[mythtv-users] upcoming movies with *** or more?

[Brad Templeton]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 01:54:37PM -0500, Jeff Simpson wrote:
> It would probably be more user-friendly to have a dropdown box next to
> the search window that listed off:
> 
> Any rating
> 1 star+
> 1.5 star+
> 2 star+
> etc
> 
> not that I mind typing in the stars, just that future users wouldn't
> think to do it, but they would definitely click the box to shorten the
> list of movies

This is a hard question.  Indeed, only some users will guess this.
On the other hand, I am loathe to add complexity to UIs.   Mythweb doesn't
actually technically have a movie search, the "Movie" link is just a
call to the search page with a preset query for the category type being
a movie.   You would not want the star choice to appear on a non-movie
search (it's meaningless there) so now you might want to detect it
is the special movie search and display the SELECT box in the HTML if
it was.   This could all be done, of course.

Or keep the interface simple and instead link to a HELP page for searching,
since it's pretty easy to remember you type in "****" to search for 4-star
movies.  In fact, I've tried that in various situations since the stars
appear in the display, you think you might be able to search for them but
of course they are not in the actual text.

Sorry the patch was garbled in the mailing list I would have attached it
had I known.

> > example.  I'd also like to be able to have different expiry times
> > based on the priority of a recording.  Are features like this in the
> > works?

People have debated revising the autoexpire code to prioritize on more
than just time, and priority is an obvious choice.   Again, complexity of
UI is a big issue.

Long term I want to see pools of storage (permanent, explicit, automatic,
recommended, suggested, deleted) where roughly a recording made in one
of these categories doesn't delete a higher level one, ie. only made if
there is space.   Making it be the same as the recording priority is
the simplest UI so it's probably what will happen.

> > 
> > > A 4* and above search might not be out of the question.   In CVS Myth you
> > > can also do a generlized SQL query to do this
> > 
> > Sounds like a nice new feature.  Is this to do the recording or just
> > the searching?

Both.  I don't know if there is a UI the powerSearch yet, but your
search field would look something like:
        categorytype = 'movie' AND stars > 0.9
To catch 4 star movies.