future upgrade

There has been a lot of discussion on this in the past. From what I recall, they used to do this to a point, but what ended up happening was that MTV labeled their shows as show title "The Real World" episode title "The Real World" description "The Real World" in such a way that it screwed everything up, since they all had the same title and description. In my opinion, they are labeled correctly, since each episode IS the same old thing. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif


One feature I would like to see (broken record begins here) is the ability to store episodes as a 32-bit CRC value in a table on the disk. In a measly 4K, you could store the last 1024 shows, movies, etc. that you have watched. Then, Replay could avoid recording those again, since you have presumably recorded (and watched) them before. Of course you would need an override on the record screen, in case you did want to record it again, or maybe manual records would get around it while themes and zones would not. It could ignore shows with descriptions shorter than, say 50 bytes in length, getting around the "Real World" problem.


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PRMan


[This message has been edited by PRMan (edited 09-02-2000).]

Mike


I don't understand what commercial have to do with not recording a show once recorded or the time of the show either. Yes a better discription for all show would be great but the way it is now no matter how great the discription is they will be recorded again even if it is on the disk at the time.


Orginialy replaytv would not record a show if it was already on the disk which help some but did no help if you already watch and deleted the show. But due to some show that had bad discription replaytv thought they where the same show and wouldn't record them. Now I can understand why some one would be upset if a show wasn't recorded which should have. But unfortunely replaytv to solve this problem now records ALL show wheather it is the same or not. Now not only are show that are already recorded and on the disk, show that you alredy watch and deleted are also recorded. For show base show it not too bad since most of them are tied to a certain time and channel but thems/zone are real bad. Lets say you set up a zone for movies/action since movie channels like HBO show the movie a number of times durning the day/week not only on one channel will move it around on other channels you end up with a lot of show recorded that are exactly the same and they all have great discriptions. This is real bad if you have a zone for Friends show with all the syndication all over the place.


All we are asking for is the unit to be smart enough to know what we recorded and not record again with the option of overriding a certain show if we want to see it again. Of course it would be nice to have a user option of how long to keep the list, one week,one month, one year, never or what ever. I know this will take up some space and I personnely would give up a hole hour of space for this feature. Can it be perfect, no for not all show have a discription so go ahead and record them like it is now. Will some show not be recorded, probley but there is always limitation to any software but for those few they can always make a single record for them as a workaround this would require a lot less work than deleting all the dupicate show all the time. Beside while it is recording dupicate show which take up space on the disk and takes up time it could be recording something you haven't seen. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif


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Tom Paulus

a TV nut that's hard to crack.

Quote:
Not feasable. Unless I'm misenterpreting you, your talking about a CRC for the length of the recording? Even a repeat would not produce the same value twice (except by total coincedence). Not only such things as the fact that the picture quailty would have to be 100% perfect and totally digital (no analog), but it would also have to have the exact same commercials.


You could store a CRC for the description.... but then you have The Real World problem all over again.


The guide data is supposed to have an episode ID to help spot identical epsodes. Not all shows have them, but some do. If anything, you would use that data.


Oh, one last note about CRCs, they work great when you have two copies of what are supposed to be the same and you want some insurance that they are, but they don't work well at all if you have two files that a probably not the same. While the chance is low, you DO get duplicate CRCs for different data. While it would be obscure, people would still get upset when rare but random episodes don't record because a "random" number happen to be the same as a show they already recorded.



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"It's like living in the future."â„¢


[This message has been edited by an infinite number of monkeys (edited 10-24-2000).]

For the description. It always matches. It would work nicely.


While I don't disagree that duplicates CAN happen, what is the likelihood with short strings (not vastly different lengths from each other), so few characters used (alphanumeric only) and only around 1000 comparitors? I really believe it to be impossible talking about what we are here (around 100 byte strings). Even so, I would rather miss one recording someday than to have the same episodes recorded again and again. Just to test, I stored everything in my browser cache (over 2400 small files, many less than 100 bytes) and all the files with the same checksum were indeed the same.


Don't use this methodology unless the description is more than say, 50 bytes, ensuring a real description and not "The Real World". The Real World will get recorded over and over again until MTV gets off their lazy butts.


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PRMan


[This message has been edited by PRMan (edited 09-03-2000).]