"Occupied Timeline", you can better schedule your (1 Viewer)

[jcee]

I use MP to record lots of movies and shows... often I get confused whether I have already a recording scheduled and so MP alerts me that there is a conflict.. I then decide which one to drop!

Better:

What about a timeline at the top of the EPG. It should be nothing more than red and green bars.. I red bar means occupied by a recording (or another batch task in the future like compression or so..)

This way I always have an overview when my system is occupied and when there is space to schedule a additional recording.
No matter where it is in a 100 channel list.

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BTW: When looking at the recording conflict, I only have the chance to drop one of the conflicting recordings.

Wouldnt it be better that MP would present alternatives? I mean when two recordings conflict, but one of them is repeated later MP could mark it somehow are even show up a selection dialog to postpone that recording!!

What do you think guys?!

 

[Elf]

I've just stumbled on this one - this is a great idea, how did it ever get overlooked!?

 

[jawbroken]

Well, it is a good idea in general but hard to figure out how to implement well. For example, how do you show the timeline with multiple tuners?

I guess perhaps you could have green for none scheduled, orange for some scheduled but still tuners free and red for no tuners free.

However, since programs marked for recording already have a red dot on them, and conflicts are marked in the schedule, it is probably not a big priority. I can see how scanning through the EPG would be unwieldy for countries with a lot of channels (it works fine for me as I only have 6 channels in my EPG, not even enough to fill the default of 8 in the list )

 

[Elf]

I think a simple "green if there's at least one tuner available to record, red if all tuners are unavailable" would suffice.

My channel list is quite extensive and I think this would be a very useful function, although I agree it's not top priority!

 

[jawbroken]

Also, further complication would come from have more than one tuner that work from different sources/sets of channels. In this case (using your simply green and red bar) how do you mark a recording on one of the tuners? As no other programs from its set of channels can be recorded, that suggests red. However, a channel from the other tuner can be recorded, suggesting green. It is a hard problem to solve for the variety of setups.

 

[Elf]

Hmm, fair point. Is this a common setup then?

(I started to think about setting the background colour on individual programmes to indicate if there was enough resource to record on a per-programme basis, but it all started getting a bit too complicated!)

 

[jawbroken]

I think it is reasonably common. Many people in Australia want a MediaPortal setup with free-to-air and then pay tv channels coming in on separate capture card (not that I understand why because pay tv in Australia is terrible so I cancelled my subscription ).