[mythtv-users] Video Library vs. Watch Recordings

[Raymond Wagner]

On 10/6/2013 12:44 PM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> Just having to manually "Scan for Changes" on every front-end is a
> complete non-starter for example.  How do I explain that to the family?
>   "Well it's really there, you just need to tell the PVR to go look for
> it".

I have never understood why this is such a hot topic. I plan on adding 
it as part of the file storage rewrite, just because it will basically 
already be done as part of tracking files moving around in different 
storage groups, but the Video Library only contains files you put there. 
When you put something there, perform a scan. When you migrate a 
recording to the Video Library, run the scan. When you rip a DVD or 
Bluray, run the scan. When you sync a bunch of home videos off your 
phone or camera, run the scan. If you have something like Miro running 
in the background downloading content, then use something like 
MiroBridge running along side it and injecting the content into the 
database.

While it is something that would be convenient, it just seems such a 
minor convenience, at least to me, it has never been given any priority.

> Is there somewhere where I'm supposed to be able to see a TV episode's
> air/start/recording time (i.e. so I know which order to watch them in)
> in any of these views?  Does the video library database support such a
> data item?

Do the season and episode numbers not fulfill this purpose?

> The other big problem with this push for the Video Library instead of
> Watch Recordings is that now anyone wanting to sit down and watch
> something, but not know what they want to watch ahead of time, has to
> look in two places to see what's available.

This has been discussed in the past, and the most reasonable plan I've 
seen is to add an option to allow recordings to be populated into the 
Video Library when it is generating its tree structure on open.

> What's more is that an
> important feature of Watch Recordings that I cannot seem to replicate
> with the Video Library is "what's new?".  With Watch Recordings, I sort
> my All Recordings list by recording date so I can easily see which new
> episodes are available.

M -> Browse By -> Date Added

or

M -> Filter Display -> Watched