Thursday September 06, 2007 Zap2It Labs Gone?
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This is annoying. It looks like Zap2It Labs is no more, and my hack to automatically get an email each day listing my new TV shows, will no longer work. |
Ironically I got an email on September 2nd saying my three month subscription for their service was expiring on the 9th September, and I'd need to renew. I tried to go to the link they provided me, and got a web page server error.
By googling around, I discovered an old posting where it looks like the service stopped working on September 1st. My automatic emails have been coming in, but they've shown no new listings. I just assummed that this was the natural state of affairs in the U.S. where there are virtually no new TV shows during the summer months. I guess I should have added some better smarts to the Python script to detect server errors.
One of the replies in the forum suggests:
http://www.tv-now.com/thegrids.htm?Zip=<your zip code here>
as an alternate service for looking up TV programs, but that just seems to be a pretty web page that's you'd have to view "manually". I don't see a way to just connect to the data.
If anybody knows of an alternate service that provides this information, I'd be very interested.
( Sep 06 2007, 12:35:25 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [7]
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Schedules Direct is the new one, http://schedulesdirect.org/
Posted by Steve Dibb on September 06, 2007 at 12:42 PM PDT #
Awright! Thanks Steve. I guess I know what
I'll be doing soon, before the Fall season
starts.
Posted by Rich Burridge on September 06, 2007 at 12:49 PM PDT #
Yikes! I was just editing my script to see if I could discover why Zap2It was no longer updating my DigiGuide listings, and finally decided to navigate there & see if there was a problem - dead link! So I started searching and this was the first search result that sounded similar. Oh well -- looks like DigiGuide is no more for me. It is a British program that I use but I was filling it of course with US programming - I'm in PA. But now I guess I'll have to use TitanTV - a free subscription to that came with my TV Tuner card for my PC. I'll post back if I hear anything further.
Posted by Jim McGowan on September 06, 2007 at 02:16 PM PDT #
Rich,
The following link is a posting on TV Squad I just found telling what's up:
http://tinyurl.com/2h7zll
Not good. Take a look at Titan TV at http://www.titantv.com
Says it is free. As I mentioned, I was given a subscription anyway when I purchased and activated my Hauppauge tuner card and the WinTV2000 software. Pretty good, actually - browser-based, but you can click on "Remind" or "Record" and if you have a supported (most are) TV Tuner it will send a script that will have your tuner card record the program.
Posted by Jim McGowan on September 06, 2007 at 02:26 PM PDT #
Thanks Jim! I'll check out Titan TV (as well
as Schedules Direct) before I update my script.
Posted by Rich Burridge on September 06, 2007 at 02:44 PM PDT #
I've had a few minutes to look at this now.
As far as I can see, Schedules Direct will
give you a free 7 day trial, but then you have
to pay money for it ($15.00 for 3 months was a
little more than I was looking for).
And I don't see a way to get raw data out of
Titan TV. It seems to be just another web based
TV channels guide.
Maybe I'm missing something...
Posted by Rich Burridge on September 07, 2007 at 11:00 AM PDT #
Rich,
Schedules Direct will lower their price once they cover their initial startup costs. They're hoping for $20/year.
Help them out by buying in at the initial price and it'll be all the lower when the determine their final pricing scheme.
Posted by Anonymous on September 07, 2007 at 12:12 PM PDT #