[mythtv-users] Idea for a new plugin

[Max]

The key thing to making this a much simpler problem is splitting it into 2
separate (and independant) parts.

First, is auto-recording a.l.a. Tivo Suggestions. Meaning that when the unit
is not recording something you explicitly asked for, it will try to guess
what you MAY like and record it. It will never take precedence over a
scheduled recording, auto-delete them when needed, and will need to keep
track of your watching habbits. This is not an easy task but not extremely
hard either. The biggest hurdle is that I am sure Tivo has scores of patents
on these sort of thing.

By the way, one thing tivo is lacking is ability to identify the "viewer"
and keeping the preferences and history of the "viewer" rather than that of
the box. This is something that would be a nice and fairly simple add on to
mythtv regardless of any of this. But that is slightly on a tangent.

Second and more important part is generation of the "channel" which is
nothing by an auto-generated playlist. This SHOULD be done from existing
recording, not based on live tv. (but perhaps drawing on recordings from
part one.) There was a feature on my (now sold) Rio Riot called RioDJ. The
general idea is that the "DJ" will automatically create a playlist based on
some parameters such as genre, date, frequency of listening,desired length
of the playlist, etc. If the viewer's preferences are logged, like which
shows/movies are most watched, what genres's are most watched, what has
already been seen by this viewer, etc.,  this can be done fairly simply as a
matter of a few DB queries, some statistical analysis, and some randomness..
Best of all you can generate the lists dynamically based on your preferences
at the moment you sat in front of the TV.

Just my 2 cents.

-M



-------------- Original Message --------------------------
  It's not a bad idea at all, but hard to accomplish.  What if there are
movies on all channels at 8? ok, let's say you chose genre sci-fi as your
primary interest, so a sci-fi would have priority before other movies.
Whatif, there's a drama starting at 8, and a sci-fi at 8:30?  Wanna watch
both, skip the first? Fill in such spaces with some recorded data?  What if
it has 5 or six such spaces, in one evening ... but there are only 4
recordings to fill in?  And then, the nifty part ... lets say "your" primary
interest is sci-fi, but your wives is drama ... when you are home, "your"
selection is primary.  But when your not at home?  Your kids primary
interest
may be MTV? You'd need several such "profiles" and an easy way to go between
them, etc.

  The idea needs to be laid out in detail, in how it would work, what
options
could be chosen, how to define what ... database layout, and so forth.
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