[mythtv] Fwd: 2 small feature requests

[Bruce Markey]

skrpub wrote:
> 
> 
> Bruce Markey wrote:
> 
>> Isaac Richards wrote:
>>
>>> Global postroll has always been optional, and ignored if another 
>>> recording (on the same channel or not) conflicts.  Per-show postroll 
>>> is not optional, and is taken into account when scheduling recordings.
>>
>>
>>
>> This, and other threads like it, suggest that there is a
>> problem with the labeling. Global "pre-roll" to try to start
>> the encoder early in order to catch the first few second and
>> per-show "pre-roll" to force a change in the scheduled record
>> time are very different things and should not be confused.
>> Unlike yesterday, I'll propose a solution to an anticipated
>> problem rather than just checking it in =).
>>
>> I've modified the advanced options page to label the per-show
>> offsets as "Start Early (minutes)" and "End Late (minutes):".
>> I don't believe any internal changes need to be made at this
>> point but this should help users to make a clear distinction
>> between these two separate features. If there are no objections
>> or better ideas I'd like to go ahead and make this change.
>>
>> --  bjm
>>
>>  
>>
> That is a little clearer. Unfortunately, it still doesn't handle the 
> case where the networks (or listing) offsets a show by a bit.

Other than guessing incorrectly, how did you come to that
conclusion and decide to explain this to me as a fact?
 
> In the mean time, how about allowing negative values?

Has been there for months...

> (I didn't try 
> that, so if it works, great!) That would work for shows where you know 
> the first few minutes are just rehash of what happened last time, or for 
> lots of sit-coms where they end the show, have a block of commercials, 
> and come back just to run credits, then still more commercials. It would 
> also work for when you don't believe, or don't care to follow, the 
> listing, and want to shift the timeslot.

Sorry, I really didn't pay much attention to the confusion
that is this thread beyond the fact that it was all confusion.

We need to untangle two very different features:

Global pre/post roll - These are set by seconds and apply to
all scheduled recordings. They are applied to the beginning
or end of a show to compensate for slow startup of the encoder,
time for an external channel change script, etc. This, of course
could also be used to allow extra padding in case a station
starts a little early or runs a little long. But the isn't
selective at all. the same time applies to all shows even if
there is just one show that you really need to start early.
If shows are end-to-end on the same card, these values are
ignored and the encoder switches from the earlier show to
the later one at the scheduled time. The pre/post roll seconds
can only be positive values.

Start Early / End Late - These are set in minutes and can be
positive or negative values as long as the starttime is still
earlier than the endtime (otherwise they are ignored). The
start time and negative end time offsets can be up to 60 minutes
and you can end a show up to four hours late. These apply to
a recording rule (single record or any recurring type) for a
title. These values change the scheduled times for the recording.
Therefore, they are always honored and adding time in a back-to-
back situation will create a conflict. However, if there are
multiple cards, these conflicts may be resolved by recording the
overlapping shows on different cards. Global pre/post roll time
is appended to the Start Early / End Late times whenever these
additional seconds would not cause a conflict.

Now, NBC has been trying to act like jerks by moving scheduled
times by one or two minutes (kudos to NBC for their overwhelming
success at being jerks 8-). However, in almost every one of these
situations, they don't actually start the show until the normal
time. They do this because TiVo(tm) does not have negative offsets
and I guess they believe TiVo users will be stuck watching their
shows and not the other networks (we can see the logic error here
but remember, these are marketing types who may not excel at logic).

This is not a problem for myth. If The Apprentice is at 8:59 you
set Start Early to -1 so that it will start at 9:00 and not
conflict with an 8:00-9:00 show on another station.

Say you have two cards and you plan to record Survivor and CSI
on CBS Thursday at 8-9 and 9-10. Survivor has a nasty habit of
running over by a minute or two if they feel like it. You don't
want to cut off the sour grapes of the person voted off on your
Survivor file and you don't want to miss the murder scene from
the CSI intro. You can add 2 minutes to the end of Survivor and
even a minute to the beginning of CSI for good measure. Survivor
will record 8:00-9:02 on card 1 and CSI from 8:59-10:00 on card 2.
Each file contains the same three minutes so you don't need to
look at the other file to see a little mis-timed piece.

--  bjm