Hi, folks. We recently announced some upcoming changes to the metadata provider for our electronic program guide (EPG) data, which is used for our Live TV/DVR feature. While we believe that this change brings significant upside for what we can offer in general, it does have the unfortunate effect that EPG data will no longer be available for TV lineups in a few countries that we’ve been able to support prior to the change. Quite understandably, there’s been frustration from some users affected by this change—particularly by Australian users (since we had previously indicated that there wouldn’t be any change in Australian support). We want to provide a bit more information about the situation to give some explanation and context.
Before getting into more details, it’s worth providing some background. Over a year ago, we embarked on an effort to improve our EPG data by partnering with a provider who would allow us to ingest their vast metadata library into our side of things, allowing us much more freedom with how the data can be used. This data includes television lineups, schedules, program imagery, descriptions, and more, for providers all over the world.
Until now, the EPG data we’ve had access to has all been “passthrough”, meaning that it was used directly for the TV EPG and couldn’t be extended or otherwise customized. Because we’ll have more freedom with how to make use of data from our new provider, we’ll potentially be able to augment that data with additional sources in the future and enable popular feature requests, such as multi-lineup support. The new metadata provider will allow a level of customization and control that we never would have had with our current provider’s passthrough deal.
So, that leads us to the current situation and particularly with Australian users losing EPG support. Between the initial evaluation of the new provider’s international coverage and our work to migrate to use their new data, metadata support for Australia was reduced by our partner. This resulted in the removal of lineups and schedules from their offering and left us with only series and episode data for Australian programming. Without a full lineup with schedules, it isn’t possible to provide lineup information for our Live TV/DVR feature.
One of our employees did previously post in the forums, indicating that guide data for Australia was “safe” and wouldn’t be affected by the change. That information was absolutely true at the time and we only learned otherwise recently. We’ve made an ongoing effort to increase our transparency and communication and this was an example of trying to get information out to users early. Unfortunately, in this case it sort of backfired, since the situation changed after we had communicated something else to folks. This is, unfortunately, a possibility when communicating things early: sometimes they change.
As mentioned, we only recently learned that Australian EPG lineups would be affected, after all. As soon as we became aware of this, our first priority was to try to find the best solution we could for our users. We’ve reached out to our friends at IceTV, who have some of the very best Australian EPG data available, and they’ve graciously offered both a price reduction and a 3-month trial, to help make the transition smoother for affected users. We’re super grateful to IceTV for helping make this offer available. With our current metadata provider’s cut-off date quickly approaching, we had few options for maintaining functionality, so for now, using XMLTV is the path forward and IceTV’s EPG special offer is a great source for such data.
Of course, we’re also continuing development of our Live TV/DVR feature and this includes looking for ways to increase coverage, improve quality, and enable more customization.
