yo, pretty lackluster forum useage lately guys..
Still curious about the legality of EPG data. The main subject of this post.
Haven't worked on my tvschedules site in ages, basically have a working prototype but still very much at the idea stage.
It's unfortunate as I am convinced that a community driven effort could lead to a major way forward for homebrew PVR and other media centric activities.
Commercial PVR (ie with actual EPG) in NZ could still be a long time off, probably several years unless something changes with the current dinosaur SkyTV.
If they are going to do something it would either be to try and creep out the technology or go full steam with it. Probably neither will occur due to the fat profits they're raking in and the likely damage to the advertising revenue stream. Can we blame them or Telecom? that is capitalism with piss poor market regulation I guess. thanks government.. anyway, that is not an area of my expertise nor do I really care as I have no influence over it and people are probably sick to death as this issue is VERY old news.
anyway, seeing as we're screwed for (real) broadband in this country for the continued foreseable future and really have few options for other TV sources it's worth investigating further the use of PVR for SkyTV/FTA. So please, where exactly are the lines drawn with the EPG?
Basically what I want to know is there some grey boundary we can be certain is within the current and future law and is arguable outside of a court. If we can know that then we can use that as a sound basis for building a tvschedule service, accessible as a webservice for use with mythtv, tivo, etc. Has anyone come across any information on this subject on the web or elsewhere?.. and relating to NZ? I'll also emphasis as I have done previously, that I would darely love to know what other folks in other countries are doing in this regard and in the PVR sphere in general. Don't have the time to research it as it is a very time consuming process. Has anyone found any useful homebrew PVR sites that track this sort of info, anyone follow mythtv development? etc tell me what u know people... spill ur beans
Anyway, the issue is coming to attention in oztivo with the announcement on 29th June by Andrew that they have been given a cease and desist from their main source of guide data (read his post here: : http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/ozt...ne/014567.html). So sounds like could be interesting times for them, there is also another email list that has been setup to deal with this issue (I havent subscribed to it yet and they dont have the emails online so I can't browse postings, (http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/oztivo-guide). It'll be real interesting to see where this leads and it's significance for NZ. I hope they start to develop an alternative to scrapping that we could possible use
Also of interest in these discussions was the mention of another PVR device in development, the HMC by www.dt.com.au
This was the first I heard of it but then again I haven't really followed oztivo at all for the last couple of months...
The first commercial PVR that I heard of was in march or earlier? The IceTV device that Peter Vogel is hawking. Peter being a dude who has been involved in oztivo for about 6-8 months I think? - came in learning nothing, cottoned on fast, now apparently building his own system. He has a glossy site to look at www.icetv.com.au but haven't heard any real plans although there have been some media publicity about. He was trying to recruit programmers a while back... lol anyway all the best to him, he is going for the Tivo subscription model ($2 a week or something), not sure of cost of hardware or where the hell he is getting his guide data from and how he thinks he can do it legally.. anyone got more details?
The other commercial PVR is the HMC (www.d1.com.au). This was mentioned by Andrew in the oztivo mailing list on March 26th (http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/ozt...ch/011607.html - "whoops laywer time". Read also http://miscname.com/public/HMC/). Now from what I can tell this guy is selling these things already. Is this true?
What's interesting is that he is publicly offering the guide data in XML format. Afterall the device is just a Mythtv box.. but how very nice
Interesting to see if they can both coexist in the same space, or even get of the ground... so yeah, anyone know anything?
Anyway, i'm still keen on my tvscheduling idea, just still somewhat philisophical on the issue, can time/channel/name/episode/duration info really be copyright information in NZ? I think it's bull**** but I don't know for certain.
thoughts?
TiM
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