[mythtv-users] Cornucopia of the Commons
Michael Tiller
michael.tiller at gmail.com
Wed Aug 10 21:55:58 UTC 2005
I was sitting around contemplating my MythTV setup the other day and it
occurred to me that with the number of deployed MythTV boxes, there should
be some really interesting "social" possibilities. Perhaps this has already
been discussed, but it seems to me that the open nature of MythTV would make
these relatively easy to add.
The specific case I was thinking about was what to watch on TV. TiVo has its
suggestions capability and I do miss that. But MythTV could do much better.
Instead of looking at my viewing habits and trying to guess what I'd like,
what if you looked at my viewing habits and then compared them with viewing
habits of other MythTV owners? If you were somehow able to compile all the
viewing information (in an opt-in, privacy friendly way of course), then you
could pretty easily identify patterns. So if I record "Law & Order" and
"Numb3rs" and it notices that most people who record those shows also record
"The Closer" then it would point that out to me.
This could be just like the online commerce approach of "people who bought
this also bought...".
This kind of capability wouldn't just have to rely on past data, it could
see into the future. It could recognize patterns in what people with similar
interests will record in the future.
I wonder if commercial identification could work in a similar
way...combining information about what the various commercial identifying
algorithms identified along with information about what parts of a program
people fast-forwarded or skipped through to create a nearly definitive map
of a broadcast (of course, this requires that time pass and some people have
already watched the episode, but I'm just brainstorming here).
As I said, perhaps this has been discussed before, I don't know. I thought
it was an interesting idea and reflects many trends in how social data is
being handled (e.g. http://del.icio.us).
If I had the time, I'd probably try and implement something myself. But
being overcommitted already with other obligations, I'm afraid I have little
to offer such a project except perhaps some ideas, user feedback and
encouragement. :-(
--
Mike
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