------------------------------------------------------------------------- TV Agent -- HOW TO FOR SYSOPS 8/19/96 1. Receiving TVLIST*.* 2. $2 credit for distributing TV listings 3. Distributing TVLIST*.* 4. TV Agent Demo 5. Your personal use of TV Agent 1. Receiving TVLIST*.* TV listings for use with TV Agent are sent every day in the Planet Connect datastream. Before the first transmission of the Fido mail, and before the Fido mail repeats, three files TVLIST??.ARC are transmitted. Sometimes the Fido mail is repeated a third time, and in that case it is preceded by eight TVLIST??.ARC files, which is the set for the whole current week. The TVLIST*.* land in the directory you have specified in the line in RULEBASE.CFG with grp 7. By default that line is :rulebase, *, 7, *, *, *, *, disk, C:\TV/, * ^^^^^ You can change the path to another drive and directory (keep the trailing "/".) If you use TV Agent yourself AND you pass the datafiles on to others you will want to change rulebase grp 7 to routinely send the data files to a different directory. C:\TV is the default directory where your personal copy of TVAGENT.EXE was installed when you installed your Planet Connect software, and you do NOT want TVAGENT.EXE to run in the directory with your only copy of TVLIST*.* before you have distributed the TVLIST*.*. Two of the new TVLIST??.* files you get each morning are listings files, where the ?? shows the day of the month. One file is for tomorrow ("fresh" listings, containing changes the programmer announced yesterday) and one is for 6 days later ("advance" listings.) If today is the 9th, the file containing freshly updated listings for tomorrow will be called TVLIST10.ARC. The other file contains "advance" listings for the day one week from today, TVLIST16.ARC. On the 15th you will get a slightly larger, fresher TVLIST16.ARC, and the advance TVLIST22.ARC. The filenames are reused, so if you never delete them your directory will soon have 31 files, TVLIST01.ARC thru TVLIST31.ARC, consuming about 9 megabytes. The small TVLISTTK.ARC file sent each day can be unzipped to find two TIC files, for instance TV960710.TIC and TV960716.TIC, which match the two new listings files sent that day. The TIC parameter "Replaces" appears in some of the TIC files to eliminate obsolete listings files -- for instance the TIC for the advance TVLIST07.ARC will say "Replaces TVLIST29.ARC" because by the time you have received advance listings for the 7th, the file for the 29th is definitely obsolete. The "Replaces" parameter is not used to delete listings for the first 8 days of the month because those can be used with the TV Agent demo on any day. If you didn't get the TVLIST*.* due to errors or your local problem, you can freq them from 1:3615/50 or ftp from ftp.planetc.com. If there was a problem getting the TV listings uplinked on time, the files may already be available at Planet Connect. If you have not received one of the expected TVLIST*.* files by the time the PCUSENET downlink starts, you may not want to wait for the next repeat -- go ahead and freq or ftp them. The filedate should be today, for the two files you expected to get today. TV Agent works best when users look at FRESH listings for tomorrow, so users will appreciate it if you replace the advance listings with the fresh listings which have the same file name as soon as possible. 2. ------- $2 Credit for Planet Connect sites supplying TVLIST*.ARC When a TV Agent subscriber identifies a Planet Connect site as his source for TVLIST*.* files, that Planet Connect site gets a $2 credit on their next PC renewal. The PC site gets another $2 credit when the TV Agent subscription is renewed. There is no limit on the credit available; if you supply listings to enough TV Agent subscribers to more than pay for your Planet Connect subscription, Planet Systems will pay YOU at your renewal time. The PC site gets the credit even if the user gets the listings from another BBS which ultimately got the listings from the PC site. Make sure your TV Agent users know they should identify your PC site when they subscribe to TV Agent so Planet Systems can direct the credit to the right place. If they don't mention any PC site, you can still get the credit by calling me and claiming them by name. Also call me if you'd like to check the status of your credits and which subscribers have said they get listings from you. If you're hubbing the listings thru other BBSs the end users may not know who you are, but you can announce yourself and tell them who supplies their listings by inserting a notice into the listings. Write an ASCII file called "ANNOUNCE.TXT", with a maximum line length of 74. The first line will be used as a heading. The file could be up to 32K long but I hope you don't have that much to say. Then insert it into a TVLIST*.* occasionally. First check that the listing file does not already contain an ANNOUNCE.TXT; I put one in when channels change names or locations etc and you don't want to mess up one of my rare announcements. PKUNZIP -t TVLIST17.ARC will tell you if there already is an ANNOUNCE.TXT in TVLIST17. Actually you better check each one of the current listings, because if the TVLISTdd.ARC where I put an ANNOUNCE.TXT gets unzipped BEFORE the TVLISTdd.ARC where you put one, my announcement gets overwritten. PKZIP TVLIST17.ARC ANNOUNCE.TXT will insert your announcement. Don't do it often enough to annoy your callers; the presence of an announcement prevents their TV Agent from immediately jumping to the current listings. They will have to see the first ~20 lines on any day they decompress a TVLIST*.* that contained an ANNOUNCE.TXT. They can then read the whole thing, or print it; then it is automatically deleted. Of course you screw up the TIC CRC when you insert a file. 3. --------------- Distributing TVLIST*.* Planet Connect sites and others can distribute the TVLIST*.ARC files for use with TV Agent to callers or to other BBSs. A FILE_ID.DIZ is included in each TVLIST*.ARC which identifies the day the listings are for and whether the listings are fresh or advance. It also includes a short description of TV Agent and tells how to subscribe. The extension .ARC is still used, for irrelevant historical reasons. If you find the extension is confusing you can rename them TVLIST??.ZIP. TV Agent users are not supposed to unzip them, and any file extension besides ZIP might help prevent complaints from users who try to unzip them. Renaming them TVLIST??.AGT might be less confusing. TVAGENT.EXE will PKUNZIP TVLIST*.* so it does not care what extension you use. However, the .TIC files that are zipped into TVLISTTK.ARC refer to the .ARC extension, so if you rename them do it after you're thru with the TICs. TV Agent subscribers will probably call you EVERY DAY and download a 290k file. They need to have those fresh listings for tomorrow to take best advantage of TV Agent. If they don't mind missing a few changes in schedule and additional episode details, they may use the advance listings instead (those are still fresher than weekly paper guides which have to be printed and mailed.) Any time they call (after you've received the TVLIST*.* in the Planet Connect datastream) they can download fresh listings for today and tomorrow and advance listings for the next six days. Some callers may call only once a week and download fresh listings for the next day, and advance listings for the rest of the week. People who take their TV listings seriously will probably call you daily and download TWO files, the same two TVLIST*.* that you got from satellite. That way if they don't connect one day, they will still have the advance listings for the fresh day they missed. This last strategy is supported by a door program written by Pab Sungenis. If you want to use it, freq TVDOOR.ZIP from him at 1:266/73 or from Planet Connect 1:3615/50. Or, send email to file-server@cnx.com , with the message text: send tvdoor . You can try it out on the Connections BBS (where Pab is SysOp) at (609) 794-8907 in Vineland, New Jersey. There is an option "T" on the Main Menu of that BBS, which takes you to the door that helps you download TV listings. First it tells you how many listings files have been updated since you last downloaded listings, and asks if you want to download them, and then which protocol you want to use. A caller could use a very simple script at the Main Menu which provides responses like "T" "Y" "Z" to get the two new files. That means the caller does not have to figure out which days he needs and select them from the TVLIST??.* files you have available. I recommend this door, and I'll mention you use it in your WHERE.LST entry if you want. If you keep expired listings and you don't use TVDOOR you might have some callers who waste download time by accidentally downloading an expired TVLIST*.*. If it contains listings for the day before yesterday, or earlier, TV Agent will immediately delete it. When TV Agent starts, it also deletes listings for yesterday, depending on what time and time zone TV Agent sees. So if they've read and understood the docs (that is, the online help topic "Getting new TVLISTdd.ARC files") they will figure out which CURRENT listings they need. One way to help the people who DIDN'T understand that help topic is to run the utility KEEP8.EXE . That will delete all TVLIST*.* in the directory where it runs except it keeps the eight which are for today or the next week. It is comparing your computer clock and the ?? in TVLIST??; if ?? isn't today's date or in the next week, it is an expired file. If the "dd" in TVLISTdd.ARC has passed, the file is obsolete. KEEP8 doesn't look at the filedate, but if the filedate is more than 8 days ago, the file is obsolete. Actually TV Agent is a little more tolerant, and doesn't delete yesterday's listings immediately at midnight. So it makes sense to postpone running KEEP8.EXE until say 6 AM or when you get new TVLIST*.*. This is because TV Agent users may want to look back a few hours to see what some program was; and in the Pacific Time Zone at 9 PM on the 3rd, TV Agent has already started using the TVLIST04.ARC file -- the file naming convention is based on midnight to 11:59 PM EASTERN time. I recommend running KEEP8.EXE daily, AFTER you've received new listings. That will prevent frustration in confused callers, and keep the TVLIST*.* from taking so much disk space (about 9 meg) if you let all 31 of them accumulate. Your TIC processor may also help delete obsolete listings since some of the TIC files use the "Replaces" parameter to kill one obsolete day. The first 8 days of the month are NOT replaced like that, and whatever technique you use, you may want to keep TVLIST01 thru TVLIST08 for callers who are trying out the free demo. Tell me if you want to be listed in the WHERE.LST file that is distributed with TVADEMO.ZIP and other places. I consult that when a potential subscriber wants to know where to find the TVLIST*.*. The minimum information I need for an entry in WHERE.LST is your BBS telephone number, CITY, and STATE. I also include sysop name, BBS name, and Fido node number. You can also include a voice phone number if you want. Here's a sample entry from a site who also makes the listings available by FTP: --------------------------------------------------------------------- John Hrusovszky WISCONSIN T-NET, Inc. anonymous FTP to tznet.com /pub/tvagent/days directory The Twilight Zone BBS (1:238/300.0) (715) 652-2758 TVADEMO.ZIP is a free download Auburndale WI --------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a disclaimer at the beginning of WHERE.LST saying your entry in the list does NOT obligate you to provide the listings. Please let me know if you stop providing them so I can remove you from the list. You can charge for the listings if you want, or only offer them to paid subscribers to your board, etc; but I think many boards are offering them for free, so I don't know what the market will bear. I am not currently asking who is offering them for free or including that in the WHERE.LST. A subscription to Satellite TV Week is $59.95 per year, compared to $24.95 for TV Agent. Plus, STVW has fewer details and relatively outdated schedules. And mainly, it doesn't remember what programs you want hilited, and it can't help but show you many listings you have no interest in. So even if you charge for passing on the listings, your local callers get a better product for less than they're paying now for a printed guide. If they have to call you long distance, I bet they'll look for a free BBS. Once they're calling your board daily they may get other things from you too. It IS possible for you to distinguish your BBS as a superior source of the listings -- for instance, if Planet Connect does not have the listings in the satellite datastream before the first pass of Fido mail, 90% of the time the two new TVLISTdd.* files ARE already available for freq. If they have not shown up before PCUSENET starts you SHOULD freq them because otherwise you'll probably miss them entirely. When a user has to look at "advance" listings for tomorrow instead of "fresh" listings, he does not see the last minute schedule updates. (Still, he'll see listings fresher than the printed guides show.) But some of his work gets lost (affecting one day only) if he does whole line hilites and deletes while looking at advance listings, and then fresh listings arrive and overwrite the advance listings for that day. If possible, make sure your callers have FRESH listings for today and tomorrow. If you show your callers the first line of the FILE_ID.DIZ inside each TVLIST*.*: TVLIST02.ARC 08/02/96 ADVANCE TV listings (OK for TVADEMO) that will help them know whether they want to download the file or not. Also consider using TVDOOR. Another value added service you could offer is to prepare a customized MYCHAN.TV2 file which lists local cable channel numbers instead of the satellite channel numbers that appear by default. That only works with channels that are among the (currently) 133 carried by TV Agent. Subscribers can do that for themselves if they follow the instructions in the help topic for the Set Up Menu, but if you want to reach out to the people who do not have C-band satellite dishes, preparing a setup for the local cable system for them is probably the best way. MANY of the channels offered on Primestar and DSS are carried by TV Agent, so subscribers to those small dish services may be a market for you. 4. TV Agent Demo The first thing potential TV Agent subscribers probably want is to download TVADEMO.ZIP, so you want to make that available. It can be distributed freely. The demo works with CURRENT listings during the first 8 days of any month, so that first week every month is the ideal time to try it out. The demo also works on the 9th and later, but it still only reads listings from the first 8 days. TVADEMO.ZIP does not include any listings, but all versions of the demo include the TVAGENT.EXE and associated files, and can be freqed from 1:3615/50. Sometimes I've hatched versions of the demo that also include listings. The number of days included is the number at the end of the filename, like TVADEMO2.ZIP contains listings for 2 days. The demo can't be used without listings, and including a couple with the EXE etc in one ZIP file means callers can try it out after downloading just one file. But on the other hand a ZIP file that includes listings is significantly bigger, by about 290K per included day. TVADEMO.ZIP without any listings is just 228K. When listings are included, they are out of date the next month. People trying out the demo can compare it to current printed guides if they do it during the first week of the month and they download listings from among the latest TVLIST01- 08. You may want to save TVLIST01-08 in a separate directory, along with TVADEMO.ZIP. Once those listings have expired they are of no use to TV Agent subscribers, but people trying TVADEMO can use those 8 days at any time. The demo is very realistic (during the first week) about deleting expired days, so if today is the 4th it is a wasted effort for a demo user to download listings for the first 3 days of the month. After the first week (that is, on the 9th or later) TVADEMO will pretend the current date is the earliest day for which it sees listings -- so somebody can try out TVADEMO on the 15th, and download listings TVLIST03 and TVLIST04, and the demo will run as if today's date is the 3rd. (It does not actually change the computer's clock.) I usually recommend that callers download TVADEMO.ZIP, TVLIST07.ARC, and TVLIST08.ARC. If they only have one day's listings TVADEMO will work but some buttons will be disabled. Two of the most used features are 1) jumping into the listings at the current time and 2) printing tomorrow's hilites. It can't do both unless it has listings for both today and tomorrow. But if it has two consecutive days, it will pretend the first day is "today". The demo will use the latest month it sees, so somebody who has previously downloaded any version of TVADEMO?.ZIP and used it with listings from an earlier month can get updated listings by downloading TVLIST01 - 08 for a later month. Set up work done with the demo (like marking the titles of your favorite programs, or deleting channels you don't receive, etc) can be preserved and used with the subscription version. The TVADEMO.ZIP also includes a recent copy of WHERE.LST, the list of Planet Connect sites that have said they make the TVLIST*.* files available. Send me your info to make sure your BBS is included! There are instructions how to subscribe in the demo, so you do not have to get involved with that. But do make it clear to people downloading listings from you (directly or indirectly) that when they subscribe to TV Agent they should tell PSI you're supplying their listings. That way you get the $2 credit on your next PC renewal -- and another $2 whenever they renew their annual TV Agent subscription. They must identify your BBS specifically enough (preferably by PC subscriber name) that I can find you in the PC customer database. Call me if you want to check whether you're being properly credited. 5. Your personal use of TV Agent You have a subscription to TV Agent included in your subscription to Planet Connect or Skylink, and the listings come to you daily, so you (and the other 99 users in your household) can use it yourself. By default your copy of TV Agent is installed in the same directory rulebase grp 7 points at. If you use TV Agent you probably want to CHANGE that directory because TV Agent will decompress and DELETE the TVLIST files whenever it runs. Make sure you have saved the TVLIST*.* files where your callers can get them BEFORE you personally run TVAGENT.EXE. The TVAGENT.EXE that comes on your Planet Connect installation disk requires the dongle. If you cannot conveniently use TV Agent on the computer with the dongle, you can get a dongleless version free from Planet Systems. They will mail you a copy-protected diskette which you can install on the hard drive of a different computer. The disadvantage of the dongleless version is the hidden files involved in the security. They won't work on HPFS drives, and you must uninstall TVAGENT.EXE before you defrag or replace the drive where you installed it. Thanks for your help! TV Agent goes NOWHERE if you don't provide the data delivery. Lee Bonnifield voice (423) 623-5234 TV Agent author & Tech Support 71267.3101@compuserve.com lee@planetc.com 1:3615/50.1 Echomail: PCSITES or PLANET_CONNECT -------------------------------------------------------------------------