suggestion: anti-favorites....

[xlr8shun]

Originally Posted by roxy99

I disagree wholeheartedly. I think Sage should focus on the core product and making it as reliable and foolproof as Tivo.

so you dont think that IR, a feature sage has that no other pvr software has, isnt part of the core of sage?

how do you make it more reliable and foolproof as tivo, when one of tivo's big selling points is also IR, this suggestion IS indeed to make IR more reliable and foolproof, by speficially blacklisting certian programs from being recorded

Originally Posted by roxy99

No disrespect intended to the majority opinion here, but quite frankly, if you guys only want a particular show as favorite, then set the favorite for THAT show alone and NOT favorite by genre. And remember, you are not REQUIRED to use intelligent recording. Problem solved.

and i DO record braves games, knicks games by favorite, keyword favorite, any program that is aired with the words "atlanta braves" or "new york knicks" (just 2 examples) gets recorded.. the confusion is, you watch 2-3 braves games or 2-3 knicks games and all of a sudden sage thinks you like ALL baseball games, or ALL basketball games. it is not the user that is generalizing here, and recording stuff by genre, it is sage.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

We've been over this a dozen times before, it does not work!

If I'm working I might have BBCNews24 on in the background but I WILL NEVER EVER WANT IT TO BE RECORDED. I have marked the shows as Don't Like a thousand times but my subsequently watching for hours seems to reverse this.

I humbly disagree. I trained it for months. And it does work.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Well you seen complaints here. I trained it for two years so I know how it works. I still have the same wiz.bin since I started using SageTV back then till now. All my watching history should be in there. So its not a matter of using it incorrectly, at least not for me. And I don't see how is it that people are using it incorrectly. You see a show it records that you don't like, you mark it "Don't Like", thats all there is to it. And this is not an attack on the SageTV developers, we are just asking for better ways to train it so its better at what it does.

stubborness has nothing to do with it. IR works great when I was using SageTV by myself, but once I introduced it to the family and have many people using SageTV, some would leave it on Live TV all day long, thats when IR goes nuts and I had to turn it off. It was too much work to undo the mess, not without better ways of doing it.

In my previous post, the first paragraph was just sarcasm and not to be taken seriously. I'm glad IR works for you and you are happy with it, but this is not about IR not working as advertised, rather just suggestions on how to make it better and more accurate of what to record and what not to record.

I did see the sarcasm and I wasn't directing my comment at you. And sure, the feature can be improved. Most of the posts I read about IR didn't appear to indicate that people gave it a fair amount of training.

Months ago I too proposed a "Don't record under pain of death" feature, and I still think an Anti-favorite preemptive strike feature would be useful. I only mentioned IR for those reading to counter the posts that say it doesn't work. Perhaps it doesn't work for some and perhaps it works for others.

Just balance...

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by gplasky

You do realize that Intelligent Recording is one of the features that ONLY Sage has and that differentiates itself from the rest of the computer-based products? Beyond TV, MCE, GB-PVR, Meedio-any of them that you find out there that does TV does NOT do this. So I think this feature is a little more than fluff. And it helps Sage to be seen as a formidable Tivo replacement. This was one of the features Sage had from the beginning.

Gerry

Gerry,

In that case IR need to be fixed up. Then if thats the case, my opinion changes. If there are these problems then they need to be addressed in the context of improving IR. Though I haven't used IR yet and I doubt I will (but that's just me), if the feature is there to begin with and users like the feature, then it had better work properly.

Favorites would need more sub-menus for the user to adjust in order to fine tune Sage's selection criteria. Computers are dumb machines and need to have decision rules appled. Technology is still a long way from artificial intelligence and the feature Intelligent recording is a mis-nomer.

What is needed in that case is some form of scoring system. Ie: After I watch a show, how does sage tag it for IR? That needs to be better undersood first before adhoc adding a new feature.

xlr8shun,
What makes Sage make these generalizations then? Interesting- IR is a great idea I suppose very difficult to implement.

[xlr8shun]

Originally Posted by roxy99

xlr8shun,
What makes Sage make these generalizations then? Interesting- IR is a great idea I suppose very difficult to implement.

i cant say specifically how IR (in sage) works. meaning i cant say if it gives more priority to programs with same titles or programs with same genres, etc.. and im hesitant to give any example what so ever (but i will anyway), because i dont want any example i give to be taken as fact and this is how it works, period, no if's and's or but's about it, because thats about as far from the truth as it could get.

however, i am pretty sure that, IR in its most basic form, "remembers" what you watch, (remembers the tags of the recording; ie: title, director, actors, genre, channel, perhaps even keywords in episode descriptions). this is all thrown into a database of sorts and assigned some kind of "point" or "rating" system. the whole idea is to look for patterns from these tags that are available to sage. sage looks at the list of shows coming on and analyzes these tags, then compares them to its database of your tv watching history. of course tags with higher points are given more priority vs tags with lower points until sage can finally narrow it down to 1 program to record.

now, an example. im going to be doing A LOT of assuming here, and a lot of typing, so if you dont want to read, stop now . its quite possible that my explination is not exactly how sages IR works, however its just an example to help you understand if the above info wasnt enough.

an example, we'll start with a _fresh_ databse and we'll do a baseball game. i belive you have to watch enough of a program to give it a "watched" status, unless ofcourse you assign it manually. now, sage says to itself, hey he watched a baseball game. evidently he likes to watch baseball games. so sage breaks down all the information available to itself about the program, just like the information you see from the EPG. it has a title "mlb baseball", it has a genre "sports/baseball", it has a channel "espn", etc.

now, for arguments sake, we'll say sage works on a point system, it gives 1 point to "title: mlb baseball", it gives 1 point to "genre: sports" and 1 point to "genre: baseball" it gives 1 point to "channel: espn". again, i cant say for sure exactly how many points would be awarded. so, keep track in your head for a moment of the current points we assigned to each 'tag' in our database.

now, we'll watch a baskeball game, sage will give it points, just as above, 1 to "title: nba basketball", 1 to "genre: sports", 1 to "genre: basketball" 1 to "channel: espn"

now lets say we watch a couple friends episodes. 2 points for "title: friends" 2 points for "genre: sitcom" and 2 points for "channel: tbs". im sure sage will also award some sort of points for the actors in this show also, but perhaps it wont.

ok now if we were keeping a running total of our "points" we have 0 points in a lot of categories, they get no prefrence, we do have some categories that have points in them, lets see what they are.

Title: MLB Baseball = 1 point
Title: NBA Basketball = 1 point
Title: Friends = 2 point
Genre: Baseball = 1 point
Genre: Basketball = 1 point
Genre: Sports = 2 points
Genre: Sitcom = 2 point
Channel: TBS = 2 points
Channel: ESPN = 2 point

now, sages IR says hey, this guy must really likes sports, and espn. he also likes sitcoms and tbs. but here is where it starts to get tricky, for arguments sake and for easy to add numbers sake, i gave each category 1 "point", but im sure sage gives titles more "points" then the genre. and im sure that that genre is given more "points" then channel.

anyway, sage sees a pattern here, it sees sports and espn, so when a sports program comes on espn it says hey, lets look at our sub-genre and see if its either baseball or basketball, if it is, sage would more then likely record it, assuming that you dont have any favorites or manual recordings set to record during that time. now, we'll say its a golf program, its not a basketball or baseball program so sage still might record it but it might also look to record something else, perhaps it sees a sitcom on TBS coming on, well TBS has 2 points, sitcoms have 2 points, thats given slightly more precidence over 2 points in sports, 0 points in sub-genre golf and 2 points on ESPN. the more you watch, the more sage "learns" about what you like to watch, thus allows it to give intelligent assumptions to record things that you may like to watch, given your past behavior of watching tv. of course there are LOTS LOTS LOTS more coding involved with sages IR you have to take into account favorites and how they're assigned "points", you have to calculate how many "points" to give for setting something 'dont like'.

you can see how easily leaving the tv on a channel and falling asleep or leaving it on a channel and going outside, only to get distracted for a few hours, could alter the IR in sage. of course it is easy to fix most of the time, just go back and either clear the 'watched' flag, or set the 'dont like' flag on them. the problem is when you have to do it over and over and over again.

in my case im constantly watching the news, but i dont want the news recorded, so i have to constantly reset my watched status on news things i watch, or set them to dont like, just so sage will not record it. if i dont reset the watched status, or someone in the house (who doesnt understand, and doesnt WANT to understand) forgets to reset the watched status, then i start getting news airings showing up in my recordings, then i have to start tracking stuff down.

i hate watching soap operas, but the lady of the house has 1 she watches religously, she doesnt want a school lesson on how to use the tv, it was one huge PITA to even convince her to give up the vcr and use this anyway she doesnt care about quality, she just wants to see her soaps (well one soap) i cant rely on her to reset her watched status, nor go through the weeks worth of soaps she doesnt watch and set them 'dont like' to counter a weeks worth of watching one soap opera.

i love IR, and use it all the time. its found me things to watch that everyone in the house loves, but the way its programed to work, it doesnt have the capability to learn that just because something has been watched, doesnt necessarly mean that it is wanted to be recorded.

again, this is only a general assumption on my part to try and explain the basic principle how sages IR works. it is in no way shape or form to be construed as the actual model sages IR is based off of. sorry so long

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by jominor

I humbly disagree. I trained it for months. And it does work.

So, I could spend hours across months telling SageTV not to record something or the developers could spend 2 hours implementing a do not record feature? Right, that makes sense.

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by xlr8shun

how do you make it more reliable and foolproof as tivo

And this is the crux of it for me. I used Tivo for several years, its IR worked, I want SageTV to do it as well as Tivo. Whats wrong with that?

[metropole]

A much needed option. I drives me nuts what Sage thinks at times I like....

[jominor]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

So, I could spend hours across months telling SageTV not to record something or the developers could spend 2 hours implementing a do not record feature? Right, that makes sense.

No, you could spend months training and enjoy it working like I did our you can choose NOT to use it and save yourself and the developers time.

[src666]

Originally Posted by jominor

No, you could spend months training and enjoy it working like I did our you can choose NOT to use it and save yourself and the developers time.

Except no matter how much you tell it you hate a show, if you watch it (or 5 seconds of it), then Sage thinks you love it. IR works as long as you NEVER watch live TV.

[ke6guj]

Without even using IR, Sage needs a way to adjust the "don't record" list.

For example, I have a actor favorite for "Virginia Madsen" that I want Sage to manage, however, I do not want any "Unsolved Mysteries" recorded, but since she is listed as a host, Sage will record everyt single one of them unless I go in and mark all the upcoming recordings as either "watched" or "don't like" and I have to do that every week or so. At last glance there were ~460 showings of "unsolved mysteries" that I have had to tell Sage not to record in the past.

Other example could be "Michael J. Fox" but don't want any "Spin City" or "Family Ties". I should not have to constantly have to look into my schedule and mark every upcoming showing to get Sage to ignore it. And if I was using IR, then I think that marking all those showings as either "watched" or "don't like" is giving the IR bad info, expecially since neither option is really correct.

I really need a "I haven't watched it, don't "don't like" it, I just don't want it recorded!!!" option.

[neilbradley]

I'll have to agree with this one. Even though I've been using SageTV for a bit over a year now, it still occasionally decides to record "Paid programming", which I *NEVER* want it to record, and no matter how many times I tell it that I don't like it and delete everything unwatched, it still pops up every week or two in groups of 4-8. Grrr.... And it keeps recording things like Full House and The Carol Duvall Show even though I've told it that I don't like it.

[dflachbart]

I have been following this discussion closely and was thinking about how this problem could be addressed by a plugin. Fact is that there isn't any real solution possible until an official API for changing the IR suggestions becomes available. Currently, the only way to influence and change the IR is by marking shows as "dont like" and "watched"...

This said, and reading all the posts how tedious the teaching process can be, I thought about a way how to ease and automate this process, as a temporary solution until either some IR configuration will become available in the core product or an API to change the suggestions is added. I've come up with a small plugin which uses "special" favorites to exclude certain shows from being recorded by marking them as "dontlike" or "watched" automatically.

The way it works:

- you define a keyword favorite with special keywords which will be ignored by Sage (because it will never match), but recognized by the plugin, e.g. "--dontlike-category--Shopping" or "--watched-title--XYZ"

- the plugin will scan the scheduled recordings in a (configurable) interval in the background and match these 'anti-favorites' against the scheduled shows. If a show matches (and is not a regular favorite), it will be marked as "dontlike" or "watched" based on the definition. A few minutes later this show should disappear from the schedule


Please note:

- I do not use IR myself (nor do I intend to soon), so I have only tested the plugin in a test environment using the NullEncoder with live EPG data.
- I do not promise or intend to add new features to the plugin, and the support if it doesnt work will be limited. I just want to throw it out here as an "idea" which others can build on if they want to (the code will be available). This doesn't mean that the current functionality could not be absolutely sufficient for some of the folks here ...
- Use it at your own risk ! I seems to work just fine in my test environment, but then you never know...

If after all this anyone is still interested in trying it out , just let me know and I'll send the plugin per email. I would like to have it tested first by a couple of people in a real environment before I make it available for everyone ...

Dirk

[BobPhoenix]

I will test it if you want but I don't have IR enabled either. If that makes a difference to you. I use NIELM's intelligent suggestions instead. Thank you.

BobP.

[salsbst]

...IR works as long as you NEVER watch live TV.

Yeah, that's definitely one problem. It seems to me that live TV watching should be excluded from any calculations of "watched" and thus from the intelligent recording calculations. One can watch a program live in two ways: (i) mark the show for recording and play it back as it's recording; (ii) flip through channels or launch Live TV from the program guide.

Airings that are specifically marked for recording (and then watched as the recording takes place) should go into the IR engine. Airings that get watched completely ad-hoc (without marking the show for recording, either due to channel flipping or launching directly from the Program Guide) should not factor into the IR engine.

No, you could spend months training and enjoy it working like I did our you can choose NOT to use it and save yourself and the developers time.

We've trained ours, and we're careful about using watched/don't like/etc.... but it does drive me nuts that it records episodes that are already marked as watched when those episodes are flagged by the provider differently when they are reruns from when they were first runs.

It seems to me that a couple of relatively minor changes would help:

a) if a show is a favorite (either first runs or reruns), then never record it via IR. This would solve my problem of having reruns recorded when we've already marked the first run as watched.

b) don't set watched status on live viewings and exclude them from intelligent recording calcs

c) create a "don't record this" feature so that we can selectively prevent IR recordings without affecting the IR calculations.

I'd be interested to see others' feedback on which complaints in this area might not be solved by doing these three things.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

I will test it if you want but I don't have IR enabled either. If that makes a difference to you. I use NIELM's intelligent suggestions instead. Thank you.

BobP.

Great to hear that you want to give it a try.

Originally it wouldn't have worked because the plugin was scanning the scheduled recordings (so if you have IR disabled the shows never appear in the schedule), but I added a switch to scan the suggestions instead.

Send me your email address per PM, and I'll send you the import with detailed instructions.

Thanks,
Dirk

[xlr8shun]

flachbar,

its only been a day and a half or so, but so far this plugin is working fantasticly, its already canceled 2 baseball games and 3 soap operas from being IR'ed and no problems as of yet.

(one thing i noticed, soaps dont have a category!! too bad )

anyway, great work on this, thanks again for your contributions to the community.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by xlr8shun

flachbar,

its only been a day and a half or so, but so far this plugin is working fantasticly, its already canceled 2 baseball games and 3 soap operas from being IR'ed and no problems as of yet.

(one thing i noticed, soaps dont have a category!! too bad )

anyway, great work on this, thanks again for your contributions to the community.

Nice to hear that it's working fine ...

Dirk

[dflachbart]

FYI, the plugin is now generally available, see this post.

Dirk