[mythtv-users] is mythtv smart enough to do this (overlap/back-to-back) with recordings?

[Brad Templeton]

On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 09:19:17PM -0600, Chad wrote:
> correct on some either.  For example, I think that TiVO (at least the
> few I've used) don't have a post-pre record option.  So, the conflict
> wouldn't occur because of the lack of that feature.

If you mean padding, Tivos have had that since before MythTV existed,
I think.   Tivos did not have the soft padding option MythTV has as
a global option last I looked, but I turned mine off some time ago and
gave it away.


> 
> Another reason why I don't agree with this approach is that if the
> user is "intelligent" enough to be tweaking pre-post roll recording
> options, they ought to at least have the vaguest idea of how to view
> what changes are being made to their recording schedule.  I don't
> necessarily think that you have to be a networking guru to know how to
> write webpages, obviously.  But this is more like not knowing how to
> use Linux and yet still knowing how to build a kernel.  I doubt that
> this demographic is very large ;-)

Again, I think the goal that most users have for a DVR is to name
the programs they want to see, and have the box figure out how to
record them as best it can, and to tell us if they can't comply with
our requests so we can fix it or accept it.    That's a very simple goal.
Because we can't quite do that, particularly because listing data isn't
exactly correct, our UIs get more and more complex.  But I think we
know what the goal is.   If users venture into more complex areas of
UI because they have to, that doesn't imply they want to venture
even further.   In addition, as I have pointed out, the same DVR is
used by multiple people in a house, each with different levels of
expertise.   I have patched the source code, others users wouldn't
even know what padding or recording priorities are. 

Even if you decide that MythTV is a hacker's DVR, for hackers, there
will always be others in the house.  What the sexist term WAF refers to.


Good software engineering tries to make it as easy as possible to use,
tries to surprise you rarely, and if it sees a problem, tells
somebody about it who will care.   If it fails, it has a backup, and
it never fails silently -- yet at the same time works hard not to
deliver extraneous warnings that people will not care about.   

This is not easy, but it is worthwhile.