# reserve space for Suggestions



## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

It would be nice if you could reserve some space for Suggestions if you so desired so you had an automatic steady consistent number of Suggestions instead of Suggetions completely disappearing at times and then at other times suddenly numbering 30 or 40 shows. 

Suggestions seem kind of pointless now that my recording choices filled up my hard drive.


The deleted recordings folder might need the same thing. Not sure yet.


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## 59er (Mar 27, 2008)

It would be nuts to have your programs deleting in order to save room for suggestions or deleted shows. The point of suggestions and deleted shows are if there's room available for more than just what you've recorded, then great; if not, oh well!


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

59er said:


> It would be nuts to have your programs deleting in order to save room for suggestions or deleted shows. The point of suggestions and deleted shows are if there's room available for more than just what you've recorded, then great; if not, oh well!


The point of Suggestions is to help you discover new content that Tivo thinks you might like based on your likes of other shows. The point isn't to make sure your hard drive is full just for the sake of doing so.

Why not let the user have more control over that feature? Why not let Tivo use x amt of hard drive space to keep Suggestions in no matter what?

I have plenty of room on my Roamio Plus for my shows. It stores 150 hrs of content. Even if it is all full of shows that I directed it to record, like it is now, there is no way I'm watching all of those. I watch the shows most important to me on a regular basis. The rest of the recorded content are just suggestions that I suggested. Not stuff that is set in stone for me to watch. It would be great if I could keep Tivo's suggestions coming regularly irregardless of how much extra crap I tell my dvr to record. This would be even more desirable when I upgrade to a 3TB hard drive and have 450 hrs of space for recordings.


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## jakerock (Dec 9, 2002)

I think almost everyone (with the exception of you apparently) would be royally pissed if shows they actually requested were deleted in order to record a suggestion. Most of us watch (or plan to watch) the shows we've asked to have recorded. At the point where I no longer plan on watching them, I delete them.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

jakerock said:


> I think almost everyone (with the exception of you apparently) would be royally pissed if shows they actually requested were deleted in order to record a suggestion. Most of us watch (or plan to watch) the shows we've asked to have recorded. At the point where I no longer plan on watching them, I delete them.


None of your shows that you watch are going to be suddenly deleted if you reserve, for example, 100gb of space for Tivo Suggestions. That still leaves 900gb for your shows on a Roamio Plus.

And, on top of it, no one says you would have to reserve any space at all for Suggestions. The default would be as it is.

And 1 TB is small for a hard drive these days. It's fairly cheap and simple to put a 3 TB drive in a Roamio which is rated at ~450 hrs of recordings. That's 11 weeks of 40 hrs/per week of tv watching without recording anything new. Not seeing that reserving some of that space for Suggestions would interfere with the daily experience of 99% of Tivo users.

This isn't like in the early days when a SEries 2 had not even 40 hrs of recording capability built-into it. I think the highest quality capacity of some of those SEries 2 Tivos left you with like 18 hrs of recordings. It wouldn't make much sense there.

But now? Lots of room. Your fear of shows being deleted without watching them doesn't make any sense. And again you don't have to use the feature just like you can opt of Suggestions or choose to use or not use a variety of Tivo features.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

trip1eX said:


> None of your shows that you watch are going to be suddenly deleted if you reserve, for example, 100gb of space for Tivo Suggestions. That still leaves 900gb for your shows on a Roamio Plus.
> 
> And, on top of it, no one says you would have to reserve any space at all for Suggestions. The default would be as it is.
> 
> ...


I'm sure jakerock brought it up because the only time reserving space for suggestions would let you to have more suggestions is when it causes some non-suggestion to deleted first.

If non-suggestions hadn't "filled up my hard drive" the TiVo would have plenty of room for suggestions and the reserved space would have no effect. But if the drive filled up enough to hit that reserved point then the only way it can keep a suggestion, or record a new one, is to delete some non-suggestion. Sure that may be unlikely to happen, but that's just another way of saying your request is unlikely to have an effect. But still the only possible effect it can have is to cause a non-suggestion to be deleted in preference to a suggestion. (Actually that's not true, if you used "keep until I delete" exclusively your idea could cause a non-suggestion to fail to record in order to keep a suggestion)

As for saying the drive has lots of space, I still need to be careful around the Olympics when there is often 40+ hours of coverage a day for a couple of weeks. Even a few TB drive can run out of space _fast_ if you don't review and delete that programming every day or so. (Stupid NBC hiding the 30 minutes of coverage I want in the middle of a 6 hour block )


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Jonathan_S said:


> I'm sure jakerock brought it up because the only time reserving space for suggestions would let you to have more suggestions is when it causes some non-suggestion to deleted first.
> 
> If non-suggestions hadn't "filled up my hard drive" the TiVo would have plenty of room for suggestions and the reserved space would have no effect. But if the drive filled up enough to hit that reserved point then the only way it can keep a suggestion, or record a new one, is to delete some non-suggestion. Sure that may be unlikely to happen, but that's just another way of saying your request is unlikely to have an effect. But still the only possible effect it can have is to cause a non-suggestion to be deleted in preference to a suggestion. (Actually that's not true, if you used "keep until I delete" exclusively your idea could cause a non-suggestion to fail to record in order to keep a suggestion)
> 
> As for saying the drive has lots of space, I still need to be careful around the Olympics when there is often 40+ hours of coverage a day for a couple of weeks. Even a few TB drive can run out of space _fast_ if you don't review and delete that programming every day or so. (Stupid NBC hiding the 30 minutes of coverage I want in the middle of a 6 hour block )


How can you guys possibly use a Tivo now? I mean if you have a 1 TB hard drive and it fills up with your non-suggestions then it has to delete your non-suggestions to make room for any new non-suggestions. 

In other words your Tivo is already deleting your non-suggestions!!!!!!!!!! 

The only difference, if you wanted to use this feature, would be your Tivo would store a tad fewer recordings than it otherwise would. Other than that everything would work the same.

For example if I wanted 10% of the storage space on my Roamio Plus to be reserved purely for suggestions that would mean I could only store 135 hrs of my own recordings instead of 150 hrs. 

And when it filled up with 135 hrs of my own recordings it would start deleting them to make room for new ones. 

135 hrs or 150 hrs? Those are the same amount of hours to me. In practice I wouldn't notice the difference. I would be fine losing those hours in exchange for a steady supply of suggestions.

If you wouldn't be then you wouldn't have to use said feature.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

trip1eX said:


> How can you guys possibly use a Tivo now? I mean if you have a 1 TB hard drive and it fills up with your non-suggestions then it has to delete your non-suggestions to make room for any new non-suggestions.
> 
> In other words your Tivo is already deleting your non-suggestions!!!!!!!!!!


Actually it isn't. I'm deleting non-suggestions once I'm done with them (usually from the handy pop-up at the end of the show asking if I want to keep or delete).

So there are plenty of hours of space available for suggestions. Reserving some would do nothing (for me); except on the rare occasions where I screwed up and it deleted a non-suggestion before a suggestion.

I've had TiVos for years and I can probably count the number of times it deleted a show, due to lack of space, on one hand.

Now I guess if your habit was just to leave watched shows on the TiVo until the drive filled up I could see why someone might want reserved space. In that scenario they would probably want random suggestions over shows they'd watched and didn't want to watch again. (Basically they'd have at least two catagories of non-suggestions; ones they cared about and ones they didn't -- but don't differentiate them to the TiVo)


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## jakerock (Dec 9, 2002)

trip1eX said:


> None of your shows that you watch are going to be suddenly deleted if you reserve, for example, 100gb of space for Tivo Suggestions. That still leaves 900gb for your shows on a Roamio Plus.
> 
> And, on top of it, no one says you would have to reserve any space at all for Suggestions. The default would be as it is.
> 
> ...


It's not obvious to you but what you're saying is illogical.

You want to reserve space for suggestions because "You want to have suggestions and you have enough recorded shows that suggestions are not being recorded (or deleted?)." By definition then you're going to lose recorded programs if you were to reserve room for suggestions.

If 1+ TB is so big and you have so much space then you don't need to reserve space, you'll have plenty for suggestions. By saying you need to reserve space, you're saying that what ever drive you have isn't big enough to hold all the recordings you've made plus suggestions. By your own words your argument that it would have no effect is wrong. If reserved space wouldn't affect your recordings then by definition you don't need it - the TiVo uses all space that isn't filled with recordings for suggestions.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Jonathan_S said:


> Actually it isn't. I'm deleting non-suggestions once I'm done with them (usually from the handy pop-up at the end of the show asking if I want to keep or delete).
> 
> So there are plenty of hours of space available for suggestions. Reserving some would do nothing (for me); except on the rare occasions where I screwed up and it deleted a non-suggestion before a suggestion.
> 
> ...


You just got done, in your last post, telling me how Tivo will delete all your non-suggestions if you reserve space for suggestions.

Now you say you delete them before Tivo can?


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

jakerock said:


> It's not obvious to you but what you're saying is illogical.
> 
> You want to reserve space for suggestions because "You want to have suggestions and you have enough recorded shows that suggestions are not being recorded (or deleted?)." By definition then you're going to lose recorded programs if you were to reserve room for suggestions.
> 
> If 1+ TB is so big and you have so much space then you don't need to reserve space, you'll have plenty for suggestions. By saying you need to reserve space, you're saying that what ever drive you have isn't big enough to hold all the recordings you've made plus suggestions. By your own words your argument that it would have no effect is wrong. If reserved space wouldn't affect your recordings then by definition you don't need it - the TiVo uses all space that isn't filled with recordings for suggestions.


No you don't get it. You have to manually make sure there is always room on the Tivo for Suggestions. This idea merely would take care of it automatically if the user so desires it.


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## jakerock (Dec 9, 2002)

trip1eX said:


> No you don't get it. You have to manually make sure there is always room on the Tivo for Suggestions. This idea merely would take care of it automatically if the user so desires it.


And in the process delete recordings which you stated that I wouldn't have to worry about that.

I don't have to worry about suggestions not being recorded because I don't fill up the TiVo with unwatched recordings. But if I needed this feature then by definition I would lose them.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

trip1eX said:


> You just got done, in your last post, telling me how Tivo will delete all your non-suggestions if you reserve space for suggestions.
> 
> Now you say you delete them before Tivo can?


No, I was saying your setting doesn't do anything except _allow_ the TiVo to delete non-suggestions before suggestions.

Look, lets say your feature is implemented and you reserve 10% of the drive for suggestions (like you said in your earlier post). There are only two scenarios:
1) The drive at less than 90% full with non-suggestions
2) The drive is at 90% full of non-suggestions.

In the former your setting never does anything; the TiVo will use the free space (which exceeds 10%) for suggestions. 
In the later the TiVo will delete a non-suggestion to avoid deleting a suggestion; its the only way it can reserve that 10%.[1]

On my TiVo, if I'm using it the way I normally do, I'd always be in scenario 1. But my point was that jackrock was reasonable to talk about deleting non-suggestions first because that's_ what would happen_ in scenario 2.

Now under scenario 2 you might _prefer_ a random suggestion over whatever non-suggestion just got deleted, but the TiVo still deleted a non-suggestion to retain room for a suggestion.
--------

[1] Well unless you're doing 100% KUID, in which case it won't delete anything but will stop recording new non-suggestions. Which is probably worse. But KUID and a full drive is a problem whether or not you've artificially shrunk the main drive size with reserved suggestion room.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

jakerock said:


> And in the process delete recordings which you stated that I wouldn't have to worry about that.
> 
> I don't have to worry about suggestions not being recorded because I don't fill up the TiVo with unwatched recordings. But if I needed this feature then by definition I would lose them.


No I said there was little difference between filling up a 900gb drive and 1tb drive from a practical standpoint. Thus I didn't see any reason to worry about shows being deleted any more than usual. And if it would be such a concern then don't use the feature.

And I said that with regards to your first reply,

"I think almost everyone (with the exception of you apparently) would be royally pissed if shows they actually requested were deleted in order to record a suggestion. "


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Jonathan_S said:


> No, I was saying your setting doesn't do anything except _allow_ the TiVo to delete non-suggestions before suggestions.
> 
> Look, lets say your feature is implemented and you reserve 10% of the drive for suggestions (like you said in your earlier post). There are only two scenarios:
> 1) The drive at less than 90% full with non-suggestions
> ...


 I don't look at it as suggestions deleting non-suggestions because only 900gb of non-suggestions would ever get recorded on a 1tB drive if you reserved 10% space for Suggestions and, more to the point, because there isn't a big difference from a practical standpoint between 900gb or 1Tb aka 135 hrs vs 150 hrs of recording space. Those sizes are close enough together and the amount of hours each offer are way more than the amount of tv most watch in a month or two that I don't see how on average anyone would magically be so much less worried at 1TB than at 900gb about shows being deleted.

So making that point of suggestions deleting non-suggestions in this context makes no sense.

jackrock's first post was trying to me tell this would make everyone royally pissed. Yes, if he's saying, in a vacuum, a show a user requested was deleted by a suggestion then the user would be royally pissed then I would agree. But I don't see how that applies here from any sort of practical standpoint. It doesn't make any sense. Maybe in some edge case perhaps. But you don't have to use the feature then. So there is no point in arguing what ifs either.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

If your proposal does not delete programs or not record new ones to keep room for suggestions, then how does it reserve space at all? That would cause suggestions to work the way they do today.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

jrtroo said:


> If your proposal does not delete programs or not record new ones to keep room for suggestions, then how does it reserve space at all? That would cause suggestions to work the way they do today.


Exactly. Take his numbers of 900gb or 1Tb aka 135 hrs vs 150 hrs.

Under his proposal what happens when the TiVo tries to record the 136th hour of scheduled content? 
Either it deletes an older show to avoid encroaching on the 15 hours of suggestions[1] or it fails to record that new show (if everything was KUID). There's nothing else it _could_ do if it's leaving 15 hours of suggestions.

Presto: suggestions deleting non-suggestions. Or rather, as we've been saying, more accurately deleting non-suggestions rather than suggestions.

That reserving space can cause non-suggestions to delete before suggestions just isn't debatable; that how reserved space _has_ to work -- all you can do is argue the drives are big enough, and the shows deleted would likely be old enough, that most people shouldn't care if they're deleted. (Which actually does seems to be the argument trip1eX is implicitly making; with his references to, in his opinion, a TiVo's vast hours of storage)

I personally think he'd be wrong about that about that, but at least it's debatable. (Heck I've seen people here say they turn off suggestions because they don't like that they cause deleted shows to be removed early from the deleted items folder. That's rating shows you've personally deleted as higher retention priority than random shows Tivo suggests for you!)

-----
[1] IIRC it deletes the recorded show that's been expired the longest; which it you haven't ever adjusting keep until dates _should_ also be the oldest recording


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Jonathan_S said:


> Exactly.
> 
> That's rating shows you've personally deleted as higher retention priority than random shows Tivo suggests for you!)


Thanks!

My only follow up- using thumbs makes suggestions better than random. That is why i like them, they use my preferences to guess what other things i may like. It is not perfect, by any means, but I certainly have found great content there that I would otherwise have never seen.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Jonathan_S said:


> all you can do is argue the drives are big enough, and the shows deleted would likely be old enough, that most people shouldn't care if they're deleted. (Which actually does seems to be the argument trip1eX is implicitly making; with his references to, in his opinion, a TiVo's vast hours of storage)


Yep that's exactly it. Not much practical difference between 135 hrs or 150 hrs. So arguing that a non-suggestion will be deleted by a suggestion struck me as a non-issue. This feature would only appeal to users who let their hard drives fill up. And the non-suggestions of those users are going to have roughly the same lifespan on their hard drive in either case.



Jonathan_S said:


> I personally think he'd be wrong about that about that, but at least it's debatable. (Heck I've seen people here say they turn off suggestions because they don't like that they cause deleted shows to be removed early from the deleted items folder. That's rating shows you've personally deleted as higher retention priority than random shows Tivo suggests for you!)


OH yeah there will be edge cases. No doubt about it. That's why you don't have to use the feature.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

A lot of this disagreement stems from trying to ascribe descriptive language (which is necessarily interpretive) to what the scheduler is doing. The OP presented a clear strategy and behavior.



> It would be nice if you could reserve some space for Suggestions if you so desired so you had an automatic steady consistent number of Suggestions


Using the 10% example, you now have 135h for My shows, and Suggestions has a baby 15h. "That's my side, that's your side."

Your shows is now full when at 135h. Within the 135h allocation, nothing gets deleted early. It's exactly like just having a smaller drive. The UI triggers warnings earlier.

Talking about how a new Suggestion would delete something from My Shows early, even if it were technically correct, is not how the model views the world. There could not even be any of Your Shows in the Suggestions allocation.

Now you can argue how porous should the delineation be. Can Suggestions go up to 16h if there were free space? That's what happens now, but the 16th can disappear when needed without notice. No complaints there. Can My Shows ever go up to 136h when Suggestions is blank? No, not without breaking the original feature purpose that there (almost) always have a minimum number of Suggestions be available to watch.

Suggestions replace Suggestions. A New My Show replaces an Old My Show. Suggestions does not replace any My Shows. Letting a New My Show displace Suggestions can lead to clobbering and extinction of any Suggestions, which is why this protected status was proposed.

As an implementation detail, you would in the Settings UI let people set a minimum for Suggestions. Choosing 0 would be the same as turning off, and how it acted before. It wouldn't be a special case (bug ridden) but a tweaking of what the scheduler already does.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

Solution: Install 3TB drive.

I've never seen my Roamio Pro go over 60% usage, and there are always at least 100 items in the suggestions.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

In theory, until the day Hard Drives are bigger than all the videos in the world, there will be someone who still manages to fill them up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle

In practice, there will be the day that hard drives hold more hours than a human lifetime.

(75 * 365 * 24 hours) / (630 hours / 4 TB) =
4.17142857 petabytes for HD MPEG2, but I should have used mpeg4.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

Right, but the number of season passes I have seems to stay about the same year after year, due to cancellations, loss of interest in a show, etc. Even so, with a 3TB drive, I can set every pass to keep 10 episodes and be pretty leisurely about watching the list, and it always hovers between 45-60%. That never happened with a 1TB drive in my old S3, and it could only record two things at a time!


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Arcady said:


> Solution: Install 3TB drive.
> 
> I've never seen my Roamio Pro go over 60% usage, and there are always at least 100 items in the suggestions.


The idea is really about automating the otherwise manual process of keeping x amt of space open for suggestions.

Personally a 3 TB would just delay the inevitable. EVentually the drive would fill up for me and Suggestions would go away and then they would begin a cycle of sometimes being there and sometimes not.


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