Re: [TV] Hi

[Andrew Flegg <andrew@xxxxxxxx>]

In list.comp.tv, Edward wrote:
[> I wrote: ]
>> > a) Is there an archive of this list?
>
>> I'll probably try and sort out an archive soon, though.

The archive is now live at:

    http://www.bleb.org/tv2/maillist/

Prettiness can be added later ;-)

> My use for the data is for the EPG in mythtv (www.mythtv.org).  Currently
> this uses a script called mythfilldatabase, which in turn relies on xmltv to
> fill the SQL database.  I can write a direct way of filling the database for
> my own needs, however, others will be using the various free epg type
> programs with the xmltv output and so they would care about that.

Indeed.
 
> Basically I don't know how you make money out of this service

I don't :)

> and also why you would be interested in making it easy for others to grab
> the data if they only want to view it using their own offline apps

As you say, keeps the bandwidth down - also fame, glory and fortune
would be nice.

> so I don't know what kind of suggestions you are open to?

Any, but as I'm doing it in my spare time (which is woefully lacking at
the moment) they may take some time to be implemented. I'd also hope the
subscribers to this list can discuss and debate any suggested feature
(whether to the XML output or the site generally) and so I can go with
the consensus.

> Personally, if you can provide the raw, high quality data for the same price
> as mydigiguide, then count me in as a future subscriber!

At the moment there are no plans whatsoever to move to a pay model - my
job pays pretty well (though don't tell my boss I said so!) so this is a
"hobby".
 
[CGI script to output this XML as xmltv-compliant]
> 
> Wow, really cool (I think).  I wonder if the value isn't in being able to
> run the xmltv script on the local machine to get the data though?

I dunno, I'd have thought it would be better if you could download the
data as XMLTV-compliant straight from bleb.org, rather than having to
download and then process before using it in your XMLTV-using
applications.

> I think the main thing which I am missing from myth that the US users get is
> colour coding of films, serials, etc.  I think this is supported on the
> xmltv syntax? and your website also seems to do some of this kind of rather
> cool stuff.  Could we get it in the XML file though???  (Pretty please...)

Some of the channels provide a '<genre>' tag - ideally all films will
have '<genre>Film</genre>', other types aren't so guaranteed. How an
individual application renders that genre is up to them - on my site I'm
hoping to make it customisable on a per-user basis.
 
> Bearing in mind that there could be a script retrieving the file, you could
> also consider having a switch which compresses the data before transmitting,
> it can then be expanded quite easily by the script.  I suggest zlib so that
> we have windows compatibility, but bzip will be very much more efficient for
> XML I think...

Good idea. It might be worth only providing
data/listings/0.{tar.bz2,zip}, 1.{tar.bz2,zip}, ... rather than the
directories (if the directories are still available noone will download
the tarballs or zips!).

How would people find this change?

> Either way this should save you a ton of bandwidth (by the
> way I didn't check, but have you got mod_gzip installed on your server?

No, it's not installed on the current server (but I'm just borrowing
space off a friend at the moment) and is another good idea.

> Thanks for creating this.  It looks really good!

My pleasure - believe it or not, positive feedback is all I want (oh,
and a decent TV website for myself to save having to buy the Radio Times
or whatever... ;-))

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew@xxxxxxxx  |  http://www.bleb.org/