My initial wishlist

[Jesse]

First of all, I'm obligated to say "Great program".  I've gotten caught up in a few hobby programming challenges myself, and I must say I'm impressed with your dedication.  Keep up the good work!

First off, I'm using a PVR250 in a 1.2ghz athlon, 256mb ram, with an MVP connected, using the new beta "server" software.

-My first wish is to clean up the FF/RW of live tv.  On the mediaMVP, the only thing I can do is pause.  None of the other keys work (|<<, <<, >>, >>|.  On my PC, I can rewind, but can't get back to the "present" time.  The >>| button on the PC gui doesn't work, and if I >>, I can only get to "0:04 behind".. After that it hangs for about 10 seconds and starts playing (about 0:10 behind).  I often get the sound to stop working when trying this functionality.

-Pressing the Stop button on the MediaMVP while paused on live tv crashes the PC services.

-Make the MediaMVP server a service instead of running app.  Make it automatically shut down the Hauppage GUI service if running.

-Be able to access the tv listings directly from live-tv. (on the remote, maybe "menu" accesses listings, while "back" goes to the application menu?)

-Allow for a pageup/pagedown function in tv listings.

-Be able to skip far ahead in time in TV listings.  If I want to record a show 4 days from now, I've got to hold the right arrow key for a long time?

-(related) Be able to search for programs.  It might sound clutzy on a remote, but my digital cable box does it pretty well.  Up/Down changes letters, right/left changes letter position.  Every change you make, it re-queries and gives you a list of matches from the best to worst and soonest to furthest.

-Ability to schedule season recordings with a time filter, say +/- 3 hours of the original show time.  This way you won't get duplicates (when shows are played several times a day), but if the network changes the show time, you'll still get it.

-(Probably easier than previous), keep track of show subtitles or descriptions, and never record a duplicate.

Ok, that was a bunch, but I tried to be descriptive.  Again, thanks for your hard work.  I wish I could help you out, but I understand the nature of what you're doing.

Jesse

[sub]

Answer to some of these:

Quote[/b] ]-Be able to access the tv listings directly from live-tv. (on the remote, maybe "menu" accesses listings, while "back" goes to the application menu?)

Pressing the green button will show the mini-guide, which gives you a list of whats now playing on the other channels. Not quite the same, but I thought I'd mention it.

Quote[/b] ]-Allow for a pageup/pagedown function in tv listings.

Page Up/Down keys on keyboard do this already. You can also type a channel number, followed by "enter", to go to a specific channel.

Quote[/b] ]Be able to skip far ahead in time in TV listings. If I want to record a show 4 days from now, I've got to hold the right arrow key for a long time?

The skip keys on the remote (or ctrl-left/ctrl-right) jump back or forward a day at a time.

Quote[/b] ]-(Probably easier than previous), keep track of show subtitles or descriptions, and never record a duplicate.

I dont get sub titles in my part of the world, so its not super high on the priority list.

[Guest]

sub, thanks for the quick reply. Your suggestions will be useful.

One more "wish" is commercial skipping for recording and/or playback.

Auto-skipping commercials during recording may be more difficult because I have a feeling you're not analyzing the video stream. This *would* be a great feature though.

Skipping videos during playback may be as easy as assigning the Skip button (>| to fast forward a pre-determined standard commercial-amount-of-time, whatever that may be.

[colin]

Hey Jesse,

Quote[/b] ]One more "wish" is commercial skipping for recording and/or playback.

Auto-skipping commercials during recording may be more difficult because I have a feeling you're not analyzing the video stream. This *would* be a great feature though.

We have a thread in the developers area for this.

Quote[/b] ]Skipping videos during playback may be as easy as assigning the Skip button (>| to fast forward a pre-determined standard commercial-amount-of-time, whatever that may be.

The skip button jumps i think about 60 seconds forward. Possibly Sub may be able to add this as a config option for those countries that know each commercial break will x minutes long.

Cheers,

[Jesse]

Thanks colin.  I think I'm proving that this project needs a help document/guide.  If I find some time, I'll step up.

Few more-
-Retention time for recordings.  I should be able to set that a given season recording is only kept around for a week, then automatically purged.

-The current time should be displayed in TV listings (and maybe other places.. main menu?)

-My MVP doesn't work for the skip-ahead.  When I was using the beta hauppauge server and pressed skip on the remote, the mini-display came up.  It shows the length of the video to be 0:00, with no progress, and it doesn't skip ahead.
Now I've gone back to non-beta hauppauge server, nothing happens when I press skip.
Skipping works as expected from the PC, however.

-You should be able to scroll up from the top menu button and get to the bottom menu button.

-Be able to set a password for the web server. The functionality in my opinion is to be able to schedule recordings from anywhere in the world. However, leaving that site unsecured on the internet is dangerous at best.

[PVR350]

Good list! I would like to see most of these ideas implemented, add a couple ideas of my own

One of the wishes in this thread has to do with the Record Season option recording duplicates. This is a big problem for many of the shows I record. The same episode of "The 4400" airs 5 times this week. An option between Record Once and Record Season would be extremely useful - to record at this same time every week. A Monday-Friday option would also be handy.

On Manual Recordings, the ability to edit an existing recording would be nice. Otherwise you have to delete and readd a manual recording to change it.

One last wish would be the option to watch the show that I'm recording while the recording is going on.

[Guest]

A couple more wish list items:

When changing channels in live-tv the program names are displayed in the OSD, but not the program descriptions. Adding these would be great also adding the current time would also be useful.

From the TV Guide highlight the programs that are currently on (the items to be recorded are changed to red) perhaps change them to another colour. Also having the current time displayed here would be useful. A button to take you back to the programs that are current on.

Adding the current time to the main menu. (am I obsessed with what the time is?).

Using the 'mini-browse' in live-tv allows me to see what's other channels at the current time using the UP and DOWN arrows. How about extending this so that the LEFT and RIGHT arrows go to the NEXT and PREVIOUS programs in the TV Guide.
Also for some reason these buttons seem the wrong way around and I want to use LEFT and RIGHT to see whats on the other channels and the UP and DOWN for the NEXT and PREVIOUS programs.

Neil

[sub]

Quote[/b] ]Also for some reason these buttons seem the wrong way around and I want to use LEFT and RIGHT to see whats on the other channels and the UP and DOWN for the NEXT and PREVIOUS programs.

Huh?! That seems really backwards. Remember the remote does have CH-/CH+ on the UP and DOWN keys.

[Snifi]

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Also for some reason these buttons seem the wrong way around and I want to use LEFT and RIGHT to see whats on the other channels and the UP and DOWN for the NEXT and PREVIOUS programs.

Huh?! That seems really backwards. Remember the remote does have CH-/CH+ on the UP and DOWN keys.

What about disabling the "normal" action CH+/- buttons while being in the live-tv mini-browse? ;-) and channel-changing (in mini-browse) could be possible by looking at what happens in another channel and pressing ok (enter)?

[CodeMonkey]

Quote[/b] (Guest @ June 29 2004,06:02)]One more "wish" is commercial skipping for recording and/or playback.  

Auto-skipping commercials during recording may be more difficult because I have a feeling you're not analyzing the video stream.  This *would* be a great feature though.

Skipping videos during playback may be as easy as assigning the Skip button (>| to fast forward a pre-determined standard commercial-amount-of-time, whatever that may be.

I had just gotten started on this, then work got busy with travel etc. But the thought at the time (and like sub said, this is all in the developers forum) was to record the show untouched (i.e. no commercial detection done at record time), but rather post process the recorded program if requested by the user at the time of recording setup. A cut file would be created during this post processing that the playback routine could use either automatically or manually (when the user pressed the skip button during playback). Another potential feature would be to allow for further post proccessing that would create a new recording file which would be the original recording minus the detected commercials. So many ideas, so little time