Difference between revisions of "Known program feature"

Latest revision as of 18:30, 24 September 2010

This is a request to add a feature where the user can indicate that certain programs are 'known' to them. This can then be used to alter the user-interface, to allow the user to toggle a view to only show 'unknown' programs in the schedules.

Use case

John has setup Myth with lots of rules to record the programs he is interested in. He still browses the listings (whether via a weekly listings magazine, or within Myth) to see if there are other programs that he might be interested in. However, this can be rather tedious, as the listings are full of programs that he already knows about (both ones that he is already interested in and is recording, and those that he knows he is not interested in). It can sometimes be hard to pick out the programs he doesn't know about, in order to look into whether they are worth recording or not.

Proposed solution

A new table could be added, for example called knownprogram, with a text field knowntitle. This table would start blank and would not have any records added to it without the user explicitly doing so. While browsing programs (for example, from Program Finder), the user could bring up a menu and add the currently selected program title to the knownprogram table. The user could add both programs that the user knows he or she is interested in, and those that the user knows he or she is not interested in. The important thing is that the user 'knows' about this program, usually because he or she has seen it or at least clips from it. After several weeks, the knownprogram table may have hundreds or thousands of titles in it.

The user could toggle a view in Schedule Recordings which would only show programs that are not in knownprogram. This would be useful in Program Finder and Search Listings, Channels. This would be less useful on Program Guide as after a while, with a lot of titles in knownprogram, this would end up as a mostly empty grid.

Notes

Please note the following:

• Nothing is actually deleted from the program table. This is purely a view that the user can toggle on or off.
• This won't affect scheduling. The table is called knownprogram, not ignoreprogram to make this clear. Remember that the user can add titles to knownprogram for programs that he is interested in, but just doesn't want to see cluttering up views in Schedule Recordings.
• This won't affect the view in Watch Recordings. The table is not called hideprogram to make this clear.
• The knownprogram table contains titles, not subtitles, so the user does not have to mark all individual episodes of a show as known.

SQL

An example of SQL code to achieve a view of showing upcoming programs but not including known programs is as follows:

SELECT program.* FROM program left join knownprogram on program.title = knownprogram.knowntitle where knownprogram.knowntitle is null