[mythtv-users] is mythtv smart enough to do this(overlap/back-to-back) with recordings?

[chris at cpr.homelinux.net]

On Sun, Jul 30, 2006 at 01:27:35AM -0700, Brad Templeton wrote:
> Actually, that really varies a lot.  In fact, in the long term, I
> think the only real answer is to have volunteers maintain a database
> of whether the start and/or end of particular shows are important.

We can't even get agreement on how to identify duplicates, let 
alone do collaborative filtering.

> I just always wished the system understood how minutes 55-60 were
> useless, and the first minute of Simpson had two little jokes.

Collaboration is great when you don't know what the show is going 
to be like, but in this case you've already determined that the end 
of "60 Minutes" is crap and the beginning of "Simpsons" is golden.  
You don't need a group to tell you what to do to fix that.  :-)

> Movies of course you always want the end of.  Sports you often want
> beyond the end of but care only minorly about the beginning of.

Myth 0.19 already has the ability to extend shows by genre.  I 
haven't tried it so I don't know if/how it works.

> I would bet however that only a small fraction of users actually
> use recording priorities.  They are not a great interface to begin
> with, and if you have multiple tuners you rarely have to worry about
> them anyway.   (I use them, but only for my "suggestions" system so
> that suggestions are always lower priority than regular shows.)

I use priorities extensively (including down-grading TVWish 
suggestions) and don't find the interface too much of a problem, 
although the way the priorities are applied is far too simplistic.  
With a little creativity it could be much more intelligent.

> >   The more constraints you put on a situation ("two 
> > shows on the same channel on the same tuner") the less practical 
> > the solution becomes.
> It is however a very common problem, I think, much more common than
> the problem of having to switch tuners on the same channel because
> the 2nd program is of lower priority.   If that happens to 1 myth
> user in 100 I would be surprised.    Recording adjacent programs
> on the other hand is something many users encounter.

I checked my schedule just for laughs.  Out of 52 shows in the next 
14 days that I would like to record, only two occur back-to-back on 
the same channel.  Two other pairs are back-to-back on different 
channels, and the remaining 46 are non-sequential.  A sample size 
of one has no statistical significance, of course...