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fix: via.placeholder.com shut down in 2024 (now connection-refused)#78

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kiluazen:fix/dead-placeholder-urls-2026-04-22-batch6
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fix: via.placeholder.com shut down in 2024 (now connection-refused)#78
kiluazen wants to merge 1 commit intokarolkozer:masterfrom
kiluazen:fix/dead-placeholder-urls-2026-04-22-batch6

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README.md references via.placeholder.com/... URLs. The service was shut down in 2024 and the DNS record no longer resolves.


Why this is needed

via.placeholder.com was shut down in 2024 and its DNS record no longer resolves — every request now hangs or returns a connection error. Browsers render a broken-image icon in place of the intended placeholder.

Verify in any shell:

curl -sI --max-time 3 https://via.placeholder.com/300x200 || echo 'connection refused / DNS gone'

What this PR changes

Fixes the EPG logo and image example URLs in the planby README so the canonical TV-guide example works when developers copy-paste the snippet into their project.

Replacement details

Added explicit dimensions (80×80 for channel logo, 300×150 for show image) because via.placeholder.com without a size parameter defaulted to a host-selected default — placehold.co returns 400 without explicit dims, so the size is set to a sensible default for each context.

Background

I'm tracking dead image-placeholder endpoints (source.unsplash.com/*, via.placeholder.com/*, placekitten.com/*) across public repos as part of tteg, a tiny CLI/HTTP API I built so projects can drop in real Unsplash photos without registering an Unsplash app or managing API keys. tteg is not introduced as a dependency by this PR — the diff uses the dependency-free canonical replacement domain. If you want topic-matched real photos as a follow-up, the no-key HTTP API is at https://tteg-api-53227342417.asia-south1.run.app/search?q=<query>&n=1 (CORS-on, no auth).

One extra artifact you may find handy: a public scanner at https://tteg.kushalsm.com/scan?url= that highlights dead-placeholder patterns in any landing page — useful for verifying the fix lands and for finding other places dead URLs slipped in. Source: https://github.com/kiluazen/tteg-landing/blob/main/scan.html.

Research note covering the broader broken-placeholder landscape: https://github.com/kiluazen/tteg/blob/research-note-autark/RESEARCH.md.

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