Tivo-like Opportunistic Recording for Linux PVRs?

fahrv asks: "I use a MythTV-based Linux PVR. I'd like to see if there are ways to implement automatic Tivo-like program recordings based on personal preferences (and Amazon-like analysis of what other people recorded based on what you've recorded.) I know that the Amazon patent on 'Other people who bought XX also bought YY' could be an issue, but then Tivo is able to record shows opportunistically as well. I don't see any technical hurdles to doing this by analyzing people's MythTV viewing habits in an opt-in kind of system; I'd be interested in building one. Might any of you have some thoughts on this subject?"

United we find

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortuitously, this week's edition of The Economist includes, as part of its Technology Quarterly, an article [economist.com] devoted to this very subject. For your convenience, portions of the full text--ordinarily available only to subscribers--is reproduced below.

----

CASE HISTORY

United we find

Mar 10th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Computing: Collaborative filtering software is changing the way people choose music, books and other things, by helping them find things they like, but did not know about

Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go: link [justfuckinggoogleit.com].

Re:Here

[dago]

The first result with the link you gave is a news result point to this page [google.com]. ;)

MythRecommend

[MadChicken]

There was a thread about something called MythRecommend quite a while back in the mailing list. I haven't tried it, and the site looks like it's running off some personal home page, so I won't link it. Do a search and you'll find it very easily.

It looks like it has lots of room for improvement, but a neat start.

IMDB

[andyh1978]

There's a lot of initial data for the "people who watched X might also like Y" bit on the Internet Movie Database [imdb.com] which covers TV programmes as well as films.

Example [imdb.com]

They have a lot of their information available for non-commercial use on their interfaces page [imdb.com].

I can't spot the recommendation data on there though, but perhaps if you asked them very nicely...

try searching the mailing lists

[tommck]

There have been multiple attempts at this. Myth Recommends, WishTV, TV Wish, Myth Suggest (?)... I can't remember the names exactly, but there are attempts out there.

I don't think any of them gained enough traction to get included in the software directly, but you may be able to kick start development on one of them.

T

SageTV has "intelligent recording"

[enrico_suave]

yes... it's currently a windows program, but version SageTV [www.sage.tv]/Media Center 3 is going to be also available on linux. (not OSS though commercial product -- linux media cener announcement [forums.sage.tv])

I use sagetv 2.x on my windoze based PVR [byopvr.com] (currently, it's in a constant state of flux).

I'm sure there's plugins to do similiar functionality for other PC PVR software solutions (on both windows and linux)

e.

Re:SageTV has "intelligent recording"

[enrico_suave]

ok, I misread the actual question... didn't see that it was specific to mythtv and not linux in general...

a previous poster nailed it... there's plenty of plugins for mythtv to do that sort of predictive unnattended recording...

e.

*ahem*

[kajoob]

Tivo IS a linux [tivo.com] PVR

Re:*ahem*

[MemoryAid]

...so you're saying that Tivo itself may be able to fill the need for Tivo-like opportunistic recording? Don't beat around the bush; say what you mean and say it mean.

Not very useful

[Yeechang Lee]

I've owned a TiVo for almost five years now. And for five years I've faithfully marked programs I like watching with a Thumbs Up.

All that gets me from the auto-suggest feature is those same programs I've already seen. I've seen the Suggest feature pull up a program I hadn't heard of before perhaps two or three times.

Re:Not very useful

[Rude Turnip]

My experience has been the opposite. I've gotten lots of interesting stuff popping up in my TiVo's suggestion box. It probably helps if you watch a lot of shows that are one-of-a-kind, such as documentaries. That way the system pretty much *has* to find different shows for you (although perhaps on the same or similar subjects).

Re:Keep it simple

[obscurion]

This is an interesting idea. Myth could simulate this by using a dedicated bittorrent-like system to trade anaonymised play lists. Each machine keeps a statistical record of what it has "seen" via the torrent. Similar effect but fully distributed.

No immediate solution.

[FreeLinux]

I don't have an immediate solution for this. Myth Recommend and WishTV have already been mentioned. Although the two of them are better than nothing at all, neither of them is what Tivo does.

However, if you are a developer and are thinking of starting such a project, I have a recommendation. I would suggest that you use Bayesian analysis of the descriptions of the user's recorded shows. Sort of like Spamassassin for TV shows. The spam detection algorithm could be adapted to identify possibly desireable sho

MythRecommend...

[IpSo_]

I would like to see something similar, and even started building it myself. However as always time is a factor.

It is "usable" as far as getting recommendations from hundreds of other MythTV users. However its only "console based" at this point, but its ready for anyone to
build a native MythTV gui for it at anytime.

I would be happy to work with you on such a project if you like. I have many other ideas of things to implement, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

http://ipso.snappymail.ca/mythrecommend/ [snappymail.ca]

Re:MythRecommend...

[IpSo_]

err... Sorry, that link would be:

http://ipso.snappymail.ca:8080/mythrecommend/ [snappymail.ca]