I found a group offering 2 Australian broadcast areas for free
http://www.epgstream.net/FreeEPG/tabid/54/Default.aspx

The MythTV wiki for Zap2it directed me to Scheduals Direct. Although cheap, it's not free.

Anyone found a free supplier for the USA?

To be honest $20 a year for guide data is not much to ask, that is $1.66 per month. I read somewhere that if you could go just one (1) day a month without a coffee you would be able to pay for your data for a month.

What is to say that if another 100 people join per month, that next time they review pricing, it comes down again. As it is a community driven service, they are not in it to make money so they don't have to pay dividends to their shareholders. They simply need to make enough money to cover expenses, thus the more people join, the cheaper it will become.

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Girkers

When I installed my Pinnacle PCTV HD pci card, it included a link for TitianTV.

http://www.titantv.com/

It claims to be a free DVR service for several tuner cards.
Has anyone had good/bad experience with their services?

You'd have to pay me more than $20 to make me go a day without coffee. But seriously, the OzTivo guide does a great job already. The only drawback is by the time it gets to Friday it only has about 1 days guide data, but it fairly reliably updates a weeks worth of data sometime between Friday and Saturday.

I came across a yahoo epg product, but I am not sure it is or has been setup for mythtv.
It worked ok for the use I had for it on a windoze platform.

a Couple of observations,

Data tended to be somewhat static, in that it didn't seem to follow the immediate schedule updates I have seen available through SD/Zap2it products. Broadcasters tend to change schedules on some products daily, like a rain delay for today will show up as scheduled for tomorrow if you force an update, the free Yahoo Product didn't do that.

However, they were doing the data, it seemed to only allow a couple of downloads in a given period of time. When I was setting up that other machine, I had a couple of False starts, it began giving me a data grabber error which rectified itself after 24 hrs, but a real pain as I was tweaking the listings lineup download.

Conclusions - While SD isn't free as we all were accustomed to, the price is only $20/year and my time setting up that other service and tweaking it was worth a lot more than the $20 I would have invested to build it with SD.

hth

Thank you very much.

KnoppMyth is being difficult (isn't linux always difficult?), so I may have to rely on winxp. If Yahoo does offer epg's, I can probably connect through Win to test the service before working to setup linux.

EDIT:: Yahoo TV
According to this page, Yahoo EPG requires a Tivo account... is there a work around?

About ozTivo:
Does it only work for tivo? Or does MythTV understand Tivo's epg? Their wiki did not contain any articles for MythTV.

I don't know the answer to your questions and I am not advocating you use anything in particular especially when Licensing comes into play and acceptable use.

I would only offer that there is a produt out there that works. I found some reservations with it, but it is advertised as part of the install for another PVR platform. I did not observe or am I aware of any licensing issues there.

Google is your friend.

I am not trying to be cryptic and I am not sure it would even work with Knoppmyth or Linux in general. The observations I made above are what they are and

I plan to stay with SD because I know they have appropriately licensed the content and they are not giving up any of my information to give me that data. That is worth a lot more than $20 (IMO)[/quote]

Free in what sense? Free as in you don't have to pay for it?

Eventually you do. Netzero, skype, paypal... I could go on and on.... started out free. The free services ALWAYS end up charging a fee, and its whatever they feel then can get away with. SD charges what it costs.

Are scrapers really free? The time you take to set it up, is that really free? The maintenance when the website changes their display format? I've never used a scraper, but I'm sure I've read about things like this happening.

Atsuten,
Can you clear something up, are you in the USA or Australia? Your profile doesn't say.

If you are in Australia (Oz for short) then you can use oztivo with Mythtv, otherwise it is of no use to you.

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Paul Turpie
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<--Is your location in your profile? Why not?

Just to clear up one question, OzTivo works with KnoppMyth in Australia.

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Girkers

Sorry, yes, I am in the USA.

I don't know if MythTV works without an epg, but I think my problem is getting the tuner card working. I'm hoping I can watch TV, then try and get epg and dvr functionality.

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I'm having issues with KM recognizing my Pinnacle PCTV HD pci card. I'm going to try 2 other linux-myth bundles (Mythbuntu and MythDora), but I expect similar issues. I found a topic in the hardware section, but its not getting any replies.
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I agree that everyone gets money from somewhere, somehow, and most are very sneaky about it. But since I can barely get linux functional, I'm not prepared to subscribe - yet.

Right now I just want a DVR, even if it is manual record. Later I can worry about adding EPG simplicity.

Thanks for everyone offering suggestions.
Maybe there will be another epg option later.

You can use the PVR function without the EPG.

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Girkers

I understand not wanting to get the box working first. I recommend keeping an eye out for the air2pc card that gets sold on ebay from time to time, generally under $40, and works. Then you can sign up with SD for free 1 week trial. Good luck!

I don't know if this is available in the US, but could you use the OTA guide, or as it is called in MythTV, EIT. Here in Australia the channels transmit the data of the current show and the next show coming up and whilst it isn't days in advance, it is better than nothing and is free.

You need to have a digital tuner card to even consider using this.

_________________
Girkers

I'm playing with the MythTV setup now and just became aware of EIT.

My parents bought an RCA TV which could gather program guide data without a digital cable box. I always wondered where it got the data, because the only connections were coax, electrical, and a/v devices (i.e. vcr, dvd, etc.) After reading about EIT, I thought "So that's how it worked," but apparently EIT is only broadcast for digital cable boxes...?

Like I said in my previous post, the tuner card is not working with MythTV. Once the TV stations show up, I can work with adding a program guide.