On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:26:04 +0200, Michał Sawicz <[email protected]> wrote:
> Dnia 2009-07-02, czw o godzinie 01:42 +0200, [email protected] pisze:
>> I'll check out Myth again... been about 2 years since I went through
>> PVR stuff.
>> I also liked MediaPortals implementation of TV scheduling PVR.
> 
> I think you've had some bad experience with PVRs :)

EyeTv on Mac was awesome...Sky+ was awesome... after that, nothing but crepe. 
:p (Myth was good, but, remember the pain of setup)
Hehe, but I spend as much time looking at shoddy UI's as I do good ones 
so...and on purpose too!... seen some shockers for sure.

> 
> LiveTV is a recording as any other is, the only difference is not even
> that you play it while it records (you can play incomplete recordings
> while they're still running, too) but how you access it. I don't see any
> situation when TimeShifting would become unavailable because of
> recordings, could you elaborate on when that happened for you?
> 

Lets just say everythign you describe below... is exactly the scenario I have 
seen PVR software mess up.
One of two things happen... to much user 'feedback' and choices... too little 
and doesn't work or acts 'strange'.

> Entering LiveTV simply invokes a recording of what's currently on. You
> can then pause / rewind as much as you want. The only problem here is
> when you have a recording scheduled that has no tuner to use while
> you're watching live. In that case you can either try and reschedule the
> recording or simply drop it. I would lean in the direction 'if it's
> available to be recorded later, don't even bother the user with that,
> reschedule the recording, otherwise ask the user if he wants to allow
> the recording to start or continue watching tv'. In Myth there's a
> timeout that defaults to turning off tv and recording if you don't
> react, which seems to be good enough - if you're not actually watching
> it, you probably don't want to miss the only available showing of the
> scheduled recording.

That sounds intuitive enough to me.

> 
> It could be the same when you try to start watching LiveTV when all
> tuners are busy. If one of the recordings is on later free this tuner up
> and reschedule the recording. Otherwise ask the user what to do.
> 

This is exactly the scenario I was describing where I said... Sky+ made a hard 
choice.
Always had a tuner available (out of 2) dedicated to LiveTV only, so this 
question was never asked or problem had to be solved.

For us though... I have no problem with it as long as asking the user can be 
made concise. In the message of what to do, and the options.

> When there are multiple recordings running and several can be
> rescheduled the scheduler should pick one with the biggest possibility
> of uninterrupted recording later. 

Prefer this, figure it out for the user...
"Sorry...cant record this right now... but I can record it Tuesday at 
5pm...that ok?" Yes/No

> This, of course, starts to become
> quite a math to tackle for the scheduler, but that's what you get when
> you want to simplify it for the user - you need to make it harder for
> the software.
> 

Yeah... intelligent though. Moovida just shuts up and gets on with it and 
doesn't bother you unless it has to. 

> An additional level of complication for the user would be to provide the
> user with a list of recordings available to stop.

Ah, yeah... this isn't a bad idea for a power user I guess. We can do popups 
with multiple button choices. (up to 4).

> 
> --
> Michał Sawicz <[email protected]>

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