[mythtv-users] Baseball Season

[John Patrick Poet]

On Mon, 5 Apr 2004, Bruce Markey wrote:

> I've had and used a ReplayTV and have no reservations in saying
> that it sucks in almost every way imaginable. You've conveniently
> ignored the issues of priority (or lack thereof) disk space
> pre-allocation, dual broadcasts, re-broadcasts, wanting more than
> an hour of overtime and the possibility that overtime may be more
> important than a trivial show that follows. I've used other DVRs
> as well and none of them can do the impossible task of mind
> reading and do the right thing for all sporting events. It really
> takes human intervention. For example, PGA Golf coverage ends on
> time for Thur, Fri and Sat rounds but may have playoff holes on
> Sun. This is one of many examples where it isn't practical to
> expect a system to automatically do the right thing in all
> circumstances.


My post was not intended to say that ReplayTVs are better than Myth.  It was
simply to point out a possible way of handling the issue at hand.  In that
context I did not "conveniently ignored" anything.

Everything you said in your paragraph above is true (at least through
version 4 of the ReplayTV OS, version 5 seems to address some of it).
Everything you said in your paragraph above are reasons I use Myth.

That being said, ReplayTVs do beat Myth in some ways:

1) User interface.  I find the Myth user interface to be very clumsy -- Too
   many menu layers, not enough ability to go directly from one function set
   to another.
2) Reliability.  Myth does not crash very often for me, but it crashes
   more often then my ReplayTV.
3) Selecting programs to record.  It is extremely cool to just tell my
   ReplayTV to record tennis matches using a "Replay Zone".  With it I
   *just* get tennis matches.  I do not get shows *about* tennis.  I don't
   have to know when the show is on, what channel it is on or how long the
   show runs for.  With the SPORTSGUARD, it is extremely rare for me to miss
   the end of the match.

I don't expect a DVR to "read my mind", but it is nice when it generally
does the right thing without constant supervision.


> As with so many features of ReplayTV, this sounds good as a bullet
> item and may look good in a demo but in practice the overall system
> is somewhat better than a VCR and lame compared to other DVRs.
> The test of time shows that most people wise up and move on and
> ReplayTV has never been able to hold any significant market share
> no matter how glitzy their features sound on paper.

I use features which my ReplayTV provides which Myth does not.  I will
continue to use my Replay until I either no longer require those features or
Myth provided an alternative.

I do find your statement that most ReplayTV owners "wise up and move on", a
bit interesting.  I personally do not know any such ReplayTV owner.  I read
the ReplayTV avsforum almost daily, and see very few owners saying that they
are leaving Replay for another DVR.  I guess we are all just blissfully
ignorant of how much greener the grass is elsewhere.

Myth is getting better all the time.  One of the best things about Myth, is
that *I* can go in an add a feature (in theory), if I want to.  Sure can't
do that with a ReplayTV.

I would love to add some features to Myth.  I have looked at the Myth
source.  It is far from obvious how the pieces fit together.  I have never
used Qt before, to that is probably part of my problem.  It is just going to
take me some time to figure out how this all works.


> > For Myth to be able to do this, the new "direct" XML listings would have be
> > used, to figure out if the program in question is a sporting event.  The
> > current XMLTV system does not provide that information.
>
> Not really. When I set a record rule for a sporting event, I know
> that it may have overtime or know that it is prerecorded and
> will end at the scheduled time. Award shows or other live events
> may benefit from such a feature also so a checkbox option on the
> adv opt page would make more sense than a hardcoded feature for
> things that are marked as sports in the listings. However, I
> really wouldn't be interested in such a feature because I do want
> to see them on the Conflicts page and consider what I want to do
> on a case by case basis anyway. An automatic overtime feature may
> happen to do the right thing in some cases but I'm always going to
> want to look at the situation and possibly tweak it to know that
> it will be what I want.


True, a show record could be designated as needing extra padding at the time
it is created.  It would be nice to be able to set up a soft pad, which
would automatically add to the end of the show, but only so much as it does
not keep another, higher priorty show from recording.  It would be really
cool if this extra padding could be given a different priority level delta,
than the main portion of the show.  That way the scheduler could figure out
if the padding is more or less important than a conflicting show.

I like having complete control, but do not want to be required to constantly
monitor the system.  For example, what if I am out of town?

Your posts strikes me as being very "angry".  I am sorry if I said anything
to set you off.  I really was not trying to criticize Myth.  I just wanted
to point out a "feature" which someone *may* want to add.

John