Hey guys, I'd like to address this thread.
Our main goal with Channels is to push the platform forward. We developed the Trash feature as a way to protect users and their content. Fans were losing content by accidentally deleting it, or losing content from aggressive pass settings. With Trash, this protects extremely destructive actions.
For years (wow has it been years?!), Channels has never given any respect to disk space. We, and fans, have always erred on the side of just having a TON of disk space to make sure everything works, while letting pass keep settings do their job. This has never been much of an issue with fans. We believe that keeping some of these bits around just a couple days longer to protect the losses, is no different.
But of course, we need options. If you've been part of our community long enough, you know that we iterate on everything. We release early, listen to feedback, and make decisions. You can see all of that at the top of this actual thread. On the first pass, we didn't even have settings for how long things would last in the trash. With feedback, we added those settings.
We initially shipped Trash to the general public with a default of 10 days. We now consider this a huge mistake. It's now set to a default of 3 days. These things happen. We corrected it immediately. This is why we've empowered ourself with tools to ship early and ship often. This is how we develop software and it's how we will always develop software.
One scenario that slipped through the cracks for us and everyone else during the beta period is the type of pass that can collect a ton of recordings per day. Things like Law & Order. Shows like this air up to 15 times a day. We understand that this kind of pass is practically a weapon for the Trash feature. This is less of a failure in the Trash and more a failure in our keep settings. This has come up in other threads and we'll likely figure out a better keep setting for this kind of show so that it doesn't just record 15 times a day and rather keeps X episodes around until you watch them. Things like this are WHY we are as transparent and involved in our community as we are.
Some of you think it's not a big deal do create an "off" option for this feature. A lot goes into software and the user experience. Allowing for Trash to be off doubles the complexity of the entire feature in reliability and UX. This is a decision we made as the only actual people that are responsible for the reliability and usability of Channels.
It goes without saying that the threats on this thread make us sad. Obviously, you're free to abandon Channels at any time. This is why we made it so easy to cancel. But using it to try to curb our product decisions just feels bad. We love our community. We love engaging with everyone and hearing all the different ways that you guys use Channels. We think we go above and beyond in this category more than any other company delivering media software today.
At the end of the day, we're building a product for lot of people. Some things might not fit your flow, but it's our job to create and maintain the software. It's our job to make sure it's stable and reliable. We're always going to make decisions based on these things.
And while this thread has turned into a bummer of a thread, your complaints have still been heard. We'll continue to iterate to make things more awesome for more people.
PS, I got a puppy this weekend!