[mythtv-users] mythtv keeping recordings of everything i watch?

[Brad Templeton]

On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 12:49:32PM -0400, Michael Starks wrote:
> George Nychis wrote:
> > Hey guys,
> > 
> > I've noticed mythtv is keeping recordings of everything i watch, even
> > though its not shown in my scheduled recordings, and they do not show up
> > in my "Previously Recorded" stuff to playback.
> > 
> > However I do see the recordings in /mnt/store
> > 
> > For example, I watched family fued in live tv today, and i now see it in
> > /mnt/store, even though i didn't tell it to record it, and it does not
> > show up in my media library in mythfrontend.
> 
> As others have noted, what you are seeing is how live tv was redesigned
> to work.  The argument has been made that space issues are not relevant
> since it will auto-expire live tv recordings first, but of course that
> argument is only valid if your box is dedicated exclusively to MythTV.
> It would be nice to see a 'keep at most n episodes' type of option for
> live tv so that you don't fill up the drive.

I've always been of the view that if you're watching that much live TV,
you aren't really getting MythTV.   This is particularly true because
Myth, unlike Tivo and some others, aborts live TV recording if you
go into the menus to do things.  (The Tivo is always recording, for up
to 30 minutes by default, the current channel, into a fixed buffer.
The Replay did it into available disk space IIRC.)   Because of this
it used to be very easy in Myth to lose your live TV buffer entirely,
and it's still easy to make it stop recording on you, though now
it saves what it did record if you look in that program group.

The Tivo of course always has a hardware encoder, so it makes sense for
it to always be recording.  Many myth users have software encoding of
raw capture cards, and would not want it to do this.   I suppose
if somebody wants they could implement code to always record if you
have a hardware capture card, with possible ability to disable it.

But my feeling remains that this is mostly a waste of time, because
it's about live tv.  You should not watch live tv.  If you want to
watch live tv, then browse to the show in the guide, and hit record,
and then watch your new recording.  Then you will have it always
record until that show ends, and you can skip out of watching to
do menus etc.   This is what you should do even for programs it
makes sense to watch live, like sports and news.

But I know, the temptation to surf still comes to poeple, and thus
the effort that goes into the live tv stuff.