[mythtv] Strange scheduler bug

[Bruce Markey]

Chris Pinkham wrote:
>>>We'd need a "watched" flag for that to work well...
>>
>>I don't see any benefit in that. The Auto Expire flag can be
>>flipped off if you've watched something and decided to keep it
>>If you watch something and decide to keep it but then let it
>>auto-expire doesn't make much sense. After I watch something I
>>either delete it or I flip off auto-expire and move it to a "Keep"
>>recording group. Everything else is unwatched.
> 
> 
> I was thinking a 'watched' indicator could eventually have other
> functionality such as indicating who had watched a show so even if there
> was a watched indicator, a field might not be the way to go.

Okay, the idea of multiple users marking shows has been suggested
by several people and probably is something that may be useful.
However, it is now the fifth different subject on this thread.
The only connection that I see between multi-user support and A.I.
for auto-expire to make bad assumptions about whether a show has
been watched is the letters w-a-t-c-h-e-d. These are two different
topics with different goals. Remember that reusing the letters
p-r-e-r-o-l-l didn't really help users understand what was going
on. Multi-user support does not require odd auto-expire behavior
and odd auto-expire behavior, well, isn't needed at all ;-) and
certainly does not relay on multi-user support. Referring to both
of these as "watched" would be a Bad Thing.

>   I think
> having some form of 'watched' check might be better than removing
> the oldrecording entry because there are some shows that I might want
> to rerecord (if I didn't watch them the first time I might not watch
> them the 2nd time they record).  

I agree. The system can't guess the user's intent but the user
knows for themselves. We do have the choice to forget or not
on the delete popup. The user is empowered and can specify at
anytime. The question is what the system should do if the user
didn't bother to delete and I don't think the assumptions in
this thread lead to the right answer.

> 'Watched' could also be used as another
> auto-expire sorting type, where right now the only option is delete
> oldest first, you'd have the ability to delete the watched files first
> (by date order still) then the unwatched files (by date).

Careful. Let's say the system marks things as "watched" if it
has been accessed beyond the 5 minute mark as you suggest. Your
disks have been full for a while and it has been dutifully auto-
expiring the watched files before touching the unwatched files.
In fact, there are none of these left. Your wife starts watching
this week's Trading Spaces shortly before you come home but saves
a bookmark when it is time to get your slippers, pipe, and
newspaper and start cooking your dinner. While she's cooking,
your Monday Night Football starts to record. Space has to cleared
so the already watched "Trading Spaces" is deleted while that
Munster's Halloween Marathon remains in tact.

So the question is, do you have a comfortable sleeping bag?

As I've said before, it seems to me that when something is watched
but not deleted it is still there for a reason. It is likely to be
something that the users is more interested in than a show that has
not been accessed. I don't know why the opposite is assumed
other than using the word "watched" makes it sound like the system
knows that you must not need it any more (but then the words "black
hole" sounds like something you can jump through ;-).

I don't see a reason that watched or unwatched is useful in deciding
an order of preference for auto-deletion. Therefore, I'd see adding
code to mark things as watched, code to determine the order of
deletion and an option for the users to consider are all creeping
featurism.

>>>Hmmm, with a watched flag you could change the the auto expire so that 
>>>watched recordings were a week older than they really are.  That way 
>>>unwatched recordings could get a priority boost.
>>
>>I don't get it. When the disks fill up would you want to expire
>>things that you watched but didn't delete because, presumably,
> 
> 
> I agree here, the week offset wouldn't make sense, I'd just give the user
> another way to order the auto-expire list using the above mentioned method.
> 
> 
>>Either you watch something or you don't. You delete it or you
>>don't. The question is if you don't delete something until it
>>auto-expires, should the system re-record it in the future. I
>>suspect the answer won't be the same for everyone.
> 
> 
> I think an setting on the auto-expire page would be good here as mentioned
> in my other email (the one I sent just a minute ago since I'm catching up
> on emails tonight). :)  Could be a 2-state setting "Remove oldrecorded
> history when auto-expiring a program" (true/false)

Agreed.

>  or a 3-state which
> also gives the option of "only if recording has been watched"

I think this is problematic. It is based on the assumption that
system can determine if the user has watched something, takes that
to mean that it is no longer needed (which in practice is almost
never the case) and may have the reverse of the behavior that the
user really wants. Other than that it might be a good idea ;-).

>  and later
> that could even be expanded to "only if watched by everyone wanting to
> watch it" if/when we make Myth multi-user aware.

I can see that if there was multi-user support an item could
auto-expire when one or more users have seem it and one or more
users haven't. However, gain, I think these are two distinct
features and are not to be intertwined in this way.

Now, as I try to think about what you are suggesting here, the
system would need to know which user (or users!) are watching
at the time playback begins to determine if each user has watched
at least 5 minutes so it can decide that if it ever auto-expires
it should or shouldn't remove the oldrecord entry. Is that about
right? My head hurts. I need to take a nap ;-).

--  bjm

Zzz... zzz... (muttering) if a show is a series and there is a
recurring rule and there is descriptive episode information and
there is a duplicate matching policy and an episode is recorded
and it is watched for at least 5 minutes by one or more users and
it hasn't been watched for up to five minutes by one or more
other users and the episode is not deleted and the disks are full
and this is the oldest show and it does get auto expired and the
episode is rebroadcast and there aren't conflicts when it is
shown... zzz.