Permissions and Watched Status

[joshuad156]

The first two options in the Permissions Profile setup are as follows:

Track watched videos
Manage recording schedule

The first option seems to allow SageTV to actually track the progress of the watched status while a video plays. This enables the user to restart the show where they left off if they stop playback before the end of the show. Makes sense, but..

The second option (among other things I'm sure) seems to enable the user to actually set the Watched status on shows and videos. I don't know why the ability to modify watched status seems to be tied to this permission setting, but that's what I'm experiencing with the latest version of SageTV and the latest STVs.

My desire is to give the user access to modify/edit/track Watched status, but not access to recording schedule (the two in my mind seem like the should be completely unrelated)

Now, this wouldn't be the end of the world, the user not being able to directly set watched status from the UI. The a really annoying problem pops up when the user tries to watch an in-progress show. They are presented with the option to "Resume Playback" or "Start from the Beginning". No matter which option they choose, they are forced to Resume Playback. And since they are unable to directly modify Watched status, they are forced to use FF or Rew during playback to start a show over. This is REALLY cumbersome for my family (they can totally do it, but it's a real PITA) and is an awful user experience for them (myself included when I watch TV in my living room!)

Is this totally normal? Does it sound like a bug? I can't believe this is fully intentional, nor can I believe I haven't seen anything on the forums about this. I know Permissions were rolled out kind of late, just before SageTV went to Google. However, this has to be a useful feature that someone out there uses, right?

[CollinR]

I use permissions but I don't need the same funtionality. I have 2 usergroups, admins in the master and living rooms (HD200s), kids in the kids bedrooms (MVPs).

All the properties to control the interfaces for user kids and the living room are set in thier properties files. The STV file they run and the properties for Malore's menus, the kids is basically stripped. The master bedroom has a wide open install if you set it as admin for permissions then just sat there and let the plugin installers run this is what you would get. Has Malore menus unique to this room (content from specific channels and ratings). The living room is somewhat mixed most things are possible some are hidden but possible.

How I interpret those settings:

Track watched videos

Allow user to keep track of the watched status. SageTV is very in tune with what you watch. It needs to keep track of everything that has been watched to dermine what to record in the future. You are allowing them the abiltity to set something as watched, then delete it, or be deleted by an automated process once set to watched.

Once something has been marked watched and then deleted the only way to rerecord it is to set it as a manual recording.

I do not wish SageTV to track what user "kids" watch, they should stay as unwatched.

(The kids are young enough they watch sponge bob over and over anyways.)

Manage recording schedule

Allow user to create and cancel recordings plus probably resolve conflicts. I don't want a recording cancelled by the user kids. I also don't want 500 favorites of misc "Suite life on/of..." specials like I used to have. I create recordings on their behalf or they can do so from the living room.

HTH but access control is much more helpful at the properties file level.

[joshuad156]

See, I have my entire DVD collection on SageTV (this includes nearly every Disney DVD and most other kids DVDs in existence), and if my children couldn't start a movie where they left off it would be the end of the world! :-)

Well, I'm nearly certain this is either a bug or a design flaw. My #1 problem right now is that when the user watches a show/video already in progress and chooses "start over", Sage fails to reset the watched progress unless they have Manage Recording Schedule permissions. Seems like the proper thing to do would have been to either 1) don't prompt me if I can't change it, or 2) actually start the show over when I choose that option.

[joshuad156]

Since I created this first post I have dug into the STV and tried to modify it to do what I want. However, it appears that it SHOULD already be doing what I want it to do. In the section of code where the "Start from Beginning" option exists, there is immediately a call to reset the watched status (without checking any permissions) and then to continue playback. So I don't really know what to change, because it looks like it already should work!

Weird thing is, this works fine on a PC client. However, on my HD-200, it seems to require the Manage Recording Schedule permission. This is bizarre!


Now for more bizarreness. I decided maybe I could make a workaround to this problem (said problem being that I can't start a movie over, I can't reset watched status, and am therefore left manually Rewinding a movie to the beginning once it's complete) by simply changing the permission that SageTv checks for when trying to change the Watched status for a video. Well, I found a few places in the STV where the client is checking for permission to change watched status. I changed these checks so that they check the Watched Tracking permission instead. This worked GREAT on my PC client as I could now change Watched Status without having the Manage Recording Schedule permission. However, when I copied the STV to the SageTV server, the extender didn't seem to work any different. :-( I made sure my changes were making it over to the extender, by changing the words on the screen for that prompt. The changes were there, but the functionality I modified were not working. This again is very bizarre.

If anyone has any idea what I might be missing, please let me know! This is one of my very few complaints of an otherwise great setup.