Download
<Version 1.11 Beta>
Purpose:
My Telly was created in response to the dropping of support for the application ETV Host. This was a subscription service that allowed you to download TV listings and have pre-created searches automatically run on the listings. You were then able to create a TV watching/recording schedule for the week. I found this program after being extremely upset that I had missed the championship game for the UEFA Champions League in 1999 where Manchester United came back in the final minutes with two goals to beat Bayern Munich! I vowed that this would never happen again!
When ETV announced dropping their service, I started looking for a service that worked as conveniently as theirs. After looking at various services, waiting for their slow sites to update, and finding them very tedious to navigate, I decided to write a replacement app for ETV Host. Mostly, It was an excuse to do some more Java work.
Originally, I found some tools at http://freshmeat.net/projects/xmltv/ that had routines for downloading TV listings from the http://www.zap2it.com site. I decided to port these routines to Java as another exercise. On May 10, 2004, Zap2It changed it's website so that the scraper from xmltv no longer worked. Fortunately, around the same time a new service, "Zap2It Data Direct Service", was started by labs.zap2it.com. This was a very fast web service from Zap2It that was free. Due to abuse of the service, Zap2It took down the labs version of Data Direct on Sept. 1, 2007. In an agreement with TMS (parent of Zap2It), Schedules Direct has created a pay service that provides listings in the same format. Currently, little change was needed to support Schedules Direct, though, this may not be true in the long run. It looks like a better solution will be to move back to using XMLTV as a provider, which would open up the application to more than just US & Canada. Anyone wishing to spear head a conversion to XMLTV can contact me through one of the My Telly Forums
The "Schedules Direct Service" requires you to register and is a pay service (though you can get a free trial). For more information, go to the Tools/Configure... menu option in My Telly and choose "Schedules Direct" from the drop down box. Follow the instructions in the dialog for how to sign up.
I've ended up with a simple app that looks similar to ETV Host and contains the basic functionality that I used on a weekly basis. There is still more that could be done, but it does much of what I am looking for now.
Note: Schedules Direct currently only contains TV listings for North America (United States and Canada).
Features:
- Download television listings from the "Schedules Direct Service" by schedulesdirect.org
- View listings in a Grid.
- Create searches for items you are regularly interested in.
- Mark items to add to your favorites search.
- Create a Schedule that can be printed, exported to html, or exported to TVPI (supported by various Personal Video Recorder (PVR) programs.
Installing:
- Install the JRE 1.4.0 or later from: http://java.com/
- Download MyTelly.zip and unzip it into a directory
- run MyTelly.bat (if under windows), MyTellyMacLinux (if under Mac or Linux)
Getting the Source
My Telly is released under the GPL License. To get the source:
- Download mytelly_src.zip.
Known issues:
- 1.0: If you choose linups from Zap2It that contain duplicate stations, but different channels only one of the stations will show programs. And it might not be correct. The data coming down from Zap2It does not seem to have any way to distinguish which scheduled program goes to which channel. They are only linked to stations.
- Beta 6+: With the new "Zap2It Data Direct" service, you may end up running out of memory during the retrieval of the data and the subsequent parsing. If so, try in creasing the amount of maximum memory allowed by editing the -Xmx128m parameter in the mytelly.bat file. Try setting it to -Xmx192m or larger.
- Beta 3+: Now requires Java 1.4.0+.
- Alpha 8: The grid view is slow with the new SQL backend. I need to come up with some optimizations. Searching is also a bit slower.
What's new:
Release 1.11 Beta:
- Switch from Zap2It to Schedules Direct Service.
- Added "TVPI GMT" to options tab [cfcubed]
Release 1.10:
- Fixed Or'd searching with spaces. [cfcubed]
Release 1.10 Beta 7:
- Mousewheel & pgup/dn support to all scrolling displays (TV Grid, Search & Schedule displays). [cfcubed]
- Put reminder about # of days downloaded on grid. [cfcubed]
- Hide attribute for program titles such that they can be greyed out in grid & not show up in searches. [cfcubed]
- created "Advanced Search" w/following: [cfcubed]
- can limit search to discovered program categories
- can limit search to substring match for channel
- can have search return only 1st matches (distinct)
- can limit search to program title only (default is title + description ala original Quick/Basic search)
- Added Options Tab w/known options (& defaults) [cfcubed]
- Experimental Feature: TV Grid printing (must be turned on in options pane). [cfcubed]
Release 1.01:
- Updated to latest release of the Zap2It Data Direct Client (1.3.2). Fixes the "java.io.IOException: Not in GZIP format" error that some people have exprienced.
Release 1.0:
- Fixed: Java version detection would fail on Java 1.5+.
- Some UI adjustments so that it looks ok in Java 1.5.
- Added item text coloring based on categories. Colors can be configured by editing the config.xml file.
- Make sure Zap2It Direct Data is selected when no config file exists.
More info:
For more information, please read the Readme.txt.
All feedback is welcome. Feel free to join discussions in the forum.
Or, you can e-mail me at
thomast@hexi.com.
Screenshots:
Windows 2000: | Windows XP | Mac OSX (Jaguar): | Linux / KDE: |
Credits:
Original code to grab listings derived from work by Jerry Veldhuis.
XMLTV format developed by Edward Avis.
Both works can be found at http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~epa98/work/apps/xmltv/
The HTTPClient package used is Copyright (C) 1996-2001 Ronald Tschalär and can be
found at: http://www.innovation.ch/java/HTTPClient/ .
This product includes Hypersonic SQL.
My Telly comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. For details, see the GPL.TXT file or go to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Tom Talbott