Profiles

Make profiles like Netflix. I don't want to see all my wife's crap and she doesn't wanna see mine. Would be great to each have our own DVR subsystems.

I totally understand the ask, but what a world of hurt the developers would be putting themselves into to get that done. :rofl:

I'm no dev, but I actually don't think it's as crazy as you might seem. We essentially already have a single profile. We would need sub-profiles in a sense - kind of like what Plex allows for - and they'd likely be able to save the data locally to the DVR installation for DVR users only and have it be a premium feature. That may even prompt more users to subscribe to DVR.

It certainly is a lot of work, as most additional major features would be, but if they deemed it useful enough to a large amount of users, then it wouldn't be that absurd of a task to undertake. For now, I imagine their hands are full making sure everything is flawless and doing that across multiple platforms. Unlike many other products, the guys here at Channels don't like to roll out random new features without working out the kinks first. That said, I do think there's nowhere to go but up currently for Channels, and when ready, some major new features could have the potential to open up some doors and potentially bring in new users.

If/when @tmm1 (Aman) reads this, I'd be more than happy to look over the forums to see what people seem to be clamoring for, provide my own feature thoughts, etc. Channels is by far the best all-around guide software available - period. It would be great to see it stay that way.

The issue that comes into play is how to handle deletions and passes that overlap, they would have to code that logic into the dvr. For deletions that shouldn't be too hard, if two users record the same show and one deletes it then hide that recording from the ui, when the second person deletes it then delete the file altogether.

If two profiles want to record the same program or make a pass that overlaps then it can be tricky, one use might add a 5min padding, another may want all episodes instead of just the new ones. For the padding the logic would have to default to whichever is longer to avoid duplicate recordings taking up space and for the new/all difference there would need to be alot of code written so that each user only sees the recordings they scheduled (hiding all from the profile that only wants new). That isn't a small task to take on and if its isn't done right you'll have people complaining about recordings showing up from another profile and worse recordings being deleted (and lost) from all profiles when only one user requested the deletion.

I've been a programmer for over 30 years. None of this sounds overly complex to me. They're already using a database. Just have another instance per user. Depending on who you log in as you see one or the other. I wouldn't worry about the overlap. My wife and I aren't scheduling the same shows.

I would think the smart thing to do would be to only apply FRONT-END UI changes as far as the DVR is concerned. I'm pretty sure other products do the same.

In other words, the DVR is still universal, and there is only one instance of it. The difference is, the UI for the logged in user would only show the logged-in users activity. If you record Family Guy, it shows up. If a family member records Family Guy, it doesn't. Both want Family Guy? When you choose to set a pass that another sub-profile has already set, the DVR has dialog to tell you it's already been set by another user, and then it adds that title to your user profile so it shows up under your recorded content.

A robust, intuitive user profile system is absolutely doable without too much confusion. It could definitely be done in a simple, obvious, and helpful way.

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I agree with the approach of @dcburnquist.

My simple solution until something better comes along. My wife and I watch completely separate shows so we virtually never see an overlap. So, I just setup 2 DVR's on 2 separate Synology NAS. This works well for if you only use 1 TV. When I move to another TV in the house (like the kitchen) and want to watch a recording I can not because it is setup for my Wife's DVR and too much hassle to change.

If the developers do not want to ever do user profiles I would like to see them make it easy to switch DVR's. Like show both so I can simply switch to the one I want. This was the way Verizon FiOS whole home worked years ago when we had 2 DVR's. One was named Mike and the other Lori and so was very easy to switch but they were completely separate DVR's so if you have duplicates there would just be duplicates.

It would be great to have profiles, but in the absence of those, different dvrs would be a good alternative...you may have more setup and hardware costs, but you would eliminate a single point of failure, as well.

What happens when someone wants to delete recordings? Lets say you have a pass setup to auto-delete watched episodes, then its no longer a "front-end only" change, the DVR has to account for who has and has not watched the episode. Other services get away with this because nothing is ever deleted and there are no passes with different rules.

Another example: What If two users setup the same recording with different options? The front-end only approach would have to inform them that not only is a recording already scheduled but also allow them to alter the options (or store two separate recordings with the advanced options of both users).

Bottom line, there are MANY factors to consider when adding profiles. I would love to see it accomplished but I'm not sure what the best way of doing so would be.

MVP. Just get something out there and figure it out from there

You mean how SD does it? Release code that doesn't work and spend months trying to fix it on the fly?

Bad idea.

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I have a kid in University and another planning to do so soon. I'd like to let them have their own DVR area on my server. If that means we're all recording the same thing into different files I'm fine with that. It may be a waste of tuners and space, but seems the safest way to avoid someone deleting something someone else was planning to watch later. I set up Emby just for use by my daughter once, but it was a support nightmare. She's much happier with Channels.

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Its funny you say that because that's how I feel companies are doing stuff with this agile approach....but those smarter than me say its a good idea. I'm not a developer, I just call them out when they do something stupid :slight_smile:

Really wish this could be implemented....with permissions and such, like Emby/Plex.
I really want to block certain users from recording or setting passes.
And also not see and scroll through dozens of shows to watch my one episode of something.

Every week, i am having to clear my hdd off of dozens of shows that are just left there,or set by my obsessed mother and here stupid soaps and talk show junk.
and the constant, please pull these files of the dvr she want to save crap.....filled up here 2tb hdd i gave here in less than a month...and i not going to buy her a bigger one.

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