[mythtv-users] Blu-Ray/HD-DVD versus MythTV HD recordings

[Yeechang Lee]

Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> says:
> My main problem is that I have stuff I recorded literally a year ago
> and haven't got around to watching yet, but I can't bring myself to
> delete it.

I know what you mean. I've recorded every episode of _Ugly Betty_
meaning to get around to trying it but only started watching this past
weekend. (It's pretty good, with the two actors who play Betty's foils
particularly talented.) Thanks to commercial skipping and being able
to jump to the next episode in two seconds' time--things we MythTVers
take for granted, but are still voodoo amongst the general
populace--I'm already more than halfway through the lot. I've also
lined up in the same way _Friday Night Lights_ and reruns of _Gilmore
Girls_.

After 10 months of constantly worrying over how much room I have left
on my old 2TB NAS (now relegated--thanks to inadequate playback
performance when recording more than one HDTV-sized stream--to backing
up my network) and constantly deleting/expiring programs in order to
make room for new ones, having (for the moment) a lot of empty storage
space is bliss.

I don't expect to ever watch everything I've recorded. This was true
back in the old 2TB-and-not-a-GB-left days, this was true furthe back
in the 240 hours-of-SD-on-a-Series-1-TiVo days, and it's even more
true now. What I value most from my setup is the sense of freedom;
freedom to record what I want *and*, when I have the time (which isn't
often), to watch what I want, whatever that may be, when I want. The
satisfaction that the programming is there for that eventuality is
almost worth more than actually watching the recordings, if that makes
any sense.

Of course, the comfort won't last. Eventually I'll run out of room
again. I'll once again embark on the Red Queen's Race of deleting
less-interesting programs in order to stay one step ahead of the
auto-expirer. But until that day comes, I'll relish in the sense of
freedom, while planning out the next big expansion to my storage
capacity. Terabyte drives, anyone?

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US