Intelligent recording ain't so intelligent

[frumbert]

Well, whoever coded the "intelligent recording" sure loves childrens programming. They have kids, I'm sure. I turned on this option to see what it would record, and came back after two weeks to find that it had "intelligently" recorded every single program marked as "childrens" in my guide. Well over 100GB of data. I had to go through the tv guide and mark every single program as "do not like" (severel dozen different shows) in order for it to not try to record future childrens shows.

I primarily record movies, documentaries, music shows and anything sciencey. It has never "intelligently" queue'd a single one of these. Today it seems to have recorded a whole bunch of new childrens shows - it missed the science and music shows similar to those manually record every week (science or technology genre). It failed to record the daytime war movies (even though I manually queue all the nighttime war movies).

What I'd really like is a "don't like" option on a genre. I know I don't like childrens programming. I know I don't like talk shows or foriegn stuff in general. I know I don't want to record "sport" or "news" or "current affairs" or "gossip".

I don't know what it's supposed to do - how the "intelligence" works, but I think someone reversed the polarity on this option, because it's not intelligent, that's for sure.

[tmiranda]

Unfortunately IR always starts out pretty dumb. The good news is that it learns relatively quickly and will eventually work really well. Here is what I'd recommend:

- Turn on "aggressive negative profiling" in the options.
- For shows you do not want recorded make sure you clear the "watched" flag and set the "don't like flag".

My experience is that it takes about a week to have it stop recording everything in site, about a month to get it where it works reasonably, and about three months to get it really well trained.

My initial reaction was the same as yours but now I think IR is one of the most essential features of Sage. The developers should probably change the initial behavior so that it does not immediately record everythiing it can.

[nielm]

Have you watched a load of kids shows in the past? IR uses your viewing history to see what you watch... You may want to clear the watched flag for those kids shows!

My Intelligent Suggestions plugin helps a lot for IR management... Easy reviewing and setting of don't like for groups of shows...

Or, leave IR off, and you can use my plugin to review what sage thinks you might like (the shows it would record if IR is on), and setup manual records/faves for those shows..

[Sparhawk6]

I had this exact same problem. I never watched kids shows and IR queued up a ton of kids shows.

The only thing I could come up with was that I was recording cartoons like Family Guy and Futurama. Perhaps it picked up that those were cartoons and thus kids shows. But yes, IR learned quickly and started picking up good shows.

My biggest beef right now is that based on my recording history, Sage's IR will pick up SD versions of HD shows that I record. I certainly don't want that. And I don't want to hit "don't like" under those SD versions because that defeats the whole purpose! I in reality love those shows, but I don't want IR to pick them up because I already record them in HD format!

[frumbert]

No, I don't watch the kids shows. I've pretty much told it about 70 kids shows I don't like, and queue'd a whole bunch of shows that I know I do, and yet it continue's to queue almostly exlusively childrens shows. I make sure I don't have them marked as watched.

The ability to mark a genre as either "don't like" or "like" is a desirable idea to me.

I guess I'll leave it on for another two weeks and then see if it's still horrible idea.

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by frumbert

No, I don't watch the kids shows. I've pretty much told it about 70 kids shows I don't like, and queue'd a whole bunch of shows that I know I do, and yet it continue's to queue almostly exlusively childrens shows. I make sure I don't have them marked as watched.

The ability to mark a genre as either "don't like" or "like" is a desirable idea to me.

I guess I'll leave it on for another two weeks and then see if it's still horrible idea.

As tmiranda indicated in an earlier post, make sure you turn on "aggressive negative profiling"; that'll save you a lot of time and effort. Typically, you should be able to mark one show as don't like, wait a few minutes, and the rest of them should fall off the list.

[waynedunham]

One thing I can add here after years of using IR. If you record/watch any animated shows/movies (Simpsons, Family Guy, Antz, etc) then the IR in Sage will start to think you like anything animated and put them all in.

As suggested, turn aggressive negative profiling on, it makes a huge difference! Also you'll find that periodically you'll have to train Sage's IR especially when a new season starts and you start to record new shows Sage will look for similar shows.

The training curve in the beginning is very steep, but quickly gets less and less demanding.

Another thing that doesn't get along well with IR is if you watch programs live. If you are someone like me who many times just has the TV on in the background and isn't paying attention to what's on you can get into IR trouble. IR will think that since you watched something live that you like it.
It's not a big deal for me because I only use Sage for viewing recordings, never for live Tv. It sure would be nice for Sage's IR to have a toggle to say "Never use Live TV stats with IR"

There is also an STV (STVi?) for "Anti-Favorites" where you can do some/all of what you want. I don't use it simply because I've used Sage IR for so long and have it trained so well that I really don't need it.

As long as you stay away from watching something Live that you wouldn't want Sage to record all the time you should be ok.
For special events (i.e. baseball playoff) that I want to record/watch, but don't want IR grabbing hold of I simply record/watch the show and then make sure I clear the watched flag before deleting the show.