[mythtv] Introduction LONG (was Re: Interesting Comparison)

Aaron Howard archanoid at gmail.com
Fri Mar 3 18:38:31 UTC 2006


On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 19:16 +0100, Lucas Meijer wrote:
> Hey Aaron,
> 
> Alltough I have a very hard time imaging this itch :-), would it be much 
> more easily scratched by
> having a "Random" button in mythvideo which just plays a random video?
> Maybe you can even bind a key to it that you can press while watching to 
> switch to the next random video.
> 

Certainly that would be much easier.  That's where I think things like
the video iPod and such are going.  It's like putting your videos on
random shuffle playlists the same way people do MP3s now.  But that's
not what I'm after.  I'm actually after replicating the feel of TV.

It might be stupid, but the idea came to me when I realized I own a lot
of DVDs but I almost *never* actually take the time to pick one out and
watch it.  Yet, I'll watch the same movie I have on DVD when it's on TV.

It is an entirely too common event in my life after a long day when my
brain is fried to just crash on my couch and turn on the TV, flipping
through channels to find something, *anything* I like.  I'll come across
a movie half-way through that I like so much I own the DVD, so I say,
yeah, this'll do...and just watch that as I let my brain rest.  It would
seemingly be much easier to just get up and put in a DVD, but I don't do
this.  I think there are several reasons for that, but it has to do with
mental effort.  I think it takes more mental effort to pick a DVD to
watch than just flip through channels.  Then there's that hunter
instinct: I just want to hunt through channels until I find something
I'm in the mood for.  Lastly, if I watch TV like this, it's usually the
last thing I do at night before I go to bed.  I don't generally want to
sit down and start a two hour movie.  I want to flip through channels to
find something that's on, that I like, and that's mostly over already.

The idea of a single random shuffling playlist satisfies the first two
but if I hit "next" will start it at the beginning.  That's not the
experience I desire.  Now, perhaps a single playlist that, instead of
picking up the next video at the beginning when I press "next", would
jump to a pseudo-random position in that video and start playing it,
might do the trick.  But it still doesn't give me the full feel of "roll
your own TV channels" which is what I'm after.

Thanks,
-Aaron
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-dev/attachments/20060303/a05a55e1/attachment.pgp 


More information about the mythtv-dev mailing list