Intelligent recording (IR)

[flavius]

What do you think about this feature?

Before I put a HTPC in my living room I used to own a TiVo and really liked this feature, since I never know what's on beyond the fifty something favorites I have.

It's also useful, since it gives me something to do. There's a lot to delete everyday, and I don't beta-test anymore.

However, sometimes I feel like Sisyphus. Let's say I have a first-run only favorite, IR will then start recording re-runs. I liked it at first glance.

IR will also keep recording shows that I REALLY don't like, over and over again...

I'm aware that those IR algorithms got to be fairly complex. This is - truly - rocket science.

I'm not letting go, though. What do you think?

[Opus4]

When IR is enabled, you can go to Detailed Setup -> Customize & choose whether to turn on aggressive negative profiling. Shows marked as Don't Like will then have a higher impact on the IR scheduler.

Another thing some people do to help train IR is to view all the Future or Past airings for a show, then use the Don't Like command on the resulting Past or Future Airings group on the next screen, respectively. You can use the Don't Like or Watched command on groups of shows to quickly mark many shows at once.

Some shows like Soaps seem to need to be knocked down quite a few times, but overall, I like the results with IR turned on since it finds stuff for me to watch w/o needing to browse the guide.

- Andy

[Fluffdaddy]

I loved the IR feature, but you have to stay on top of it. And setting like aggressive negative, Don't Like and Watched command must be used a first. But once you get it set up it will find some wonderful jams for you. I personally stopped using IR because I have Five Tuners and IR was just eating up to much Drive space with shows/movies. Once I went away for a 3 day weekend and IR ate though 1200 GB with its 24/7 recordings off of my 3 stb's and 2 HDTV cards and some shows I really wanted to save got deleted because I did not have them set for manual delete only...............my bad
But IR works great.

[tmiranda]

Count me as another positive vote for IR. I took Andy's advice a long time ago (turn on aggressive negative profiling and use watched/don't like all of the time) and am very pleased with the results. It took me about a month to get the system trained.

[blade]

I don't use IR because I like to control what actually gets recorded, but I use the plug-in that shows what IR would record if it were turned on. I have "Suggested Recordings" setup directly below "Scheduled Recordings". I regularly browse through the list to see if Sage has picked out anything I might like to see. If so I schedule it and while I'm at it I mark anything on the list I know I don't want to watch as "don't like".

[jominor]

Originally Posted by flavius

What do you think about this feature?

Before I put a HTPC in my living room I used to own a TiVo and really liked this feature, since I never know what's on beyond the fifty something favorites I have.

It's also useful, since it gives me something to do. There's a lot to delete everyday, and I don't beta-test anymore.

However, sometimes I feel like Sisyphus. Let's say I have a first-run only favorite, IR will then start recording re-runs. I liked it at first glance.

IR will also keep recording shows that I REALLY don't like, over and over again...

I'm aware that those IR algorithms got to be fairly complex. This is - truly - rocket science.

I'm not letting go, though. What do you think?

I like it. You can accelerate the learning my marking all the additional recordings as like or don't like.

I've been using IR since the beginning. For me, it was one of the biggest selling points. I have 3 tuners and almost a gig of storage.

[nielm]

My Intelligent Suggestions plugin

If IR is enabled, this can be used to tune it by marking all episodes of a show, or shows in a category as don't like

If IR is not enabled, this can be used to see what IR is suggesting for you...

[GKusnick]

I haven't played much with IR, since I barely have time to watch the stuff I know I'm interested in, never mind what Sage thinks I might be interested in.

That said, it seems somehow backwards to me that you have to train IR by telling it about all the things you don't like, which (if you're like me) is probaby about 90% of what's on. Doesn't keeping track of all those "Don't Like" flags tend to bloat your wiz.bin over time? Plus it seems wrong to have to say I "don't like" the news when in fact I like it fine; I just don't want IR filling up my disk with it.

Wouldn't it make more sense for IR to assume by default that most of what's on is uninteresting for IR purposes, and provide some way of saying "record more stuff like this" for the much smaller set of things I like (or want IR to record)?

[flavius]

I don't have much time to watch either, but the rest of my family does use Sage quite a bit.

The last time I did a fresh install of Sage was probably 18 month ago. So, I would assume, that's what the viewing history encompasses.

Why is there such a setting as aggressive negative profiling? Which didn't seem to make much of a difference back then or today.

It is a complex matter. IIRC even the TiVo feature was showing some weaknesses over time.

Sage implementation, however, hasn't gotten any overhaul in a long time, it seems and is still more about avoiding recordings, then finding stuff.

When I have a favorite for first runs only on channel foo, Sage's IR should NOT start recording reruns from channel bar. That would be huge, IMO.

I'm about to add a third tuner. I will probably just look at those suggestions after I put it in..

Nielm, is that your plugin in SageMC?

[nielm]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

That said, it seems somehow backwards to me that you have to train IR by telling it about all the things you don't like, which (if you're like me) is probaby about 90% of what's on. Doesn't keeping track of all those "Don't Like" flags tend to bloat your wiz.bin over time? Plus it seems wrong to have to say I "don't like" the news when in fact I like it fine; I just don't want IR filling up my disk with it.

Wouldn't it make more sense for IR to assume by default that most of what's on is uninteresting for IR purposes, and provide some way of saying "record more stuff like this" for the much smaller set of things I like (or want IR to record)?

Like==Watched, so every show you watch, Sage considers that you like.

So on a first install, IR will record nothing. As you watch shows, IR will see you like certain categories/channels/shows/actors/directors, and then will suggest more shows that match those.

I guess it works on a scoring system: each 'watched' adds points to that category/channel/show etc, each 'don't like' removes points. Shows that have a cumulative number of points over a certain threshold will be suggested by IR...

You can re-tune IR by looking at your viewing history and clearing watched flags...

There is also a 'negative favorites' plugin somewhere, which auto-sets dontlike on shows, but I agree that there should be a way of excluding shows/categories/channels from IR's consideration.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by flavius

Nielm, is that your plugin in SageMC?

don't know -- I don't use SageMC.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by flavius

Nielm, is that your plugin in SageMC?

Nope, afaik this is custom SageMC code to display IR suggestions


Dirk

[flavius]

It certainly does the trick.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I haven't played much with IR, since I barely have time to watch the stuff I know I'm interested in, never mind what Sage thinks I might be interested in.

That said, it seems somehow backwards to me that you have to train IR by telling it about all the things you don't like, which (if you're like me) is probaby about 90% of what's on. Doesn't keeping track of all those "Don't Like" flags tend to bloat your wiz.bin over time? Plus it seems wrong to have to say I "don't like" the news when in fact I like it fine; I just don't want IR filling up my disk with it.

Wouldn't it make more sense for IR to assume by default that most of what's on is uninteresting for IR purposes, and provide some way of saying "record more stuff like this" for the much smaller set of things I like (or want IR to record)?

I guess that depends on your perspective. I *WANT* IR to look at what I watch and find similar shows. I also want it to pick something that I may like. IR has indeed found shows that I would not have picked. If it chooses something I don't like, I mark it as such.

I like news tool, but IR doesn't fill my disk with it. Besides, Sage handles the disk. What exactly do you do with say 250 gigs of free space on a disk? Look at it? I have my HD on my server for Sage TV and movies. I don't want free space beyond the 5gigs of housekeeping space I set up.

I'm always fascinated when people talk about bloat, btw? What's bloat? Sage records at 3.2gigs/hr for example. Is that file bloated? Compared to a word doc, but not to an Hi-def file.

One cannot barely buy a drive smaller than 80gigs anymore so if the wiz.bin file, the database of Sage hits 30megs, so what? That's a micro-fraction of the space needed for a show.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by jominor

One cannot barely buy a drive smaller than 80gigs anymore so if the wiz.bin file, the database of Sage hits 30megs, so what? That's a micro-fraction of the space needed for a show.

It's not about disk space. It's about performance. (See the "Database upgrade may take a while..." thread.) I don't mind marking a few shows "Don't Like" if IR makes a bad guess. But I don't see why I should need to mark hundreds of shows "Don't Like" before IR returns anything useful at all. The more "Don't Like" flags there are in wiz.bin, the less efficient it becomes to access the stuff I do like.

I'm not saying that IR should suggest only programs I already know about. That wouldn't be very useful. I'm saying that the training process seems less than ideal. Even though I have hundreds of hours of viewing history of stuff I actually like in my wiz.bin, IR's idea of what I might like is still much too broad, unless I go on an aggressive campaign of don't-liking 90% of what it suggests.