Re: Zap2It's TV Listings Are Gone

On 2025-03-27 5:00 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

On 2025-03-27 3:56 PM, anim8rfsk wrote:

 

. . .

 

I've been peripherally involved with a couple attempts over the years. You
have to understand that everyone involved in cable TV is stupid and
dishonest. Such efforts usually fall apart over in fighting such as them,
insisting that the day starts at 6 AM and not midnight because that's how
TV guide used to do it.

 

Why would they even care about when the day starts?

 You're right. Using GMT with offset for local time doesn't care
about the day of the week. This goes back to radio days when there was
no overnight transmission. To this day, certain AM stations are daylight
only. Who remembers why?
 

In any case, you could let the user set the time when the day starts in
their settings and then they could start the day at 6 AM, midnight, or
any other time they wanted.

 as long as it didn't screw with the date.
 

Databases typically make heavy use of a datatype called a Timestamp which typically consists of a year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and fractional seconds (which could be hundredths, thousandths, millionths or even billionths of a second) and a timezone. That effectively bonds all of them together as a single big, complicated number. That timestamp is normally generated to represent a particular moment of significance, like the exact date and time a show will be aired on a given TV provider.
It's still possible to alter individual parts of the timestamp, like the hour, after the information has been added to the database so this doesn't guarantee that the hour won't change (whether because the show was rescheduled or because someone hacked the database) but it is relatively unlikely. In any case, the system will be designed so that the information provider - cable network, for example - is the only one that can create or alter the data; the end user (you and me) only get to read what's there. So if the hour changes, it's almost certainly because the schedule was changed for some reason.
--
Rhino