LiveTV reminder

[ptousign]

I recently installed mythTV on multiple platforms, used different front-ends as well. I can only applaud the nice work, the amount of work offered to the world for free will never cease to amaze me. Installing MythTV comes with its fair share of frustrations caused by the immense diversity of hardware and special needs of the worldly audience but everything works if you have the luxury of the time and patience to carry it through.

It almost makes it all the way to the equivalent service we get from the modern cable provider DVRs, but I noticed a small feature that I find myself missing, a simple reminder that "you just wanted to watch" another TV program without recording it. Because the intrinsic method used by Mythtv will always record it anyway, it's more a trickery than a complex feature to implement. Because MythTV is slowly evolving from the "why bother even watching anything live anymore" to a more "throw it in the hat and we'll see what can be done" approach, maybe it's time to consider adding this "light" feature, at least on the technical side of things.

For those not familiar with the feature, you use the recorder's scheduling system to simply "flag" a TV program, not asking to record it. When the time slot comes, you just happen to be watching something else (previously recorded or live) and some form of pop-up message comes up on the front-end reminding you that "you had the intention" of watching this program. If no front end is turned on at the time, the system doesn't do anything, not even bothering to record it.

This is far from a top-priority issue but hey, maybe it'll grow on you. Keep up the great work.