I have used this widget for some time and have encountered some of the problems discussed here. As a widget developer myself, I actually managed to solve some of them, for my personal use. But, all of these problems may soon go away - permanently.

The TV Tracker widget currently gets its TV listings data from Zap2it Labs, which has announced that it is discontinuing its service, as of September 1, 2007. In the past, the TV Tracker widget used a different listings provider, so I hope that they will go back to that one, before the Zap2it Labs discontinues its service. Actually, though I am not sure, I think that they used to parse a web listing, but changed to Zap2it, because the source web site was always changing, which required changes to the widget. At least, that's my understanding.

Interestingly, I have noticed certain significant slow downs and even failures to download data in the TV Tracker widget, since that Zap2it Labs announcement.

Also, this has created a lot of discussion on home theater boards, around the net. The loss of that data from Zap2it Labs, represents a great loss to the home theater community, as several other Mac and PC products also use that data. I hope that some company will move in to fill the Zap2it Labs gap.