[mythtv-users] browse/review all recording rules

Yeechang Lee ylee at pobox.com
Thu Nov 22 03:52:57 UTC 2007


[This continues a thread,
<URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/293626#293626>,
from early October. I only today realized I never replied to Mike's
reply below when I'd meant to. Summary of message: mythfrontend's
Recording Priorities should be renamed to Recording Rules or
somesuch.]

Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> says:
> I'm simply saying if the primary purpose of that section of Myth is
> to edit recording rules, it sure wastes a /lot/ of screen space on
> priority stuff

That's because priority is the one attribute of a recording rule that
is useful to see relative to other rules'. The fact that one rule is
set to record on channel 83 or or uses the Autodetect transcoder is
irrelevant to another. However, seeing that "Great Performances at the
Met" and "The O.C" carry priorities higher than "30 Rock" or "How I
Met Your Mother" (which, in turn, carry higher priorities than reruns
of "Family Guy" and "Futurama") *is* useful.

Put another way, "Great Performances" and "The O.C." are the only
2-priority rules in my MythTV setup; everything else's is 1 or 0 or a
negative number. That "2" is, by itself, meaningless; it could be 5 or
1000 or -47. What really matters is that that figure is *higher* than
for any other rule.[1] Because of this, the priority *has* to be
displayed in any usable list of recording rules because otherwise it'd
be almost impossible to easily assign priorities to rules relative to
others'.

> and doesn't provide any of the info that a "Recording Schedules"
> page should (i.e. stuff that you'll see in MythWeb, like Channel,
> Profile, Transcoder, and Recording Group--or whatever).

You left out "type," which would undercut your argument because it
does appear on both MythWeb|Recording Schedules and
mythfrontend|Recording Priorities. That said, I agree that the latter
could very well use showing the other additional data that the former
does. Said data just isn't nearly as vital to the screen as the
priorities are, though.

> You can also go into Previously Recorded and edit recording rules by
> hitting 'i' on an episode that was recorded (at any time in the
> past), but I would still say that section is for managing recording
> history--not for editing/deleting recording rules.

Fair point. However, the fact that recording rules can be edited there
is only a side effect of how mythfrontend permits rules to be edited
for linked guide entries anywhere (a great thing, of course). Besides,
if there aren't any old recording entries in Previously Recorded
linked to an active rule, there's no way to edit that rule.

> If someone wants a "view/edit existing recording rules" page, I think we
> should create one that's designed for the task rather than just changing
> the menu text for the one that takes you into a priority-centric view of
> recording rules.

Recording Priorities is that page. The fact that showing a few more
bits of data for each rule--à la MythWeb|Recording Schedules--would be
convenient doesn't change the fact that it is the *only* place in
mythfrontend guaranteed to display and permit editing of every extant
recording rule. That it happens to show recording priorities--again, a
practical necessity given their nature--should not be taken to mean
that that's the only purpose that screen is for.

[1] Again, TiVo provides a useful comparison/contrast. Its equivalent
of mythfrontend|Recording Priorities is, as I previously wrote, *only*
(if I recall correctly; it's been a few years) for adjusting rules'
priorities relative to others', with no other rule-editing
allowed. TiVo doesn't visually display or permit the setting of any
numeric priorities; rather, the only thing that matters is each rule's
relative pecking order on that screen. That's OK, because the numbers
really are meaningless in and of themselves.

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