (and failing) to run mythfilldatabase to update my > listings. I think this may be the same issue as decribed last week by > Bruce Markey over in the dev list at > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/169821 As an update, it just got somewhat better. Something changed at DataDirect, and they now seem to be sending most of the information. I have most of next week's listings, except for TNT-HD, which I get about 50% of my programming from (one show every day). I guess I get to see how the manual recording feature in Myth works :( Drew ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
John Biundo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Andrew Gallatin wrote: > > If I save post file, and run the same wget command that > > mythfilldatabase does, I see that the data I get back > > has valid station,lineup,and schedules data. However, > > it seems to be missing programs and everything after that. > > The tail end of the downloaded file looks like this: > > Hi Andrew, > > As a follow-up to my last post, I was thinking it would be great to be > able to verify the downloaded data (i.e., to answer my question of > whether it was the downloaded data that was borked, or my tables from my > microsurgery on them). Which lead to wondering how to get at the wget > command that's emitted by mythfilldatabase. Which lead me back to your > post! ;-) > > Could you elaborate on your statement above so I can figure out how to > get at my equivalent set of wget commands? I just ran ps while mythfilldatabase was running and captured the wget command. For me, it was something like: wget --http-user='myusername' --http-passwd='mypasswd' --post-file=/tmp/zot --header='Accept-Encoding:gzip' http://datadirect.webservices.zap2it.com/tvlistings/xtvdService --output-document=- | gzip -df I got the post file by suspending mythfilldatabase and hard-linking to the file that it was using, so that it did not get deleted. My post file looks like: 2006-01-08T05:00:00Z 2006-01-09T05:00:00Z Drew ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
Andrew Gallatin wrote: > If I save post file, and run the same wget command that mythfilldatabase does, I see that the data I get back has valid station,lineup,and schedules data. However, it seems to be missing programs and everything after that. The tail end of the downloaded file looks like this: Hi Andrew, As a follow-up to my last post, I was thinking it would be great to be able to verify the downloaded data (i.e., to answer my question of whether it was the downloaded data that was borked, or my tables from my microsurgery on them). Which lead to wondering how to get at the wget command that's emitted by mythfilldatabase. Which lead me back to your post! ;-) Could you elaborate on your statement above so I can figure out how to get at my equivalent set of wget commands? Thanks! john ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
Andrew Gallatin wrote: Are they known to be working on things? Is anybody getting (working) listings from them? I've only got listings up until Sunday, and I'm going out of town this weekend, so I'm a bit paranoid.. I was just about to post a question about DataDirect. I'm still setting up my Myth box. It's partially working, but I've had a big problem with channel lineups, and I've been trying to figure out a way around it and hacking (just a little) at my database. My mythfilldatabase results from this morning have been problematic, and I wasn't sure whether it was zap2it or me that was the problem. I was just about to destroy and recreate my database, suspecting I might have messed something up, but figured I'd post here first, when I saw this message. Of all the parts and pieces of MythTV, this has been the hardest to deal with, the most frustrating, and the scariest. My cable provider isn't listed at zap2it labs, though apparently they WERE there up until a few weeks ago when, according to another subscriber's post, they mysteriously disappeared. I've had ZERO response from zap2it despite patient, polite e-mails and posts on the forum. I remain very nervous that my $800 + 30+ hours investment in MythTV is riding on this very shaky foundation. Right now I'm working through a procedure to hack my database to generate the right listings for my cable provider from a nearby competitor of theirs. This has been most frustrating, and is complicated by the fact that now, apparently, I can't even get reliable downloads from zap2it. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
The last good fill I received was around Jan 1. I'd like to know what the status is also. Kirk Andrew Gallatin wrote: > I'm trying (and failing) to run mythfilldatabase to update my > listings. I think this may be the same issue as decribed last week by > Bruce Markey over in the dev list at > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/169821 > > If I save post file, and run the same wget command that > mythfilldatabase does, I see that the data I get back > has valid station,lineup,and schedules data. However, > it seems to be missing programs and everything after that. > The tail end of the downloaded file looks like this: > > duration='PT07H00M'/> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Are they known to be working on things? Is anybody getting > (working) listings from them? I've only got listings up > until Sunday, and I'm going out of town this weekend, so > I'm a bit paranoid.. > > Thanks, > > Drew > > > > > ___ > mythtv-users mailing list > mythtv-users@mythtv.org > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
[mythtv-users] ongoing DataDirect problems?
I'm trying (and failing) to run mythfilldatabase to update my listings. I think this may be the same issue as decribed last week by Bruce Markey over in the dev list at http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/169821 If I save post file, and run the same wget command that mythfilldatabase does, I see that the data I get back has valid station,lineup,and schedules data. However, it seems to be missing programs and everything after that. The tail end of the downloaded file looks like this: Are they known to be working on things? Is anybody getting (working) listings from them? I've only got listings up until Sunday, and I'm going out of town this weekend, so I'm a bit paranoid.. Thanks, Drew ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
