Schedules Direct Service Change November 1st

[TBacker]

The Announcement:

Schedules Direct has been operating since 2007 to provide a stable environment for non-commercial media applications to receive TV listings data, but that does not mean things never change! This may be our first email-blast since 2007!

We have been informed that Gracenote (formerly Tribune Media Services) will be ending the guide data service currently used by most members of Schedules Direct. Their plan is to end support for this service on
November 1, 2014. Schedules Direct was already hard at work
implementing replacement services.

Please check with your application's support page for your best
solution. Some applications have chosen to use a new SD-JSON service
that offers a richer data set, while others have chosen to use the SD-DD service, which is meant to be a drop-in replacement for Gracenote/Tribune's service.

If your application is no longer supported, there's no reason to worry.
Most apps can continue to function with a change to your system's hosts file. (details in the SD forum).

Last week I asked Tribune to update their DNS to force half of the traffic to the SD-DD servers. The concept was for people with problems
to fail half the time now, rather than 100% come Nov 1. If you're one
of the folks having problems, check with your application team or us to help resolve it.

For the most up-to-date news, look for links on the SD website http://schedulesdirect.org

Robert Eden
President, Schedules Direct

[TBacker]

Will this affect the Argus Schedule Downloader at all?

[geoffstewart]

Yes, this will affect the importer.

There is "replacement" API implemented by the SchedulesDirect guys to make it seamless. All you have to do is change your hosts file to point to the SD service instead of the TMSdirect service.

However, that works with the SD plugin, but not with the Argus Guide Importer.

The Argus importer gets an exception when trying to get the guide data.

Is the source for the importer shared sinces it's sort of a hang-off tool to ArgusTV?

[geoffstewart]

Nevermind, I found the source on github... search works!

[TBacker]

So, I guess until someone has the time to write the changes for importer and post an updated version, SD users are SOL?

[twemperor]

Geoff,

Do you have time to work on updating the SD plugin to the Guide Importer? Is anyone else working on this already?

[geoffstewart]

I got the source for the GuideImporter, and finally had some time to take a look.

I needed to refresh the WSDL and proxy classes.

I've just done a quick test and I'm able to get guide data with the /etc/hosts file pointing to the dd site instead of tmsdirect.... victory.

Let me do a bit of testing, then I'll post a package for others to try before submitting a proposed fix to GIT.

g

[geoffstewart]

OK, tests seem positive. I was able to get schedules.

EDIT: You don't have to edit your hosts file

Expand this zip file and run the importer to see if it works.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/323600mf0bvz3 ... T.zip?dl=0

Let me know how it goes.

Cheers.

Geoff

[mreardon]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for trying to get SchedulesDirect working again!

So I've replaced my Guide Importer folder in my Argus install with the copy from your archive (after renaming my original folder), but now when I run ArgusTV.GuideImporter.exe the dropdown for the plugin selection is blank, so I'm not able to even attempt to import from SD.

Is there something else I'm supposed to be doing to get it to work?


My logs don't really give me anything useful debugging wise unfortunately.. all I get is:

2014-10-30 20:52:37,701 [INFO ][1]: Guide importer started.
2014-10-30 20:52:37,831 [INFO ][1]: Importing, using plugin:SchedulesDirect

at which point the program seems to quit.

[twemperor]

I got the source for the GuideImporter, and finally had some time to take a look.

I needed to refresh the WSDL and proxy classes.

I've just done a quick test and I'm able to get guide data with the /etc/hosts file pointing to the dd site instead of tmsdirect.... victory.

Let me do a bit of testing, then I'll post a package for others to try before submitting a proposed fix to GIT.

g

I also pulled down the source, and made the URL change indicated by SD. If I understand this change correctly, why does the /etc/hosts need to change? Shouldn't the updated SD plugin reference the new URL, and therefore use the right DNS entry?

For myself, I had to upgrade to 2.3 RC to start trying this out. I was unable to 'Refresh Channels' until changed my hosts file to point to the original TMS server. Once my guide is updated, I'll try out your version of the plugin (and mine) and see if that was my only issue. I haven't dug through the code yet, but I fear that the 'Refresh Channels' feature uses another (different?) interface to the guide data that isn't updated yet.