script keyword recording questions about problems

[erichammer]

Hi all,

I just finished installing BTV4. I'm moving from Tivo. One feature which I loved about Tivo which is missing here in BTV is the wishlist or record from keyword. I put a note up in the troubleshooting forum about this question but have since read further and found references which explain that no, the feature I want does not exist.

What I want to be able to do is to record anything based on a keyword. It occured to me that this would be relatively easy to do using a script. However, I'm running into some issues which I'm hoping someone has ideas for. If not, I'll just write the script and have to live with the issues.

Here is what I have in mind: A simple script which would execute say around 3:30AM once a week and start up BTV4, switch to search, then search by keyword, enter the keyword and then execute the commands to record. All that I know how to do without any great difficulty. Here is where the problems come in, which I'm hoping someone could suggest a way to solve this problem:

1. Some programs are repeats. I can't see a way to tell the script not to record repeats. Not the end of the world. It just means that when I see a repeat recorded I delete it. But it is annoying.

2. This is a bigger problem: I can set they keyboard commands to record whatever it finds, but the problem arises when it finds let's say 30 items, but set the loop for 40. BTV would simply loop back to the top of the list, so using the down arrow key to move to the next item at the bottom of the list would simply take you back to the top of the list and then the same commands which set it up to record would automatically undo the recording as well.

If there is some way to disable BTV4 from moving back to the top of the list with the down arrow, this would solve the problem at least in regard to most recordings. Though the last one would be vulnerable since it would keep executing the script for the number of times it is set to loop regardless of whether it reached the bottom of the list or not.

In addition, since the script can't see how many items are listed, it may do too few items. This can be solved by simply having the script loop to say 100 times, but again, I run into the first problem. Any way to disable that feature so that it doesn't move back to the top of the list?
That would be a huge help.

The only alternative I can think of is either to have the script execute and then I have to manually choose which items to record (which takes away 90% of the reason for doing it to begin with), or take my best guess as to how many items are likely to be listed and then set the
script for that number of loops (for instance, during baseball season, a reasonable assumption would be around 15-20 for a week since some would be repeats of games).

Any ideas would be appreciated. I don't know if any of this is easier to do with the SDK or if it wouldn't work at all with it, but if any of the people on here who have used the SDK have ideas about what to do to make this happen, I'd appreciate it. I just requested the SDK and I guess I need to wait for the d/l link in my e-mail before I can see what it is capable of doing.

Thanks,

Eric

[erichammer]

One note: I just saw that there is a webadmin that offers this feature as an addon, unfortunately, from what it looks like (unless someone knows different), it requires XP Pro edition. For my needs Home does all I need and I don't want to spend $200 to upgrade to
pro. . .

Eric

[bnflaherty]

Not sure what your referring to -- Web Admin is part of BTV -- and nothing requires XP Pro as far as web admin is concerned... what exactly is it you saw?

[erichammer]

Originally Posted by bnflaherty

Not sure what your referring to -- Web Admin is part of BTV -- and nothing requires XP Pro as far as web admin is concerned... what exactly is it you saw?

One of the addons which offers more features in webadmin. It's in the d/l section. It requires XP Pro unfortunately because it uses IIS 4.0.

Eric

[Fonceur]

If you want to do it from the SDK, it is rather easy. Basically BTVGuideData.GetEpisodesByKeyword(Keyword) will get you a collection of all the results matching your keyword, then you just loop over them, adjust the format of those results and feed them to BTVScheduler.AddRecordingJob(newJob). Of course while you're at it you can filter out the repeats and such.

In principle you could try my programme as the list of results from the searches does not roll over at the top or bottom, though I am not sure if your script would be able to navigate through it easily (or at all). I still have in the back of my head the intention of automating parts of my programme, such has creating recording jobs based on search results, resolving conflicts and blocking duplicates, but I'm not big on interventionism and prefer to provide the tools and let people decide...