[mythtv-users] ReplayTV "Zones" functionality?

Bruce Markey bjm at lvcm.com
Fri Feb 13 16:42:00 EST 2004


Bill Bradley wrote:
> On Friday 13 February 2004 10:13 am, Dan Wolfgang wrote:
> 
>>One of the features I really like about my ReplayTV is
>>that I have several "Zones" defined. Does this
>>functionality exist in MythTV?
>>
>>For those who don't know about Zones, I'll explain:
>>One of the Zones I've defined--5-Star Sitcoms--is set
>>to record up to 6 hours of what ReplayTV considers a
>>good sitcom. I like being able to come home from work
>>and see what it's taped for me today. It always varies
>>based upon what is on. I also have 6 hours reserved
>>for a "Contemporary Comedies" Zone. It records movies.
>>Same as with 5-Star Sitcoms, I like seeing what it's
>>taped for me. It's a good way to get a variety of
>>shows/movies without having to actively look in the
>>Program Guide all the time.
>>
>>I thought I might be able to use MythTV's Search
>>Listings function to make a Comedy genre "zone" but it
>>doesn't appear so. Any thoughts?
...
> Sounds a lot like Tivo's Suggested Recordings feature.  I have a tivo and that 
> was one of the first things I disabled.  It ranks suggestions by the number 
> of thumbs up choices you select when viewing a program.  I would come home 
> from work and find the TiVo full of Yugioh or Pokemon....You would be amazed 
> at how quickly 7 year olds will pick up technology ;)
> 
> That being said...I don't believe Myth has this feature..

ReplayTV doesn't have the equivalent of TiVo Suggestions. The
recording by Zones in TiVo terms would be like Auto-Record
a Tivoloution sub-category with "Keep at Least" for 6 hours
worth rather than a number of shows.

The problem with Zones or Tivoloution is that there are people
at the home office collecting payola from stations for promoting
these shows and worker bees that format the lists to be sent
along with their proprietary data. There is no one at XMLTV/
MythTV corporate world headquarters making these lists (however,
if there are any network executives reading this, you could
send me checks to be sure that your shows are included in the
New Titles list ;-).

I've used TiVo for about 30 months and ReplayTV for about 8
months before I turned it off due to it's lack of features and
mis-features. I've used, and tried to contribute to, MythTV
for over a year.

I found that Tivoloution, TiVo Suggestions and ReplayTV Zones
are an interesting novelty for a couple weeks or couple months
tops. These are great for new users to help them discover that
it's okay to record lots of things that you may never watch. Also
that having a collection of recordings to choose from is a much
better way to watch TV than channel surfing in hopes of finding
something 'good' on.

The problem is that if I wanted the system to record Talk Shows,
I'd find out right away that I do like to watch David Letterman
and I don't really want to watch Oprah Winfrey. Next week I'd
watch Dave, delete Oprah. Next month, Dave, yes; Oprah no.
Next July I won't be so impressed if the system suggests that
maybe I might want to see "Late Show With David Letterman".

What I did find is that I would look at these lists regularly
not see if all the same old shows were still recommended, I
was really looking for the things that were new and different
that I didn't already know about and I might not stumble across
any other way.

This lead me to the idea of a "What's New" list and combined
with the obvious need for keyword searches, this became part
of the "Search Listings" menu. "New Titles" works by collecting
all the titles that ever appear in your listings. The New
Titles list then shows anything in the current listings that
hasn't appeared before and doesn't have an airdate from earlier
than last year. This list will include specials, new movies and
any series premiers. No home office worker bees required =).

What I do is look at this every couple days and look ahead a
few days to see if there is anything coming up that I might
want to record (unlike TiVo Suggestions, this is actually sorted
by time so you can see what you'd need to choose today if you
don't want to miss it =). Right now I see I found "2004 U.S.
Poker Championship" on ESPN tonight and a series on Fox called
"The Great American Celebrity Spelling Bee" which might be
funny or dumb. I'll give it a look.

The other thing that can add a variety of things that suit your
tastes is the keyword searches for "Titles" and "Descriptions".
Both dlengel and I found that we search for the same keywords
over and over. Therefore, there is an editable list of your
saved keywords. There are about a dozen things I like to look
for that I have stored. Once you enter the search results page,
the "view" keys (Home and End) can be used to see the results
of the previous or next keyword in your list without having to
go back to choose another word.

What's obviously missing is a record rule type to record anything
that matches a keyword. I'm sure several people have thought
about it and it has been discussed in the past. No one has
implemented this yet but it's possible that this may show up
somewhere down the line.

--  bjm






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