[mythtv-users] Mythtv .19 live watching

[Isaac Richards]

On Friday 14 July 2006 7:07 am, chris at cpr.homelinux.net wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 10:41:40AM +0300, Osma Ahvenlampi wrote:
> > I'd think that would be fairly obvious, if you consider not the current
> > implementation, but what a user would expect to happen with a TV set:
> >
> > d) display live tv, but show a message over the OSD that storage space
> > is not available, so time-shift capability and recording are disabled.
>
> BINGO!
>
> The reason this list devolves into design wars ("there's a problem
> with Myth's implimentation!" vs "if you want it improved then code
> it yourself!") is because some of us start from the position of
> "what should myth do, given limitations caused by past
> assumptions?" while others ask "what would Aunt Tillie expect?"
>
> In the real world, when a VCR reaches the end of the tape it either
> stops recording (the "storage is critical so I'll panic" model) or
> else it rewinds and starts at the beginning of the current tape
> (the "storage is expendable so I'll eat my tail" model).  It
> doesn't reach over to your rack of videos and say "you haven't
> watched this movie lately so I think I'll write over it".

What VCR do you have that has a couple hundred hours of recording capability 
available for $50?  That allows you to explicitly mark which sections to 
_not_ record over?

In the real world, we don't compare completely dissimilar things to try and 
prove points.

> The intuitive solution when you don't have any room to record live
> TV is simply to not record live TV.

Which will happen _every_ time the user enters live tv, unless they think "oh, 
I want to watch TV live right now, so I better go check to see how much free 
space I have and possibly delete a program or two if there's less than 2GB 
free, but, oh, I was thinking of changing channels to watch the game in a 
couple hours, so I better make sure there's around 6GB free since I'll 
_probably_ want to keep the game, but not if they lose... again.  Oh, but 
wait, I'll need to delete more than that because there's a recording 
scheduled in an hour on the other tuner card that'll use some of that space 
and I still might want to keep the game."

Not really a corner case, there, I don't think.  You're really wanting Aunt 
Tillie to have to do that, when it could be (and is) essentially automatic?

Isaac