The Buzz on BTV4

[dimen426]

Just wanted to make a suggestion to incorporate BTV's "The Buzz" into BTV4. At first I didn't care for this feature but with new programs popping up this season, keeping track of good shows can sometimes be difficult. Now being able to view this information from the BTV interface would be a plus. I would also like to see what everybody is watching at say...8:00pm(comes in handy when you are just channel surfing finding what to watch at that current time[of course this is based on what people watched last week]). You may even want to narrow it down to "comedy" at "8:00pm". Do you have any other stats that you think "The Buzz" should track?

[cfaslave]

Not a bad idea. Incorporating current statistics into the BTV interface could be usefull or at least interesting.

[thundermax]

it would also be nice if the Buzz listed the channel and time of these shows or made them links to snapstream.net so I can find and record a show that others are watching.

[btvfreak]

It would be nice to see how many PCs it's gathering this info from. Kind of like a poll where it shows you the size of the population the data is representing.

[cfaslave]

Originally Posted by btvfreak

It would be nice to see how many PCs it's gathering this info from. Kind of like a poll where it shows you the size of the population the data is representing.

I agree. It was discussed previously here with Kilrsat responding with some information regarding the Buzz stats, but no actual total sample number given. Would be very interesting for those of us that keep an eye on the Buzz page.
Brent

[merrypig]

Personally, I'm finding a list of 5 of the same shows pretty uninformative.

It seems each episode of the same series is treated as a unique show - so it's possible for the one series (say, simpsons etc) to fill all top 5 slots, but only showing as "Simpsons" with no specific episode detail.

If each show is going to be treated independently, then I'd like to see a) more entries in the top 'n' shows.. ie top 10 or 20 rather than just top 5. and b) the episode title

Personally though, I'd have more interest in seeing the top 10 series /movies and not episodes. The individual episodes have more than likely already come and gone, whereas if I see a series is really interesting people, I can sign up to record future showings.


The other thing I can't help but feel, is that as people add more tuners and disk space, they get less picky about what they record. long term this kind of statistic based on what is recorded is somehwat meaningless, and only what was actually watched from the recorded material is worth tracking.

[cfaslave]

I'm not seeing a list of the same five shows, but I see your point. I think that will be less of a problem once the fall tv season begins. BTV Buzz is a uninique feature that sets it a part from the competition. I think it will have some usefull applications if it is built into the BTV interface.

Here's what I see today on the top recorded episodes: Several repeated series, but not that bad for Summer.

[dimen426]

Now imagine if they kept these stats for a year or more...
Now it becomes an interesting "rerun tool"! What are the possibilities...hmmm...well for one when browsing the TV guide BTV Buzz could put an icon showing 5 stars beside the show telling the user a lot of people recorded it and it might be worth watching...2nd have BTV record reruns with only 5 stars...
Any other suggestions of how to use these stats?

[dimen426]

Ohh....another idea....how to use BTV Buzz...
Have BTV make automatic recordings based on the top upcoming recordings on BTV Buzz.
It should have a feature to set the priority. I would set these recording as low priority to make sure my scheduled recordings takes preference over the resources (capture cards) on my computer.

[sainswor99]

I think something that might be useful would be to give weighted ranking, so you could determine the most popular series based on the number of recordings divided by the number of unique episodes. For example, if 100 people record Battlestar Galactica (assuming that only one episode airs in the week), that should have more wieght than that same 100 people recording all 10 episodes of Stargate SG-1.

Such a measuring scale would obviously favor new series over established series (ie, 100 people may record the NEW episode of Stargate SG-1 and ignore the reruns, which would skew my measure), but it would avoid having the 10 episodes all showing up in the Top 10 list.

I guess what I'm saying is that Buzz is a good idea, and it should be included in the software clients, but it needs to be configurable in some fashion to help balance things out.

Stu

[cfaslave]

I like the buzz webpage for Beyond TV. I check it every so often just out of curiosity, but have been wondering if SS has considered improving the functionality in any way. Some ideas I and others have been thinking about:
1. Add an option to add the statistics to the BTV gui. Be able to select the stats page from the BTV menu (via remote control) and then click on any of the shows listed to see future airings in the guide
2. Show more information about the population of the statistics so we can see how many people are actually participating at any given time.

In addition, it would be nice to have your own personal statistics or information available in an xml file or RSS feed or something. I'm thinking about something like they are doing on EvokeTV. This could be something we as users could add to our blogs, forum posts websites etc. This would be a way to promote Snapstream's BTV also (hint hint).
What do you think?
Brent

[cfaslave]

The Stats on the BTV Buzz Page don't look right. Can this be correct???
Thursday
1. The Office - Gay Witch Hunt
2. Good Eats - Puddin' Head Blues
3. Good Eats - Berry From Another Planet
4. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Built to Kill
5. Grey's Anatomy - Time Has Come Today


Also lots of Pokemon.

Does this look right to you guys? I'm just surprised to see Good Eats come in before CSI and no Survivor. I guess there's a lot of foodies out here or there aren't enough people with the advanced settings turned on to make the sample representative. What do you think?
Brent

[nanook105]

Originally Posted by cfaslave

The Stats on the BTV Buzz Page don't look right. Can this be correct???
Thursday
1. The Office - Gay Witch Hunt
2. Good Eats - Puddin' Head Blues
3. Good Eats - Berry From Another Planet
4. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Built to Kill
5. Grey's Anatomy - Time Has Come Today


Also lots of Pokemon.

Does this look right to you guys? I'm just surprised to see Good Eats come in before CSI and no Survivor. I guess there's a lot of foodies out here or there aren't enough people with the advanced settings turned on to make the sample representative. What do you think?
Brent

Doesn't make sense to me. Maybe Good Eats is the lead in show to the Biggest Loser ?

[Kilrsat]

Should look right now.

[dimen426]

Just trying to understand the phenomenon cfaslave witnessed with the Buzz results. Was this because polling was not complete, people read the post and changed their recording habits in the last minute, did snapstream manipulate the data, is snapstream collecting data not only from BTV4 users but from other programming guides that updates later, the new season of CSI only showed up in peoples programming guide today, ...no one really knows...

One thing I do know...we need to understand how BTV Buzz collects this information!

Next we need some stats! Any kind of stats...post it online then let the BTV users decide which of the stats are useful

Last incorporate this into BTV4 as a simple GUI like a thumbs up or down.