LocateTV.com closing down - schedule suggestion

This topic has briefly been discussed here: http://www.tvmaze.com/threads/1174/filter-calendar...

This might give you some more insight, but please let us know if you have any other issues :)

Unfortunately our schedule isn't able to adjust to your likings, however if you have some suggestions, feel free to state them. We know that our schedule page needs some updating and finetuning and will most likely be updated sooner or later.

Hi Echo,

We're currently trying to get in touch with the managers of locatetv, checking out their key features and listing all the requests you guys are making. Most things that have been asked make sense to be added and we'll gradually work towards implementing them.

Same goes for your request. Altough I think it would fit better in the calendar.

Keep the suggestions coming. :)

Thank you, Jan! I hope you succeed in getting in touch with the LocateTV managers. I had been unsuccessfully trying to get in touch with them for a few weeks PRIOR to finding out they were shutting down.

By the way, when I was discussing "schedule" and "scheduling", I wasn't referring to your scheduling service in particular. In my head, the schedule shows on my calendar and the calendar shows me the schedule ... Call it whatever you want!

I'm a relatively new user here after discovering LocateTV was about to close. While this site is perfect for tracking watched episodes, I'd love to see it expand to incorporate many of the features of something like LTV (films, full & custom schedule, hiding watched episodes, shows featuring followed actors on schedule). It's great to hear that things are possibly in the works.

For anyone still trying to contact LocateTV, here's the result of a bit of detective work when their website was having difficulties (some weeks before the announcement of the shutdown, but now it makes sense why nobody was responding on LTV's contact form).

LocateTV.com is operated by NDS, which was acquired by Cisco at some point.

Here's a reply after emailing Cisco via their generic & publicly-available "tac@cisco.com" address...

> Dear Sir/ Madam,
> Thank you for contacting Cisco.
> For further assistance regarding this matter, please contact the following phone numbers:
>
> UK +44 (0)20 84 76 84 84 (main number) or +44 (0)2380 307 411 (backup number)
> USA: +1 866 398 8749
>
> For General Inquiries:
> Phone: +44 (0)20 8476 8000
> Email: customerops@nds.com
>
> We apologize we were not able to assist you directly.

Calling one of the UK numbers, they admitted they tried to continue to run it as an experiment, and that even if the technical issues at the time were fixed, the site would be shutdown at some point in the future.

That was all before the official announcement, but my guess is the site was acquired as part of a package (perhaps they weren't even aware of it's existence till after acquiring NDS), and whoever is now in charge doesn't see any future in it. There were some technical difficulties back in October 2015, so maybe the acquisition had happened by then.

Maybe if someone can get through to the right people, they may be willing to discuss some deal on the tech / transfer / partnership / who knows..?

Pudsy wrote:
...many of the features of something like LTV (films,

yeah a moviesmaze site, although would take some work. would be awesome =)

I'm using imdb lists at the moment to track my movies, but I dunno it doesn't feel as nice as this website and seems dated.

Same here, IMDB seemed the only place up to the job for films. Though it's obviously laborious having to use one site to scroll through tv listings & mark what I want to watch, then come here and flag episodes as watched when they happen, then go to imdb to add films to a list.

So yeah, the key would be to link it all back to a full tv schedule (which I guess someone along the line will want to charge for the data feed). But that was the beauty of LTV... coupled with the 'did you see it?' panel on the RHS of any page you visit on their site, prompting you about recently aired episodes/films, with simple dropdowns right there on the page. The watchlist here does a similar job, but it takes more of a pro-active approach on my part to keep it up to date, especially when it's all based on original (not necessarily UK) airdates, and doesn't account for repeat showings of episodes I may not have marked as 'seen' yet.

And to think, I've been using icheckmovies.com for movies.

I came here today because LocateTV (locatetv.com) has shut down :o(

I started using LocateTV 5 or so years ago (when the people behing the Radio Times website ruined it). I'm trying out "tvmaze" but it seems to lack a lot of the functionality that I want/need. So far, for example, I've set up my 5 favourite channels (BBC1, BBC2, BBC4, Channel 4, and Film4 - the only ones I ever bother to look at) but I can't find a way to (A) display a schedule for just those channels or (B) display a schedule in "List" format.

So fed up about LocateTV closing ...

If you want my opinion on how to make tvmaze better my answer is simple: make it just like LocateTV!

To all users from LocateTV,

We just posted a blog with some news regarding the shutdown. You're welcome to share and follow it for more updates.

http://www.tvmaze.com/blogs/10/locatetvcom-alternative-dont-lose-your-picks

If you have suggestions in regards to functionality you'd like to see implemented but hasn't been mentioned before.
Then it would be best to create a new thread in the suggestions forum for further discussion. http://www.tvmaze.com/forums/2/suggestions

(It's easier for us to sort everything if there are seperate threads instead of one long one with various suggestions)

We welcome all ideas. Be descriptive of how you'd like to see things integrated into our current system.

cheers,

Jan

Jan, in the blog you mentioned about an importer/exporter...

Will this allow other websites to also do the same (i.e TVMaze specifies the required format, developers output it to that format, TVMaze imports generically).

Or is it going to all be done automatically & only support import from LocateTV?

I'm asking this because it's not just users from LocateTV who would want this feature.

I never did use the whole 'mark movies' and stuff like that on Locatetv (I didn't even know about it). What I did use it for was to find out when programs were going to be on and to find out what was on a channel at the time. I really liked the way that it only displayed one channel at a time. I also REALLY REALLY liked the format, vertical instead of horizontal like most sites. I have some vision problems and vertical was MUCH MUCH easier for me to read. Can anyone recommend a site or program that has a similar format? Every site I have came across so far has all of the channels listed and is in a horizontal format. Any help you could give me would be appreciated.

I'm another refugee from LocateTV who recently arrived at TVMaze. So far this site is the best I've found but I'm confused by two things:

• on the UK schedule page there are lots of gaps and the channels are listed in random order (e.g. April 11 8pm E4 is after ITV2 and before W and has nothing shown then on April 12 I don't see E4 at all) and

• calendar tells me when shows are on but often doesn't say what time or what UK channel they are on (e.g. my calendar has "The 100" on April 14 on "The CW" but I know in the UK it's on April 13 at 9 pm on E4).

Is this because you don't have complete information, and will this be better in the future? Or is it that you only ever include the first time a show is on in the calendar, and if that's on a US channel then I'll never see it in my UK schedule or calendar when it's on here?

@pauldove

Schedule is by default sorted by Most Popular; there's a dropdown at the bottom-right of the page where you can set it to alphabetically.

As for the gaps, this could be 2 things:

1. TVMaze only stores worldwide premiere so whatever is airing then is not the episode's premiere.

2. No-one has added the data yet

For not showing time on Calender, you have to go to your preferences and enable 'Display airdates in schedule and calendar in your local timezone.

Yes, if it aired first in US, you won't see it under the UK schedule at any point; if you want that, I'd suggest voting for that feature (votes = # of users following the thread).