[mythtv] Fwd: 2 small feature requests

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Tuesday 27 January 2004 23:53, skrpub wrote:
> Thanks to everyone who's working hard on MythTV, it's really comming
> along well. I tried kidding myself that I'd look into implementing
> these things myself, but well, I just don't think it will happen. So,
> I'm tossing them out there and maybe someone else will pick 'em up.
>
> First, say I'm watching live TV and am several minutes behind. A
> scheduled recording time is about to arrive and the system prompts me
> for the action to take: watch while recording, exit to menu, or don't
> record; keep watching live. What I usually want is to allow it to
> record, but continue watching my delayed live show up to the point
> where it stopped to record something else. Couldn't be too hard to
> keep playing from the ring buffer while recording switches to
> somewhere else, is it?
>
> Second, I notice that if I set post-roll on a show, and that causes
> it to overlap another show, conflict resolution will cause one to be
> not recorded at all. When shows overlap by such a short time,
> especially pre-roll, post-roll, but even just regular schedule, it
> seems reasonable that one show could be cut short so you get most of
> both. (I suppose that means another user setting for how much can be
> cut before a schedule is dropped.) What I can't decide is if pre/post
> roll is less important than the show. That is, a higher priority show
> gets pre/post roll cut off, instead of cutting more into a lower
> priority regular show time. I guess if its set on a per-show, it
> should probably not cut off pre/post roll. Global would be another
> story I think.
>
> That reminds me, what happens when back to back shows on the same
> channel are recorded with extra time specified? Are pre/post roll
> dropped, or does one take priority?


Global pre/post-roll is ignored for purposes of conflict resolution.  If 
2 shows are recorded back-to-back, the (global) post-roll of the first 
and the (global) pre-roll of the second are dropped.

Per-show pre/post roll effectively changes the start/end time of the 
recording for purposes of conflict resolution.

What I would suggest is a new conflict resolution feature that would 
allow a show to be partially recorded instead of suppressed entirely.  
A global setting could control default behavior:  'Conflicted show 
behavior:  (a) suppress shows (b) record partial shows'.  You'd be able 
to override the behavior on a per-show basis in the Conflict Resolution 
screen.  Select the conflicted show and pick "record partial"; it will 
record the non-overlapping portion of the program.  This could be 
especially useful in cases where (as recently) shows are intentionally 
scheduled by the network to overlap 'standard' showtimes by a couple of 
minutes (i.e., Friends ending at 20:32 instead of 20:30).

It's been a while since I looked at the scheduler/conflict resolution 
code... not since before the recording priority stuff went in; I'm sure 
it's gotten more complex.  I'll have to have a look at it and see if I 
can figure out how this might be done...

-JAC