Quote Originally Posted by brucer
how does all this work in Australia? Obviously they've got a much higher profile.. have they been harassed? Is the law different over there or do they have some kind of licensing agreement?
They are just like us, living in the fear of the coming of the great (free) Guide Data Killing/Publicity monster.

Since there are many more TV channels spread all over Aus and each state seems have their own laws that can change or remove Federal (National) laws, the legal position is pretty much muddier than here especially since by doing stuff across state lines you can circumvent a lot of legal issues.

However, they are finding the recent profile rise due to newspaper articles and rise of the "trying to make a buck of the OzTivo group" operators on Ebay that things may start hotting up there soon.

They do have an advantage in that there are some (Pay to use [ebroadcast]) EPG services in Aus, and in theory if enough Tivo owning folks reached into their wallets each month they could buy a legal EPG feed but the entry fee for that is a little steep (about 10K per month I think). Also, there seems to be a PVR service launching soon in Aus which may also have a positive spin-off benefit to the Tivo guys.

None of this is much use to us though - but they are in the same boat as us more or less, just a little closer to the front of the boat than we are - so that when the onrushing waves hit (us &) them, they may get tipped out first, but we'll no doubt follow suit.

I guess as soon as a proper PVR service hits these shores, the floodgates may finally open up with full EPG data becoming more available, but right now, no-one wants to be the first mover on this so we end up without legal EPG data.

We may have to wait until one of the Aus EPG service operators finally decides to take on NZ as well.

Also, don't forget that its one thing to have EPG data, but it must be up to date and accurate always to be any use.
I guess you've all seen what its like to have semi-ok Guide data - its basically unusable and is more trouble than its worth!

The Aus guys have all found that the existing TV EPG sites they use have lots of problems with bad data - and so a lot of their effort is spent trying to fix dodgy data, let alone trying to obtain reliable clean sources for those hard to get channels. Then you have to align all the data so that the Genres from Source A are consistent with all the other sources they use.
(Curling anyone?)

Really, considering it costs only $20 per month per-Tivo for the US Tivos to have local, accurate guide data, they get a really good deal considering all the hard work that Tivo do keeping the data up to date and accurate.