Re: http://zz9.dnsq.org

["Adam Stevens" <adam@xxxxxxx>]

"James Hoye" <james.hoye@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:<DNEJIAAIMJGCAICBHBFIKELBCGAA.james.hoye@xxxxxxx>...
>
> Now that IS a neat feature :)  Something I will DEFINITELY be looking
> at once my ADSL is in place :)

You don't really need ADSL, just unmetered... I was running the same
system on unmetered 56k until I got the cable modem - The only time the
system needs to be online is when it picks up the TV listings, and that
only takes a couple of minutes.

> > from missing Eastenders... If only I had a Tivo... :-)
>
> I'm beginning to think that with the TiVo Ethernet port upgrade, TiVo
> webserver giving you control via a browser (don't know exactly how
> much) and a TV guide in a SQL database, the TiVo subscription becomes
> a little bit more redundant ;)

Quite - A friend of mine bought a Tivo a couple of weeks ago, and
although it is very good, it really is overkill for me (as I never get
time to watch the things *I* record, let alone watching things the Tivo
things I'd like!).

> Any chance of the ASP to scrape the TV listings?  I might convert it
> to Cold Fusion as I like it better than ASP!

This really goes against the grain, but I can't give you the exact
code... The reason is that I had a complaint to my ISP from the site I
was picking up listings from, so now go via an anonymous proxy, and keep
the service I use close to my chest (They didn't like the idea of me
being to import TV listings into a database, and therefore, in theory,
being able to resell the data... Not that I'd do that anyway).

However, at the end of the day, it's not difficult.  I use a VBScript
program which is scheduled via w2k's scheduler.  You could do the same
thing in Homeseer by setting it up as an event. (The ASP page you can
see from the site simply reads the local database that the vbScript
program has populated).

Homeseer has a hs.getURL command, which will return the text of the URL
you point it to, however when I first did this, the Homeseer function
wasn't working, so I use a 3rd party COM component called aspHTTP from
www.serverobjects.com (just because the component is written for use via
ASP doesn't mean you can't use it in vbScript or anything else which
supports activeX).

Basically, all you need to do is use one of the above methods to get the
text from a web page which displays a full TV-listing.  Then it's just a
case of parsing the text, and putting the data into the database.

Sorry to be so vague!... I would usually be happy to help more, but I
did have real problems with my ISP (funnily enough, I eventually got
confirmation from them that I *wasn't* breaking their AUP - By it was
touch and go for a while!).

That said and done though, I guess I *could* do an automated bi-weekly
e-mail of the data in XML format either to this newsgroup, or to a
select few personal e-mail addresses? (I'm not really sure on the
legality of this - Any lawyers on the list?! - This is all data which is
freely available on the net, I've just correlated it).

Adam.