Mon, 10 Sep 2007

Another option for MythTV schedules

Yesterday I mentioned how straightforward it was to setup an account with SchedulesDirect to obtain tv schedule data for the MythTV 'software pvr'.

For completeness, a 'free as in beer' screen-scraping alternative is provided by the zap2xml Perl script together with a (free) registration at the tvlistings.zap2it.com site. Instructions are on the zap2xml page, and all is left to do is to combine the calls to zap2xml.pl and mythfilldatabase in a single shell script -- which is easy enough to do too.

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Sun, 09 Sep 2007

MythTV data service switch

One of several things I never got around to blog about is my experience with MythTV (which, in case you don't know, turns your pc into a tivo, given a suitable tv decoder card and the mythtv software). To make up for the lack of a more detailed post, let's just recap: I had set it up a little over two years ago, on what was then a 'possibly temporary' Kubuntu box. Well the box is still there and still running Kubuntu, four releases later, and MythTV only got easier as Ubuntu now includes the decoder drivers. So far no worries.

TV schedule information had always been provided via the 'free as in beer if you answer a question or two' zap2it subsidiary of the for-profit Tribune publishing company (i.e. the folks who own the Chicago Tribune, Cubs baseball team, WGN TV station around here and what have you, and are in the process of being sold to Sam Zeil). As had been noted in other places, that 'free' service is no more, and a seemingly cooperatively-run 'small fee' service has been set up by a few volunteers at schedulesdirect.

So I just switched, and for the benefit of anybody sitting on the fence about this, the switch is trivial:

1. If need be, add 'feisty-proposed' to apt's sources.list file to get the new MythTV 0.20.2 release directly from Ubuntu.
2. Install MythTV 0.20.2 which takes as little as wajig update; wajig dist-upgrade
3. Follow the instructions in this email, in particular point 4) about re-creating lineup info
4. sit back and enjoy

Including the signup at schedulesdirect, the whole thing took maybe ten minutes. Not bad. Now I only have to find some spare time so that the backlog of unwatched episodes of the Daily Show does not grow much beyond six months... Oh, and last but not least, I'll have to pony up the fifteen bucks for the subscription once my trial is up next Sunday.

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