[mythtv-users] mythtv keeping recordings of everything i watch?

[Brad DerManouelian]

On Jul 25, 2006, at 3:24 PM, Brad Templeton wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 12:49:32PM -0400, Michael Starks wrote:
>> George Nychis wrote:
>>> Hey guys,
>>>
>>> I've noticed mythtv is keeping recordings of everything i watch,  
>>> even
>>> though its not shown in my scheduled recordings, and they do not  
>>> show up
>>> in my "Previously Recorded" stuff to playback.
>>>
>>> However I do see the recordings in /mnt/store
>>>
>>> For example, I watched family fued in live tv today, and i now  
>>> see it in
>>> /mnt/store, even though i didn't tell it to record it, and it  
>>> does not
>>> show up in my media library in mythfrontend.
>>
>> As others have noted, what you are seeing is how live tv was  
>> redesigned
>> to work.  The argument has been made that space issues are not  
>> relevant
>> since it will auto-expire live tv recordings first, but of course  
>> that
>> argument is only valid if your box is dedicated exclusively to  
>> MythTV.
>> It would be nice to see a 'keep at most n episodes' type of option  
>> for
>> live tv so that you don't fill up the drive.
>
> I've always been of the view that if you're watching that much live  
> TV,
> you aren't really getting MythTV.   This is particularly true because
> Myth, unlike Tivo and some others, aborts live TV recording if you
> go into the menus to do things.  (The Tivo is always recording, for up
> to 30 minutes by default, the current channel, into a fixed buffer.
> The Replay did it into available disk space IIRC.)   Because of this
> it used to be very easy in Myth to lose your live TV buffer entirely,
> and it's still easy to make it stop recording on you, though now
> it saves what it did record if you look in that program group.
>
> The Tivo of course always has a hardware encoder, so it makes sense  
> for
> it to always be recording.  Many myth users have software encoding of
> raw capture cards, and would not want it to do this.   I suppose
> if somebody wants they could implement code to always record if you
> have a hardware capture card, with possible ability to disable it.
>
> But my feeling remains that this is mostly a waste of time, because
> it's about live tv.  You should not watch live tv.  If you want to
> watch live tv, then browse to the show in the guide, and hit record,
> and then watch your new recording.  Then you will have it always
> record until that show ends, and you can skip out of watching to
> do menus etc.   This is what you should do even for programs it
> makes sense to watch live, like sports and news.
>
> But I know, the temptation to surf still comes to poeple, and thus
> the effort that goes into the live tv stuff.

Tell that to my 9 year old who only watches TV when she's bored and  
isn't very discriminating about what she watches. Sure, she has her  
favorite shows she records to make sure there's something there to  
watch, but sometimes she gets bored with those and likes to flip on  
Nick or the Disney Channel, etc. and watch whatever happens to be on.  
LiveTV makes that easy for her. You can't tell a 9 year old, "You  
don't grasp the concept of MythTV. You're using it wrong." when she  
is watching TV just fine in her eyes.