Taking a Load Off DataDirect ???

[Brian Wood <beww (at) beww.org>]

On Jun 12, 2006, at 2:52 PM, Jake wrote:

>> Are there any alternatives to DataDirect?  If
>> Time-Warner-AOL-Greenpeace-Umbrella Corp-General Products bought them
>> tommorow and told us to take a hike, what we be up the creek?
>
> in all probability i assume we would just go back to web-scraping
> using xmltv like the rest of the world does.
>
> unless they want to completely get rid of free listings websites i
> don't think there is a way to stop web crawling without hampering the
> usability for normal users.

They could certainly make it a lot more trouble, I seem to recall  
having to change the xmltv setup quite often back in the bad old days.

Actually there *is* a way to purchase the data from Tribune. If you  
buy "EyeTV" for around $79 you get a subscription to the TitanTV  
schedule service which, as far as I can tell, comes from the same  
folks. Titan says that it has a deal good 'till 2008 and will likely  
extend past that.

So if you own a Titan subscription you could conceivably get the  
data, though I admit I have not studied the EULA, which probably  
prohibits using it for a different use.

Don't get me wrong, Tribune has been great to Myth users, and I have  
no reason to believe that will change, which is why I want to explore  
helping them out any way we can, but any single-source arrangement is  
inherently dangerous IMHO.
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