MyTV "simple" request. (1 Viewer)

[NLS]

I just HAD to use my (TM) word.

Anyway after TWO accidents pressing a key on my remote and loosing critical TV time...

I wonder if there could be some "safety" if someone tries to switch channel (both by pressing a number or ch up/down) but only when pause is pressed for some time. The system should either ask if the user is sure that wants to change the channel (best case), or not allow it if the user doesn't press "stop" for example.

Of course the safety system should not be triggered if the user hasn't pressed pause at all (and uses simple timeshifting) or press pause for 2-3 secs or maybe 10 secs tops. In fact since the user could have pressed pause for let say 60 seconds but it happened to have 55 secs of commercials in there (and after resuming he pressed fast forward to skip them - so in fact he is 5 secs before timeshift 0), the system in fact should not check if the pause is pressed, just if the feed is more than 10 secs behind timeshift "live" (which of course is also not live since timeshift delays content a bit).

I hope you get my idea even with my bad english.

After TWO times that we lost precious (ok weird word choice since we talk about shows) TV content by mistake (once the fault of my wife that thought pressing "ok" would resume, and once my... elbow's mistake), I see this idea as VITAL... I hope some dev does too.

What do you think?

 

[Marcusb]

If you mean the fact that MP deletes the timeshift buffer when the channel is changed, that is rather a can of worms and the topic usually ends up getting closed.

To sum it up, timeshift material never used to get deleted when the channel was changed. This meant that if you changed channels by accident then you could simply change back. You only missed the slight period while you were on a different channel.

A long time ago, this was reported as a bug. When it was "fixed" there were a lot of people who requested this behaviour back again but also a lot of people who were very against it. Strangely, the people who were against it had no better reason than "Well, it just shouldn't, should it?" and a few even didn't ever use TV or timeshift, but were still against it.

When v.2 came out, the behaviour was back and every one was happy. Then one of the "no" group noticed (eventually) and the "bug" was "fixed" again.

There have also been lots of possible solutions which involved a lot of configurable options and lots of asking dialog boxes for channel changes but all this seems to do is make changing channels *very* much more complicated when really all that is needed is to re-instate this behaviour and the people who don't like it simply just don't rewind after channel changes. If they accidentally rewind, they can simply fast forward and thus avoid whatever disaster they were afraid of all along.

Sorry, I know my post is pretty inflamatory, but I think it's pretty clear what my view on the matter was. Also, if I have misunderstood your request, sorry for the accidental thread hijack.

 

[NLS]

hmmm initially I thought you hit the nail on the head...

then I think it is not the same thing to just "keep recording"...

let me explain...

1) we are watching channel A, we are maybe 2 secs behind live (normal timeshift) that we consider as "live"...

2) ...then at 10 mins play time (on live), I have to go to the King's Throne, so I press pause

3) ...I return after 2 mins and press resume... I continue watching and I am in start+10', while live is at start +12' (and +2' from my view)

4) then after 3 more mins (start+13' view, start+15' live) I switch to channel B (mistake or not, irrelevant) for 10 secs, of course watching B live right?

5) ...and switch back to channel A

...what should happen now? Would I see from start+13' (plus 10" I missed) OR would I go to A live and miss the two mins I was in pause?

Since probably there is no program logic "remembering" that there are 2 mins extra buffer for channel A, switching back to channel A would in fact kill my recorded 2'... except if you just mean that if I mistakenly press a channel switch then I should just press rewind to "rewind" the... channel change. Is that what you mean? Then I guess after 3 mins (where I reach the buffer time where I had the channel switch), I would just see a "virtual" channel switch of 10 secs (since the buffer would have that recorder too). Am I correct?

This IS an interesting workaround (if the program still allowed for it - and you say it doesn't), but far from user friendly.

You see we have two negative WAFactors here:

1) The user should KNOW that if (s)he presses a channel switch mistakenly, should NOT press the original channel again, just rewind (not intuitive).

2) The user will experience the "weird" (completely logical but still weird to the end user) side-effect of experiencing the channel switch accident again (waiting for it to end without touching the remote), when the recorded buffer reaches the "accident". Again counter intuitive, since subconciously many users would just reach for the remote to return to the correct channel (messing things EVEN more and adding one more "switch" in their future buffer).

My (well that doesn't mean I hold any patents and that nobody have thought about it before) idea, is to add a simple logic when a channel switch is pressed doing this in pseudo-code:

if channel-change-pressed
  then if live - current > 10 sec [i](i.e. for some reason we are more than 10 secs behind live)[/i]
      then ask user if sure about the switch

shouldn't be too complex in real code

and if someone hates it, it could be added as a configurable option (although a better configurable option should just be the trigger delay... so if someone puts 0 seconds in configuration, the system should consider it as ffffffff secs and never trigger the check)

 

[NLS]

...ah... and the safety check shouldn't trigger if there is an additional AVAILABLE tuner that IS able to show channel B (in that case the system should use that second tuner to view channel B, without touching the recording of channel A), of course then the user should be aware of that (maybe a "rec" sign on screen or some pop-up leting the user know that channel A is still recorded)

then the interesting thing would be how the program should handle a channel switch back to channel A... in my opinion a pop-up should then say:

"Channel A was being recorded while you switched channel, because you was more than 10 seconds behind the live buffer and MediaPortal assumed that you are interested in that show.

Would you like to return to the point you switched away from channel A or discard the recording and switch to channel A live?"

Now that would be interesting!

Also, if for some reason the user that has let channel A with some minutes recorded buffer (because of a pause), and then while in channel B, ALSO presses pause, the system should normaly time-shift, but then if the user unpauses and switches to ANOTHER channel (either A or some other), then the system should pop-up with:

The system will not be able to record channel B in the background unless you accept to stop the background recording of channel A. Would you like that?

I don't know if it get more confusing or complex, but THAT would be A SMART (and intuitive) TV!

Think about it.