[mythtv-users] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #4578: Recordings Sports Feature

[Marc Sherman]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> 
> However, the big problems with an "indirect" mechanism for determining 
> changes (i.e. the sports show ran over 45 minutes, so start and end 
> everything following 45 minutes late) are:  "we now return you to the 
> regularly-scheduled showing if XXX, already in progress;" the 
> not-a-money-maker, so reschedule for a later date decisions; the "shave 
> a few minutes off each show to return to the regular schedule by some 
> specified time approach; knowing when the regular schedule resumes; and 
> all the other annoying things the networks do.

Yeah. I'm thinking a better approach might be to just ignore the 
real-time data available (since it's so unique to each channel) and add 
a configuration block like:

Sports event padding:
Event genre regex: VVVVV
Start prime time: xx:xx
End prime time: yy:yy
Pad start times: WWW
Pad end times: ZZZ

and hack the scheduler so that any time a sports event (a program with a 
genre matching regex VVVVV) ends during prime time (between X:XX and 
Y:YY), add _soft_ padding of ZZZ minutes to the end of the sports 
program, and also add soft padding of WWW minutes to the start time and 
ZZZ minutes to the end time of all programs following the sports program 
on the same schedle within the same prime time block.

Soft padding is used so that while programs may not end up labelled 
properly by the scheduler, at least everything we're interested in will 
be recorded somewhere. Hard padding would almost certainly introduce 
conflicts.

So, for example, if my config is:

Event genre regex: Sports event
Start prime time: 18:00
End prime time: 2:00
Pad start times: 15
Pad end times: 60

and the schedule is:
18:00 - 21:30  Superbowl (Sports event)
21:30 - 22:15  Post game show (Sports non-event)
22:15 - 23:15  House (Mystery)
23:15 - 00:15  Cold case (crime drama)

Then the scheduler would add 60 minutes of soft pad to the end of all 
four programs, and 15 minutes of soft pad to the start of the three 
programs after the superbowl.

Since I've got a pvr500, it would result in something like the following 
recordings, assuming I had all four programs scheduled and nothing else:

18:00 - 22:15 (tuner 1) Superbowl (Sports event)
21:15 - 23:15 (tuner 2) Post game show (Sports non-event)
22:15 - 00:15 (tuner 1) House (Mystery)
23:15 - 01:15 (tuner 2) Cold case (crime drama)

Does that seem like a reasonable way to approach the problem?

- Marc