[mythtv-users] MythTV does not handle daylight savings properly

Brian J. Murrell brian at interlinx.bc.ca
Wed Nov 7 12:10:33 UTC 2012


On 12-11-06 06:29 PM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> 
> Not only have I been saying that we need to get rid of DST across the
> US, I would also love to get rid of time zones and have the entire world
> use UTC in their daily lives.  I'd have no problem whatsoever having
> breakfast at noon and lunch at 5pm and dinner at midnight, nor putting
> in a grueling day of work from 2pm to 10pm.  Unfortunately, it seems I
> have to convince most everyone else in the world.  The only reason
> people think that noon is lunchtime is because that's what they're used
> to--but if they grew up having lunch at 5pm...

There are real problems with this scheme.  To keep things quite on topic
let's look at national television broadcasting.  Having each "region" of
the country aligned on a timezone based clock makes announcing staggered
schedules easy.

For example, a single "announcement" that "television program foo will
be shown at 8pm" can be made and, no matter where you live, it's on at
the one time they said it would be.

The alternative would be a huge announcement saying that at locations a,
b, c and d (where this list would probably be longer than just 4) the
program is shown at X and at locations e, f, g, h and i the program is
shown at Y and at locations j, k, l, m and n the program is shown at Z,
etc.  It would be a rather nasty announcement to make and nastier to
have to pay attention to, waiting for your location.

And no, the answer is not to stop staggering the showings (more
generally any event that is currently staggered) because given the
preference that (most) people have to planning their activities around
daylight and night-time, when things happen for people are timed (more
or less, seasonal change notwithstanding) according to when it's light
and when it's dark, so events still need to be staggered across the
east/west.

b.


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 259 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20121107/1f15998a/attachment.sig>


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list