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  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

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