[mythtv-users] PVR-500 Dual Tuner

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Fri Dec 3 03:51:55 UTC 2004


On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 06:07:40PM -0800, Bruce Markey wrote:
> Brad Templeton wrote:
> Myth shines here because unlike the system you are familiar with
> where previously recorded shows are only remembered for 5 or 6
> weeks and a first run feature is used to block reruns, myth keeps
> it's previously recorded entries. It will remember which ones

That's good, but it actually overdoes it.  One of my first bad
Myth experiences -- once it was working -- involved it failing
to record a show because the signal wasn't strong enough.  It was
convinced, even though it had failed, that it had recorded the
show.  It took quite a bit of work (and I lost several minutes of
the show) trying to convince it to record it "again."

These things will improve with time.

> already formed an opinion about but the new titles I hadn't heard
> of before(!). This lead to the What's New list now in Schedule
> Recordings->Search Lists->New Titles. This is a slightly different

I am sure the suggestion concept will see much advancement over
time, including showing you shows that people with similar tastes
to you are approving of etc.   With disk space cheap you might also
just automatically record new shows and specials until the word gets
out over whether they were good or bad.

In fact, this is similar to how I use the PVR.

See the section at the bottom called "Quick Review and the Nature of TV..."
at:
	http://www.templetons.com/brad/tvfuture.html


The interesting concept of the suggestions was that, since the Tivo
has an mpeg encoder, there is no reason for it to not always be
recording something into spare disk space.  Why not?  It's a new lens
onto the world of TV and worth exploring.   As long as you have
a clear concept of spare disk space, and your recording doesn't cost
you CPU, you should go for it.
    
> I now like reality shows like Survivor, Apprentice, Rebel Billionaire,
> Biggest Loser, even this new The Real Gilligan's Island. I'd like
> to watch all six of these shows (and not Dragnet BTW ;-) each week.
> Other than Survivor and Apprentice on Thursday, the other four are

Don't worry, you will get over it. :-)

I mean I used to watch Survivor religiously.  It was the only show I
watched live (Starting at 8:15 and ending live.  I never watch LIVE-live).
But I broke from it this season and find I don't really miss it.

I sort of view that if I want to adopt a new show, I must drop an
old one.  Of course, my view is I'm watching too much TV.  Not
everybody views it that way.   But it's good to have my tech make
this easier to do, not harder.

> Friday? So as far as thinking about the decisions over what you
> really want to watch, that decision becomes more about what you
> really want to see and less about what compromises you need to
> make in order for things to fit.

Or just get a Canadian satellite dish and you won't need multiple
tuners.
> 
> Myth had two different concepts for padding that are not intertwined
> but are often confused. First, on the options page for any record
> rule, minutes can be added or subtracted from the beginning and the
> end. This information is used bu the scheduler in planning the schedule
> and is always honored. If this creates more conflicts than tuners,
> a show will not record if it cannot fit. 

Right.  This is what Tivo does and it's bad.  You should almost never
have to use it, because the auto padding should be long enough to handle
almost all cases.   The only time you should need to use manual padding
is if you have two shows that abut, and they don't follow their time
slots in some predictable way, and you don't have enough tuners and you
know just what you want.  That's pretty rare, but it does happen.


> this is none of the the scheduler's business. If two shows are back
> to back, the encoder goes from one to the next and quietly forgoes
> the extra time.

That's the right approach -- but it should also start the playing cursor
at the listed start time, and allow rewind if needed, so the user isn't
even aware of it most of the time.
> 
> What you can do with Myth is to set some preroll seconds so that
> every show that isn't back to back will get this padding. If you
> strongly suspect that a certain title is likely to need more time
> and you don't want to risk missing, you can force the scheduled
> minutes for that show.

Though most users won't really get into that.  One imagines that a good
idea would be for users to form collective opinions on shows.  For
example, the last 5 minutes of 60 minutes are all commercials.  The
last 30 seconds of Survivor are an important part of the show (final words
of contestant.)   The first 30 seconds of some shows are always the
theme music (less common today than it used to be.)  Etc. etc.

A database of this would be very handy so people would almost never
have to manually pad.  True PVR success means "it just works."  You don't
have to tweak it.  Because my mother would not ever tweak it.
> 
> Well if you are out of space there certainly must be better choices
> to expire than the potential overtime finish of today's game. Murphy
> says this would only happen when there is a thrilling triple overtime
> buzzer-beater. It's like anything else with disk space; if you're
> so tight that this one hour would make a difference then you don't
> need to find an extra 2% of the disk space, you need twice as much
> disk.

Yes, the better answer is more disk.  However, my point is that if
you are waiting a long time with a show it's probably not a big sporting
event.  For me the killer lost-endings of sports and events have
been watching them that very day, or a day later at worst.


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