[mythtv-users] TV-Series DVDs

[John Veness]

Christopher X. Candreva wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2007, Nathan A. Smith wrote:
> 
>> Reading the archives, I don't see any recent discussion of how people
>> handle importing, separating, tagging, etc -- TV series DVDs.  Since
> 
> I've been thinking about this for a while. The question that keeps comming 
> to my mind is, Why are TV, Video, and music separate modules at all, and 
> could they be combined into a single view ? Things I would like to do:
> 
> o See episodes recorded OTA and from DVD in a single list.
> o Not record episodes or movies I already own on DVD.
> o Mix MP3 and music video files, with visualizations for non-video files
> o See selections from a movies soundtrack album in the same place as the 
>   movie.
> o Catalog non-ripped DVDs, and when selected be given information as to 
>   where the disk is stored. (which I know I would have to enter).
> 
> The trick I think would be the database. Designed properly, you should be 
> able to either pull out the three separate views we have, or present a 
> unified interface as I described above, along with things I haven't thought 
> of. 
> 
> IMDB does already list TV episodes so it is possible to get that 
> information. What would really be nice would be a cross-reference of 
> Schedules Direct IDs with IMDB ids. I suppose this could be built over time 
> by the community, possibly ala the Amazon Mechanical Turk.

In my mind, I've been imagining my ideal Myth interface. Rather than 
having to enter 'TV' or 'Videos' or 'Music' (based on using the 
'classic' menu theme), I would like to enter 'Series' or 'Films/One-offs'.

The Series menu would show all the series I am interested in, whether 
there are currently any recordings or not, with an episode guide for 
each series. Any episodes available, either as recordings, videos (e.g. 
downloaded), or DVDs (with a prompt to load the DVD), would be available 
to view from the same interface. The 'Series' menu would include 
radio/audio series, not just video, which is why I didn't call it 'TV 
series'.

The episode guide could include a synopsis of each ep, so that we could 
browse through and mark which ones we've seen in the past, even if they 
weren't recorded by Myth, to stop Myth from recording them. I'd also 
like to be able to add other data to an episode, like a rating.

I propose keeping Films and other one-offs (e.g. documentaries) 
separately, as browsing/viewing those could be quite different. At the 
moment, I find the TV user-interface a bit inefficient for films, where 
a single film takes up as much vertical space in the left-hand menu as a 
whole series containing multiple episodes, which is why I would like to 
separate them.

I've no idea how this would really work (maybe some kind of link to 
tvrage or thetvdb) and I can't really code, but I could try and mock 
something up.

Cheers,

John

-- 
John Veness, MythTV user, UK, DVB-T