[mythtv] More scheduling scheduler

[Martin Ebourne]

From: David Engel <gigem at comcast.net>
> OK, here's the scoop.  In short, the current softpad approach won't be
> going into trunk.  The main reason is that nobody wants to support it
> and be responsible for it.

Although this is understandable, this is a very disappointing turn of events.

> The multi-candidate approach is conceptually a simple extension of the
> current scheduling algorithm.  This is why I had mild interest in
> seeing how it would work out.  However, the quadrupling of candidate
> recordings makes it much harder to follow and explain the results for
> all but trivial scenarios.  Additionally, many users would probably
> enable softpadding naively expecting it to solve all of their
> scheduling issues.  That's not something we want to deal with.

I do wonder what all these issues are that people are likely to assume
will be resolved with softpadding. The only problem I can see it solves
is for channels with unreliable timing, or that sometimes run a couple
of minutes late, and for this it works very well.

> If you do experiment on your own, I suggest going back to
> something along the lines of Max' first attempt.  That was to have a
> single function add softpads by re-arranging things after the main
> scheduling was completed.

This sounds like an unpleasant hack, and when we've already got a
working implementation that uses the full power of the scheduler would
surely be a backwards step.

> We feel
> pretty strongly that most users don't really need it, even if they
> think they do.

I really cannot understand that remark. Maybe in some countries channels
are 100% accurate on their timings but this is most surely not true
across the whole world.

I'm in the UK where the listings data is of a high quality and the
channels are reasonably accurate on their timing. But even here shows
sometimes run over their allotted times. Before we had softpadding (and
even with postroll being abused to lengthen recordings) we used to get
probably one recording a month where the last few minutes was lost, and
this was generally very annoying (and the wife is very effective when
annoyed...).

The old VHS videos have had a feature that let you add a few minutes
onto the end of a recording for decades, they knew that this was a
problem. In the UK we've had Program Delivery Control on analogue
channels for VHS recorders for 10 years which was a more high tech
solution to this problem.

I for one will have to continue patching softpadding in until a better
solution is found (maybe the new digital equivalent of PDC will resolve
this issue in the UK one day). In countries such as Australia this
situation must be a real pain.

I don't think the average user of MythTV is stupid, and telling people
they don't need something that has clearly been demonstrated to be
beneficial doesn't really help.

Cheers,

Martin.