[mythtv-users] Baseball Season

[Khanh Tran]

You obviously never read my posts on the avsforums.  I spent more time
on the phone trying to convince some guy who couldn't speak english that
my money needed to be refunded.  I couldn't get ReplayTV to stay on live
tv for more than 45-75 minutes at a time.  ReplayTV told me to simply
not watch tv for that long or at least change the channel.  :)
Obviously, this was a hard drive/live tv buffer issue, but they couldn't
resolve it after 3 RMAs and one guy even blamed it on the use of their
screensaver or photo partition.

Finally, PVR-350 & PVR-250 setup is already cheaper and more functional.
I get true networking, MP3 and photo functions, plus DVDs and weather.
I have a much bigger hard drive (which no one will fault me for wanting
to upgrading) as well as a real-time web based scheduling program.  I
don't have to wait almost 24 hours for a remote schedule to take effect
because my PVR didn't contact the mother ship...

-Khanh


-----Original Message-----
From: John Patrick Poet [mailto:john at BlueSkyTours.com] 
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 7:44 PM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Baseball Season

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