Name based Recording Problem solved

[jazzis]

From what I understand the main hold up is patents and paying license fees.  I made a post on this a little while back and tried to suggest a solution without giving away all my great ideas.  http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10512

:rolleyes:  LOL... Anyway my whole thing with that was Dish could get creative and not use the same technique used by there competitors. Example Serial based recording instead of name based.  Anyone ever notice that all the PPV Movies have there own serial number.  Well if they would only assign hidden serial numbers with the descriptions and have the OS seamlessly look at those Serial numbers without the end-user having to deal with What Serial goes with what show.  Example: 7th Heaven on Channel 234 and its usually 1hour.  The serial could be 234*1:00*54fd6eg4... (Channel*Length*Serial unique to 7th Heaven) Now let’s say threes a special 2hour episode it would now read 234*2:00*54fd6eg4 and your PVR would automatically Ajust for the extended time :D ...  There you have name based recordings without the name... :shrug: :cool:

Now I have an idea how this could lead to more Advanced Features as well:blush: I Think Ill save those..... 

[Jacob S]

I have also recommended this, like a vcr+ code.

[bunkers]

From what I have read, its not clear at all who really has what patents. And who owes who for what.

It seems that TIVO has a couple of patents, but a company called Pause Technology already had a couple of patents as well. Replay had a couple of patents also and there is at least one more company with PVR related patents also.

So Tivo goes after Replay and this finally ends in a draw and they finally agree to drop the legal battle for now and focus on making PVRs and leave each other alone (for now).

Meanwhile, Pause is suing Tivo ... not sure what happened there ... or if its still ongoing.

And some folks are licensing the technology from Pause and some from Replay and Tivo says that they might also license their technology -- but who really has what is not clear at all. They all have patents on elements of the total PVR product, but not all.

It seems like licensing one of these is an option --- but which one, you would choose is not clear cut.

I think Microsoft maybe just went for it, or licensed under one of them -- and then these companies are scared to sue them, because they would run out of money long before Microsoft gave in. The FEDs couldn't even rattle Microsoft.

Changing topics a bit -- I like the idea of name based under some form.

I think even a search based timer shouldn't be a huge stretch to implement.

Maybe by adding a few more rules added on top of the existing search capability -- DISH could implement a search results based timer. I would consider this to be similar to the replayTV themes, but using existing DISH search capabilities + some further qualifiers added.

For example, you would save the search "Joe Bachelor" and associated with "titles only search". You would also need to select the channel to record the show from OR the first non conflicting occurance only (keeping it simple) -- and then you could save this search as a search-based timer. If the search yielded a conflict, then the regular timer would always win the conflict, or perhaps you could enable an option to make the search based timer win any conflict. Just brainstorming a bit.

It seems to me that before they could implement something like this that they need to implement the 1x override capability first.

[Jacob S]

If so many different companies has so many different patents then there would never be a decent pvr if you could not put all of these different features into one product.

[DarrellP]

A very simple solution would be this: Keep the timers as they are, but add one simple item: Since the name of the show is on the timer, just check the timeslot for the same name and if it does not jive then don't record it. Last week when John Doe was not on, my timer still said John Doe even though Fast Lane was on.

This seems like an extremely simple solution, it would only add a couple lines of programming.

[bunkers]

I agree DarrellP.

I think maybe the following options might complement the existing timer capabilities:

[ ] Don't record timeslot if show name in EPG changes
[ ] Auto extend time till end of EPG event if Name matches
[ ] Auto One time override if AutoExtend creates a conflict

I also think that a daily check of the timers: i.e. the Name+channel+timeslot beg+timeslot end could be compared to the most recently downloaded EPG -- and if a disparity is detected, then flag these timers and allow for a timer manual review screen to be viewed, which just points out possibile descrepencies which can be manually fixed, if desired.

Maybe this just takes the form of a new button in the timers screen, where if you press the "timer verify" button, then it shows you a list of just the timers which don't agree with the current EPG -- and then you can fix if so desire using the existing timers screen methods.

Since a single download of the EPG is done each day, this seems like the perfect time to also flag all existing timers for differences, based on the conditions I specified earlier. Its not name based, but its making sure that the name+channel+timeslot beg+end stay consistent -- and if not, then you figure it out. I know they could code for this!

[Jacob S]

When there is a will, there is a way, and I think there is a brilliant solution to this. I think that they want to choose the right way because more than likely they will have to stick with the same one for now on to not cause any confustion later on.

[Kagato]

I don't get why Dish even it batting an eye on this one. They gave Gemstar the middle finger and did the GUI based guide with out paying a royalty.

if they are that worried do a downloadable guide. Titan TV and the ilk. The 721 is supposed to get some boardband connectivity at some point. Load up Mozilla or Opera, create a seperate LLC that has guide data, and let the 721 download an XML recoding schedule every couple days. You're not doing season passes, you're just downloading a guide from a seperate company. It would even fix 119 users.

Hell, I wouldn't mind being able to go to a site and say "Give me all my home team sports" and bam, a schedule is pushed to you.