[mythtv-users] Mythtv .19 live watching

[Yeechang Lee]

chris at cpr.homelinux.net <chris at cpr.homelinux.net> says:
> Second, both 0.18 and 0.19 users have complained again and again
> about the auto-expire not working and how it causes their partition
> to hit 100% and kill the machine.  I therefore don't trust
> auto-expire and manually manage the recorded programs.

I haven't had such problems in seven months of running 0.18.1 and now
0.19-fixes, for what it's worth. Of those months, the system has been
essentially 100% full for the last four. If this is a concern, writing
a simple shell script that cron runs to check on free space and
sending out alerts (wall, email, audio, etc.) is, compared to the rest
of MythTV system maintenance, child's play.

> Third (as I mentioned in a previous email), the way the system
> selects which shows to expire is not satisfactory.  If I leave my
> shows expire-enabled then it will delete the wrong ones (my POV)
> because it looks at their age and schedule status but not the
> priority I assigned to them.

??? I have Setup|TV Settings|General|Auto Expire Method set to Lowest
Priority First and this works great.

I set programs that get repeated often or otherwise aren't that
important to -2 within their recording schedules (Scheduling
Options|Recording Priority). Two examples: _The Simpsons_ reruns,
almost all of which I've seen already but still like to watch if one
strikes my fancy, and _Sunrise Earth_. Programs that are just a bit
more important, but still not a big deal if I don't get to them before
expiration, I mark as -1. On the flip side, I also mark as such
programs I definitely don't want to ever auto expire.

This way, the system constantly fills up empty storage space with
lower-priority programs (it's a good idea to set a maximum number of
episodes kept for each such recording schedule, and optionally the
"Delete oldest if this would exceed max episodes" setting), and that's
OK because they're also the first to go when the system needs more
space (for TiVo owners, think of how auto-recorded programs are always
the first to go). And if, occasionally, I don't get home in time and
the system--having first chewed through the buffer of lower-priority
programs--ends up deleting one or two movies I recorded four months
ago on a lark? Big deal; if I never got around to watching them I
probably never would have. And, again, the movies I've marked to never
auto expire are quite safe amidst all this.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US