[mythtv-users] Collaborative recommended viewing revisited...

[Chris Curtis]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 03:20:42 -0400, Bill Chmura <bill at explosivo.com> 
wrote:
> I missed the first round of this, but what exactly is the benefit of 
> this?
> For example, if my mythbox uploaded data it would be an compilation of 
> my
> stuff, my gf's stuff and my 5 year old daughters stuff.
>
> So at best you could say that people who like star trek also like monk 
> and the
> wiggles.  Maybe with profiles or something that you could get down to a
> specific person making a recording on that box or something you could 
> get
> some good data.  Also there is a while region thing (US, Autralia, etc)

Perhaps surprisingly, this is exactly what it should do.

First, combining the recordings of all users of the system is probably 
the Right Thing to do. The point, really, is to recommend/record shows 
that are likely to be liked by the "viewer" of your system -- which is, 
in this case (and probably in most cases), a composite. So the 
recommendations would match that composite viewer profile, ideally 
resulting in a mixture of shows that are likely to appeal to the 
various individuals who use your system.

Relatedly, though perhaps less intuitively, the statistics probably 
don't make much sense in the individual case or with small sample 
sizes. But when you put data from millions of households together, you 
can find some interesting patterns. It's completely reasonable to think 
that there may be a cluster of shows that are also liked by households 
that watch Star Trek and Monk and The Wiggles.

--chris