[mythtv-users] Mythtv .19 live watching
Michael T. Dean
mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Wed Jul 12 17:23:07 UTC 2006
On 07/12/06 12:40, glen martin wrote:
>Michael T. Dean wrote:
>
>
>>The right solution, though, is to stop LiveTV when you're not watching
>>it... Another solution is to get more hard drives. ;)
>>
>>... Also, if the problem is that you're falling asleep during the
>>commercials in LiveTV ;), check out the "Sleep" menu--hit MENU ('M') in
>>LiveTV and scroll to "Sleep". There you can specify that Myth should
>>turn off playback in 30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes. (You can also toggle
>>the sleep timer with the TOGGLESLEEP key (by default 'F8'), which cycles
>>through 30, 60, 90, 120 minutes then off.)
>>
>>
>I'll gently suggest that such a solution is low in WAF (Wife Acceptance
>Factor) and KCF (Kid Competency Factor). I remember to stop LiveTV.
>Others don't, and won't.
>
That may rule out the "right solution," but still leaves the "another
solution." It also leaves the "EXECTV executing xawtv" solution that I
mentioned in the linked post (
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/188296#188296 )--i.e.
if you don't want to record it, don't record it.
Let's say you've set LiveTV to the ridiculously-high average bitrate of
6000kbps (the default is 4500 average, 6000 max). Let's say some
channel shows 24-hour programs and some--heh hum--person leaves MythTV
playing LiveTV for the entire 24-hour program. That program will be
about 60GiB. (Even at 9000kbps, the show will be about 90GiB after 24
hours.)
Now, in the real world, how often will your MythTV box sit there playing
LiveTV for 24 hours straight? Won't someone try to use the Myth box
within that time frame? If so, once they exit LiveTV, the large LiveTV
program is eligible to be autoexpired immediately.
True, for HDTV, a 24-hour program would be much larger, but has /anyone/
ever seen a 24-hour program listed in a HDTV channel (which doesn't
include digital radio channels because they won't use much bitrate for
the video since there's not much video to them). I could see, maybe, 8
hours for a sporting event (and, assuming an average of 7GiB/hr, that's
about 56 GiB).
So, making sure the family doesn't do something stu^H^H^Hlike tell Myth
to record an entire 24-hour program when short on space (if you don't
want to lose shows marked as eligible to autoexpire) doesn't seem too
much to ask. Or, keeping a reserve of space for when someone does tell
Myth to record an entire 24-hour program doesn't seem too much to ask.
I am still very much against the artificial breaks in LiveTV for exactly
the reasons I specified (
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/188296#188296 ).
And, while it seems most of the list was very much for them--just in
case--it seems that once the thread died down, no one really cared
anymore (no one wrote patches, no one complained for 4 months) until it
appeared on the lists again... But, my opinion doesn't matter that much.
If there are artificial breaks, I would say the /only/ reasonable
approach is to make them /only/ when continuing to record the current
LiveTV program would cause expiration of non-LiveTV programs and when
the current LiveTV program is larger than the
highest-priority-to-autoexpire non-LiveTV program (i.e. Myth has to
decide between autoexpiring a 2GiB non-LiveTV program or a 10GiB (or a
2.3GiB) LiveTV program). At that point, Myth could break the current
program and let autoexpire delete that portion. But, that's a lot of
logic to write for a "just-in-case"... And, if the person watching the
show later decides it's worth keeping, they lose the entire beginning,
so it's not an ideal solution...
Mike
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