Zap2it Labs is about to shut off the free TV guide listing service used by MythTV, GP-PVR, Media Portal, and other free PVR software applications. As we've been reporting, two separate groups are stepping up to continue offering TV listings.

But neither Schedules Direct nor CT TV will be giving the data away for free. That's because unlike Zap2it, (which is a subsidiary of Tribune Media Services), both groups have to pay to license the data.

Schedules Direct announced earlier this month that their program guide information would be available at a price of $15 for 3 months. As more customers sign up, they're hoping to bring the cost down to $20 per year. This week, CT TV announced that it would charge either $3.50 per month or $30 per year (which comes to $2.50 a month).

Considering CTpvr has long been an also-ran in the world of software-based PVRs, CT TV could become a real money maker for the company. That's assuming free PVR users are willing to pay for TV listings at all and don't just find a way to improve applications that scrape the same data off of online TV guide pages for free.

There's good news and bad news for users of free PC-based PVR suites like MythTV, Media Portal, and GB-PVR.

While Zap2it Labs plans to cease offering the free television program guide data used by these programs in September, there are at least two groups planning to offer similar data. And both are close to having tools in place to pick up where Zap2it leaves off in September. That's the good news.

The bad news is that neither group will be able to offer this data for free. It's not surprising. Zap2it was offering the TV episode data in an XML format in addition to its online TV guide. The company was is owned by Tribune Media Services, so providing data to the open source community cost Zap2it nothing.

That's not true for CTpvr or Schedules Direct, the two new groups planning to offer TV episode data. Both now say that they will be charging users for access to the data, although pricing has not yet been set.

Most users of commercial PVR applications like BeyondTV, SageTV, and Windows Media Center won't be affected. Those companies get their data from alternate sources. So you have a choice. Pay for the software, received the program guides for free. Or get free software and pay for the program guides.

Come September, MythTV, Media Portal, and GB-PVR users could be stuck staring at a blank screen. That's when Zap2it Labs will stop offering free program guide data in the easily parsed XML format used by those and other PC-based PVR applications.

The developers of CTpvr, another software-based personal video recorder are developing a product that will offer data that is nearly identical to that currently offered by Zap2it. TV listings will include data like genre, cast, crew, advisories, and original air dates.

CTpvr hasn't announced pricing yet, but the company will charge users a monthly or annual fee for access to the data. For that reason alone, I suspect that this system will be used by CTpvr customers, while free and open-source applications like MythTV will look elsewhere.

Several MythTV, XMLTV, and MacProgGuide developers have already come together to form Schedules Direct. The group, previously known as EasyTV Data, is looking at alternatives to the Zap2it Labs data that can be easily plugged into PVR software to provide you with that electronic program guide goodness you've come to rely on.

Zap2it Labs has announced that it will no longer offer free television listings after September 1st. You may be wondering what the big deal is. After all, there are a million web sites where you can get your TV guide data.

But Zap2it Labs provided listings in an easily indexable formula, making it the program guide data source of choice for MythTV, GB-PVR, and Media Portal. These programs are also capable of handling XMLTV data, but there aren't really any good programs right now for scraping program guide data for U.S. television listings. We can probably expect to see that change in the very near future.

There's an active discussion taking place in the GB-PVR forums about alternative data sources, such as Yahoo! TV or TitanTV. But GB-PVR's lead developer says he doesn't have plans to design a program to scrape the data. Rather he suspects the much larger developer community working on MythTV will lead the way.

[via Brent Evans]

Remember that little web interface for Media Portal we told you about the other day? Yeah, turns out it was largely ripped off from Doug Berrett's WebGuide4 for Windows Media Center.

Chris Lanier noticed how similar the graphics were on the two products, and after a little snooping, Barrett and others noticed that those similarities seem to extend to the program's code.

Media Portal has posted an apology of sorts, stating that the team borrowed some graphics to use during the testing phase of the project. And then they forgot to remove those graphics before issuing a release. The web guide is no longer available for download.

While it would be nice to see a web interface for Media Portal, there's no real excuse for stealing code. Hopefully the team will be able to remove all the code and issue an update in the future. And hopefully they'll post a more sincere apology to Barrett than "sorry for ripping off your graphics, we meant to clean it up before sending it out to the public. Whoops."

The Open Source Windows PC-based Media Portal now has a web interface. That mean's you'll be able to perform a number of basic media center and PVR functions on your PC over the internet using a web browser.

• View your TV guide
• Schedule recordings
• Cancel/delete scheduled recordings
• View recorded programs
• View upcoming recordings.

No support for streaming videos over the net yet, but that could possibly be on deck for a future release.

[via Missing Remote]

How often have you said to yourself, I'd really like a Slingbox, but wouldn't it be great if it was just a little bit cheaper and from an obscure company? Well, then there's Moonsoon Multimedia's Hava.

No, no, you say. Even cheaper and more obscure. Ah hah. Have you considered the Honestech My-IPTV? Of course not. You've never even heard of them. So there.

Anyway, rather than giving you a box to set down by your TV, Honestech's solution includes an external USB tuner and software for your computer. Install the tuner and software, and you can stream video to internet-connected devices including computers, Windows Mobile phones or PDAs. PVR functions are also available.

Prices start at $99. Of course, for less money than that, you could just pick up a cheap TV tuner, set up Media Portal or GB-PVR for free, and use Orb to stream your video over the net.

[via Engadget]

It looks like two groups of open source media center developers are thinking about merging their products. Media Portal is a completely open-source Windows Media Center replacement, while MeediOS is a project to continue development of Meedio, which was purchased by Yahoo and pretty much scrapped in favor of Yahoo Go TV.

It looks like both teams are working toward an open source media center with multiple user interfaces for use on Windows, via the Web, and on a PDA. Most features of the media center would be plugin-based, letting you for example add music, video, and picture functions to create your own personal media center program. It looks like both teams have pretty much the same goals in mind, and given that each has made a lot of progress over the last few years, I'll be curious to see what they come up with if they join forces.