[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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