[mythtv] New program -- bulk search import -- will it be harmful?

Alan Gonzalez alandgonzalez at gmail.com
Fri Jan 14 06:48:26 EST 2005


This is similar to wanting to record all movies above a *** rating
right?  Of course I'm not sure how IMDB 250 relates to the star
ratings, or if all movies in the IMDB 250 have a star rating, but I
thought I'd mention it.


On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 23:58:34 -0800, Brad Templeton
<brad+mydev at templetons.com> wrote:
> 
> I have written a new program which performs a bulk import of title
> search recording requests.   It lets you grab listings like the
> IMDB top 250 movies, AFI 100 or Oscars list, trim them down and
> then create them all as Title searches, so whenever one of these
> top movies (presumably only those you haven't seen) comes on at
> any time in the future, it will record it.
> 
> The documentation for the program, and a link to the source code
> can be found here.  However, it is preliminary and not yet for
> public release.
> 
>     http://www.templetons.com/brad/myth/mythwish.html
> 
> Before I do release it, I have some questions...
> 
> a) Will there be any problem in adding 100 or 200 search entries
> to the record table?  How often are the queries re-scanned?  Is it
> frequent enough that this would create a load burden, or is it, ideally,
> only after mythfilldatabase or changes to the "record" table?
> 
> If this will be highly inefficient, what are recommended steps to fix
> this?
> 
> b) I put the entries in the record table, not in the keywords table
> where searches entered by the user are placed.  This is deliberate,
> in that I don't want to fill that table up so large the user can't
> manage it.  It still works without being there.  They can remove
> the requests in mythweb.   Any unanticipated problems with this
> appraoch?
> 
> c) As it is, there will be some unexpected results.  Notably if you
> enter one word movies like "Brazil" the current search approach,
> which is "Title LIKE %string%" will match any show with Brazil in
> the title, including Boys from Brazil.  And for any movie you will
> get remakes and tv shows with the same title.    I noticed a stub
> in the code for a complex search -- in this case one could imagine
> a query that is much more specific, without the substring, with a
> year match required, and with "movie" required, for example.  Anybody
> working on this area?
> 
> However, overall, this is something I always wanted on my Tivo.  Now
> my mythbox will magically keep recording great movies I haven't seen
> as they show up.
> 
> As noted, the docs and source if you want to check it out are
> at the URL above.  It's a perl script.
> 
> On the long term general path, this could turn into something to
> do a parallel to Tivo's suggestions feature, which turns out to be
> much more useful than I ever expected it to be.  By a parallel I
> don't mean doing exactly what they did (though one could certainly
> code that) but a general concept of surprise recordings, including
> things similar to your tastes, things recommended by others on the
> net and so on.
> 
> However, to do that, Myth's auto-expiration tool needs a concept of
> classes of disk space so that, for example, suggestions are always
> removed first to make room for actual requested recordings etc.  My
> personal taste would be for the ability to have "N" levels, which
> would include:
>         a) Permanent recordings (do not autoexpire)
>         b) Individually requested recordings
>         c) Series recordings
>         d) Wishlist/Search (like these movies)
>         e) "Suggestions"
> 
> Where possibly b and c would be on the same level, as might d and e.
> However, for additional complexity, a good system would identify when
> a requested show is deleted before a person got a chance to watch it, and
> removed from the "Never record this again" list.
> 
> Anyway, all this is something much further away, I'm starting small, but
> am curious if there is any investigation in this direction.
> 
> 
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