Suggestion - Rule based deletion of shows

[berg]

I wasn't sure if this would be the right place to post this but here it goes -

I would love for PVS to have some rule-based system to delete shows. Let me explain -

I have used the maximum size per folder option to limit the size of those folders but it doesn't offer the flexibility I would like.

What I would love is to be able to set options, probably within the actual record entry to tell PVS only to keep one such recording "on file" or only to keep the last 7 days, etc.

Here are two examples -

I record several news shows so that I can quickly catch up on the world and local news at my convenience (how PVS is spoiling us ...) Ideally, I would like to only keep the latest show of each type, say the latest local news, whether it is the mid-day, evening or late night news, etc.

Once PVS would have recorded the evening local news, it would delete the mid-day one, etc.

The second example is my wife's daytime soaps. While I personally think you can only watch one show per quarter and still follow along ;-), it would be handy if PVS could only keep the last 5 or 10 episodes. After that, it is kind of pointless to try to catch up... PVS could then delete any show older than x and keep room for the really good shows.

I don't know how difficult this type of functionality would be or if it is only my own idiosyncrasies, but I thought I would suggest it.

This only goes to show how wonderful PVS really is. I have a full 80 Gig 7200 rpm/8 meg cache drive dedicated to PVS content, which I thought would be ample room, but .... as several others have posted, PVS is addictive ... I need to add another drive ! (And I haven't made it to the Fall TV season yet - this is crummy summer TV season :-o )

Berg

[Terminal]

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are trying to do, but it seems to me you could do that now. For instance I transcode all my shows to VHS quality. This means a 1 hour show takes about 500Meg. If I create a folder for that show with a 3 Gig limit it keeps about 6 episodes. Lower that limit, fewer episodes. I have a folder for every show I record. This is kind of a pain right now as SS doesn't really have good folder mangement, but I think that will be along in the not to distant future.

[berg]

Terminal,

You're right on the money - I was going to touch on this but was affraid I would be (actually, was) rambling on.

You're right that I could do this if I wanted to setup seperate folders for each show, but this would be a pain.

I thought it would work better if I could setup rules.

Right now I have some folders for each family member, with a couple of folders inside a family members folder for special show (like soap, if you can call them special ;-) along with a shared folder for shows of interest to everyone and a folder for all the news shows.

I would work better if could setup rules instead of having a folder for one the ABC World news, one folder for one market's local news, another folder for the other market's local news, etc. (Hello, my name is Berg and I am a news junkie ...)

But you are right; I could do it with PVS now, just not very elegantly.

Berg, the news junkie.

[tjdmobile]

I completely agree. This would be a fantastic help. I record kids's shows, but would rather not have them start to dominate the hard drive. On the TIVO, you can say keep at most 2,5,10 episodes. This is VERY handy, because I can say that I always want to have 3 episodes on the disk of Looney Tunes (for example). The only drawback here is that if you don't watch them for a week, then episode monday thru Wednesday get recorded, thurs thru Sunday do not get recorded. In the case of soaps (or other ongoing storylines), this would not be satisfactory to the viewer.

What I am experiementing with now is the ability to recompress the shows, offload them to DVD +RW. Then create a new directory which matches the DVD drive letter and voila, the shows are in the library. If you are not already in the Beta program, you should definately sign up. The latest Beta is very stable on my system and adds a great amount of functionality over ver. 3.1

My two cents

TJD

[grot]

Keep at most is a must have feature. They just added it to SageTV, which i currently use, but I am doing the Trial of 3.1 now that they have the PVR thing fixed.

[berg]

"Kept at most" would be a useful feature, but it is already there in some ways. If you set up a folder and use the size limit setting for the folder that would be equivalent.

However, it does require separate folders (which I am hoping to use but not for this feature) and has one disadvantage - it either keeps the last x shows, or the first x shows (not sure how either TiVo or Sage do it), but it doesn't allow for a mix of the two, depending on the folder, the show (I assume ... and you know what they say ...).

That is why rule based would be better, but of course more development.

Berg

[grot]

The folders thing doesn't really work. Not if you are recording 15 different things. Keep at most is the core competitive feature - at this point EVERY alternative - tivo, replay, and sage - has it.

[Terminal]

Originally posted by grot
The folders thing doesn't really work. Not if you are recording 15 different things. Keep at most is the core competitive feature - at this point EVERY alternative - tivo, replay, and sage - has it.

It does for me and I record about 15 different things. Now I would agree that the keep at most feature would be nice.

[rkuo]

Being worked on for 3.3, I believe.