Series 2 question about storage space used
 

Is there any way to determine how much storage space is currently
taken up by recorded programming? i realize that there are many
recording variables so an absolute # of 'hours remaining' is not
really possible, but i have yet to find out how many hours of
programming i have recorded, or how much space as a % remains. I can
of course count up all recorded shows, but that's not always
practical.
Is there really no easy way to determine this?
just FYI, i have a regular 80 hour series 2 (non-direct tv)

Rimsey Mimblerod shaped the electrons to say:
Is there really no easy way to determine this?

The easiest way is to turn on TiVo Suggestions. They'll fill up the
unused space and then you have a rough indication of the space left by
the number of Suggestions recorded.

-MZ, RHCE #806199299900541, ex-CISSP #3762
--
URL:mailto:megazoneatmegazone.org Gweep, Discordian, Author, Engineer, me.
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-755-4098
URL:http://www.megazone.org/ URL:http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Eris

The easiest way is to turn on TiVo Suggestions. They'll fill up the
unused space and then you have a rough indication of the space left by
the number of Suggestions recorded.

I still don't understand why TIVO can't simply provide a screen with this
info. I have been using that suggested method, but it is rough indeed, the
programs that get recorded tend to go from 30 minutes to 2 hours so I still
have to drill down into the suggestions to really get the full picture.

On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 16:34:23 +0000, Stephane Beaudry wrote:

I still don't understand why TIVO can't simply provide a screen with this
info.

How simple could it be, really?

Free space at the exact moment might be easy to find, but how useful is
that?

If you look at the screen at 10:55 and it says you have 3 hours free, but
at 11:00 it starts recording a 3 hour movie, suddenly the info you have is
useless.

So it might take into account recordings that it knows it will make in the
next few hours. How far into the future does it go? How does it know what
you will keep or delete in that time?

The way the system is set up, with expired recordings and suggestions
being automatically deleted to make room for new recordings, makes it
difficult to peg down available disk space in a usable way, IMHO.

I'm not saying it's impossible, just that there are a lot of things that
would need to be answered, including whether the info would be helpful or
not.

OTOH, in my daily 'hacking-plug', I would point out that TivoWebPlus can
tell you how much space is free, as in the following results from my Tivo:

User Space
Expired Season Pass 81 61371 MB 47.7% 51:12:41
Expired Single 13 22928 MB 17.8% 19:18:41
Single 4 9677 MB 7.5% 7:50:08
Season Pass 22 14530 MB 11.3% 12:01:16
Suggestion 1 620 MB 0.5% 0:30:02
Invisible 2 281 MB 0.2% 0:21:02
Live Cache 1 1020 MB 0.8% 0:23:56
Used User Space 124 110427 MB 85.8% 91:37:46

Reserved Space
Expired Tivo Clips 41 10684 MB 8.3% 8:48:22
Used Reserved Space 41 10684 MB 8.3% 8:48:22

Space Summary
Total Space - 128665 MB 100.0% 107:13:24
Total Used 165 121111 MB 94.1% 100:26:08
Total Free - Medium - 7554 MB 5.9% 6:17:43
Deleted** 3 1729 MB 1.3% 1:30:05
** Deleted is a subset of Total Free

--
Lenroc

On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 17:25:00 +0000, Howard wrote:

Well, we're all allowed our opinions, even when they are wrong.

ROFL... I love that sentence. It's wrong on so many levels.

Available disk space is nothing but a number. Nobody but the detractors
have ever said anything about it being a future number. The CURRENT
available disk space is in no way difficult to peg down.

Ok, how but how is the current available disk space usable?

If it says you have 3 hours available, it would take you at least 1 1/2
hours to fill it, yes?

In that 1.5 hours, there may be things scheduled to record. If there are,
then that 3 hours available isn't really available.

If you wanted to record something to fill those 3 hours, then you would
have to cancel anything that was already scheduled to be recorded.

So, I ask you, how is it useful to know how much disk space is available
at a given point in time?

What, specifically, can you do with that information?

--
Lenroc

Ok, how but how is the current available disk space usable?
...
So, I ask you, how is it useful to know how much disk space is available
at a given point in time?

What, specifically, can you do with that information?

It's a better gage of the space I have available for recordings then relying
on Suggestions. Let's say that I am going out of town for the weekend and I
have 5 hours scheduled, I know that if TIVO has 10 hours available right
now, I know I don't have to worry about loosing any recordings over the
weekend. I have a bunch of recordings that have expired, so indeed I have
much more then 10 hours left, but if I see the space is getting low, I might
want to decide for myself what recordings I want deleted first and do it
myself, the current algoritm would delete the oldest recordings, maybe I
would rather choose to delete something more recent. If my space is getting
low, I might also decide that it's time for me to make a few decisions and
mark any recordings that I really care about to not be deleted. If my space
is so low, I might decide it's time to watch that movie I recorded last
year. There is nothing like the sense of urgency to motivate someone to
watch something.

On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 12:28:35 -0700, Lenroc
wrote:
[snip]
So, I ask you, how is it useful to know how much disk space is available
at a given point in time?

What, specifically, can you do with that information?

curiousity, but it can also help me plan my subsequent recordings,
especially season passes and retention duration. While I may not
represent the perspective of the entire Tivo community, more
information is better for planning purposes, IHMO.

Howard . shaped the electrons to say:
If it says you have 3 hours available, it would take you at least 1 1/2
hours to fill it, yes?
You must have a very rewarding career in economics.

Just to point it out, he's right - it would take 'at least' 1.5 hours
to fill 3 hours of space, on a DirecTiVo.

Actually, a standalone unit could do it in about the same amount of
time - one show recording from the tuner and another copied over at
Best quality via HMO MRV. That copies at just about realtime.

If they enable USB2 it could copy in better than realtime and fill
faster.

Just that the comment was a bit uncalled for - I do agree that a space
indication would be nice. I'd use it frequently, I *do* use the
suggestions a lot now. In recent weeks I was working my ass off to
finish a project and my TiVo was slowly filling as I didn't have any
time to watch TV. I kept an eye on the Suggestions and started
juggling 'keep' times and deleting some things manually to prevent the
shows I REALLY wanted to keep from being deleted, and forcing other
programs (like Tech Live, etc) to be deleted first when space was
gone. It would've been nicer to just know how much space is left.

It wouldn't be hard to look at the unused space on the disc as well as
any space used by Suggestions. You could even report both. And the
max bitrate is known for each quality level, so you could report;
You have at least:
- W hours of Best
- X hours of High
- Y hours of Medium
- Z hours of Basic

When in doubt, round down - hence 'at least'.

-MZ, RHCE #806199299900541, ex-CISSP #3762
--
URL:mailto:megazoneatmegazone.org Gweep, Discordian, Author, Engineer, me.
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-755-4098
URL:http://www.megazone.org/ URL:http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Eris

In article il.com,
Lenroc wrote:
On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 16:34:23 +0000, Stephane Beaudry wrote:

I still don't understand why TIVO can't simply provide a screen with this
info.

How simple could it be, really?

Free space at the exact moment might be easy to find, but how useful is
that?

If you look at the screen at 10:55 and it says you have 3 hours free, but
at 11:00 it starts recording a 3 hour movie, suddenly the info you have is
useless.

It's not useless. It means I better watch some "quick to watch" shows soon
(e.g. game shows), even while the movie is recording, or nuke some stuff
manually. Personally, I _never_ want anything that I told it to record to be
deleted automatically. However, I live with that risk (and think I _may_ have
lost a few small recordings last week, though they may be on my other Tivo,
since I used my Tivo #1's 60 gig drive in Tivo #2, so they had quite a bit of
overlap from many months ago to when I started saving stuff -- but I manually
have deleted some of the duplicates, so I'm not positive).

But I can't mark everything as keep until I delete because then it starts
having a fit when the drive is close to full. (If I could tell Season Passes
to save for _one day_, then I would at least be able to give it better hints
about stuff I tend to watch within a day. Keep at Most 1 is NOT the same
thing.)

So it might take into account recordings that it knows it will make in the
next few hours. How far into the future does it go? How does it know what
you will keep or delete in that time?

Anyway, that info would be very useful to me, even if it were only "good" for
the next day.

It knows just how it knows how to fill up the SP list, or to record Suggestions.

The very fact that it can record suggestions shows that it _knows_ how
much free space there is, and it knows to delete suggestions (and the user's
recordings) when there isn't enough space.

The way the system is set up, with expired recordings and suggestions
being automatically deleted to make room for new recordings, makes it
difficult to peg down available disk space in a usable way, IMHO.

Not really. Just like I know there's 3 hours of empty space on a videotape,
I can know that there is _approximately_ 3 hours of recording space on the
hard drive.

On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 19:47:41 +0000, Stephane Beaudry wrote:

Let's say that I am going out of town for the weekend and I
have 5 hours scheduled, I know that if TIVO has 10 hours available right
now, I know I don't have to worry about loosing any recordings over the
weekend.

Alright, I stand corrected. If you're into babysitting... err..
if you've got a more hands-on approach to managing your TiVo, a screen
telling you how much space is available at a given time could be helpful. ;)

I'm definitely not in that category. I couldn't tell you what it's going
to record tonight, let alone this weekend, and I don't care.

I've set up my priorities, Keep at Most, and Keep Until settings to
reflect the things that I like to watch, and I let TiVo do it's thing.

If there was something on my TiVo that I wanted to make sure didn't get
deleted, I would set it KUID, or burn it to DVD. I certainly wouldn't
spend my time poring over the To Do list, figuring out what's going to be
recorded when, and then cross-checking that against the currently
available time, to see if the show will be kept around.

But that's just me. I don't spend time worrying about what TiVo's going to
delete automatically. If I haven't watched it in however long it took to
be deleted, I'm not really going to miss it. It's only TV, after all.
Checking my NPL, I see the oldest non-KUID thing was recorded on 5/6. If
it was deleted tomorrow, I wouldn't miss it. It's been there for almost a
month, and I've never cared enough to watch it.

Perhaps one factor I haven't considered yet is that not everyone has an
upgraded hard drive. IIRC, when I had only 40 hours, I was more hands-on
too. But now that I've got ~130 hours, I get to just enjoy ;)

--
Lenroc