PVR Terminology?
#1
Before I bothered doing any work on things that may or may not float with others, I wanted to gauge people's opinion

The terminology of TIMERS has always bugged me, as they are familiarly known (in english at least) as "scheduled recordings". Timer indicates a very much more "dumb" type thing like an old VCR (eg a programmed start/stop time) whereas a "Scheduled Recording" implies the smarts we expect from a PVR such as only recording new episodes, or finding that show no matter what day/channel it airs and so on. Whilst I do have personal dislike for "Timers" as a terminology the other point is that there is actually inconsistency within Kodi where a few sections do refer to them as recordings eg "Settings -> Live TV " has a "Recordings" section that contains all the TIMER settings and some of those settings are even called "instant record duration" (as opposed to instant TIMER duration) etc etc.

And in terms of consistency of usage, on the main menu other sections are called "Channels" and "Recordings" but then we have "Timer" as opposed to "Timers" (plural). So for consistency it should bep lural in my mind. Personally I think we could actually just say "Schedule" or "Scheduled" here if we did do away with the "Timers" nomenclature.

Another thing along the same lins is that the Sideblade in the PVR section has an entry for "Guide" but on the confluence main menu this is called "EPG" instead. It seems like the same terms should be used consistently between the main menu and side blade, if we want the product to appear polished and achiee the maximum acceptance from the "wives and girlfriends" etc

I wonder if anyone else dislikes the TIMERS nomenclature and would support the idea of renaming things to Scheduled Recordings? Not suggesting renaming things in code/API but just the localised strings etc.

Even if there is no support for that at the very least I wonder if people support the idea of consistently referring to them everywhere (eg changing those things in settings area to be called Timers), making the main "Timer" entry plural and deciding between Guide or EPG for the sideblade/main menu etc?
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
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#2
'Timers' is something thats always confused me also. I can see why its called a timer but its not very descriptive and to me 'scheduled recordings' fits much better.
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#3
I have always disliked 'Timer's too. Its not very descriptive and I have never seen another pvr call them that, so I think its confusing for new users. The only exception for me though is from a support point of view, I have come to appreciate referring to them as Timers, because I don't have to worry about users thinking I mean their recordings list. Recordings and Scheduled Recordings are different things but pretty close in wording. The MBS folks have tried to avoid this by just using 'Scheduled' as the list heading.

And yeah, even if we don't change, lets at least call them Timers (plural).
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
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#4
Maybe what is needed is a Team-Kodi approved "Glossary" or "Dictionary" in the official Kodi wiki for all Kodi related terminology terms and acronyms for features and functions used in Kodi, including but not limited to the PVR functionalists.

Such a glossary/dictionary should probably foremost contain terms unique to Kodi configurations, while more common technology acronyms and terms could be linked to Wikipedia or other external website pages.
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#5
(2015-01-11, 01:14)scarecrow420 Wrote: I wonder if anyone else dislikes the TIMERS nomenclature and would support the idea of renaming things to Scheduled Recordings? Not suggesting renaming things in code/API but just the localised strings etc.

+1, but "Scheduled Recordings" is way too long to display it in the side bar etc.

(2015-01-11, 01:14)scarecrow420 Wrote: Even if there is no support for that at the very least I wonder if people support the idea of consistently referring to them everywhere (eg changing those things in settings area to be called Timers), making the main "Timer" entry plural and deciding between Guide or EPG for the sideblade/main menu etc?

+1 because these are trivial changes to our default skin confluence
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#6
here are some screenshots showing "EPG" on main menu renamed to "Guide" and "TImer" on main menu and PVR sideblade renamed to "Scheduled"

There are also 2 images with "Scheduled Recordings" rather than just "Scheduled". I also thought it would be too lengthy, but in the flesh it's actually not TOOO bad

http://imgur.com/a/Bnv8k#0

what do you guys think? And what terminology could be used in the context menu for options "Add Timer" "Edit Timer" etc. Perhaps "Add Entry" ? Or "Add Schedule"?
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
http://bit.ly/ServerWMC
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#7
it fits Wink .. I thought it is to long so +1 for "Scheduled Recordings"


(2015-01-12, 16:24)scarecrow420 Wrote: what do you guys think? And what terminology could be used in the context menu for options "Add Timer" "Edit Timer" etc. Perhaps "Add Entry" ? Or "Add Schedule"?

I'd prefer "Add Recording", "Edit Recording".

see https://www.mts.ca/file_source/mts.ca/St...rade_1.jpg
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#8
Just a dev question: for a change like this do I just edit the English strings.po and the other languages should get updated by transifex?
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
http://bit.ly/ServerWMC
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#9
correct
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#10
I'd prefer "Schedule Recording", "Edit Recording"
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
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#11
My PVR terminology pet peeve is "timeshifting" I can see if when I start a show late to skip commercial or simply watch later, or maybe even like my cable company having west and east feeds to record shows at convenient times with a single tuner. Rewind is just rewind live tv or not.

Martin
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#12
(2015-01-13, 00:19)krustyreturns Wrote: I'd prefer "Schedule Recording", "Edit Recording"

+1 Smile
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#13
(2015-01-13, 00:29)emveepee Wrote: My PVR terminology pet peeve is "timeshifting" I can see if when I start a show late to skip commercial or simply watch later, or maybe even like my cable company having west and east feeds to record shows at convenient times with a single tuner. Rewind is just rewind live tv or not.
Well, "time-shifting" is the commonly used and industry accepted term, it have been so for a long time so can't really be changed now:

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

So whether it is your personal preference or not, pausing Live-TV and rewinding it is called "time-shifting" by almost all PVR and DVR manufacturers today.


The feature that is "time-shifting" should however not be confused with a "timeshift-channel" which have nothing to do with PVR, see:

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


The "shifting" part of the name also is also used in other media server functions such as place/space shifting and format shifting:

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Format_shifting
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#14
(2015-01-12, 16:24)scarecrow420 Wrote: here are some screenshots showing "EPG" on main menu renamed to "Guide" and "TImer" on main menu and PVR sideblade renamed to "Scheduled"

There are also 2 images with "Scheduled Recordings" rather than just "Scheduled". I also thought it would be too lengthy, but in the flesh it's actually not TOOO bad

http://imgur.com/a/Bnv8k#0

what do you guys think? And what terminology could be used in the context menu for options "Add Timer" "Edit Timer" etc. Perhaps "Add Entry" ? Or "Add Schedule"?

You have to remember that XBMC/Kodi is a multi-languaged software which is translated to many languages, and therefor you are bound to end up with long words and sentences in at least some language so I'm not sure how much good it would do to try to use short words or shorter sentences in English.

Also not all skins for have XBMC/Kodi allocated the same amount of space for such menu itemes.

Probably better off to just let skinners add extra space in their skins for longer short words or sentences than trying to find shorter words to use.

I think that using abbreviations is a bad idea regardless, as using abbreviations is simply not very user friendly for none tech-savvy people.
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#15
(2015-01-13, 00:19)krustyreturns Wrote: I'd prefer "Schedule Recording", "Edit Recording"

it's okay for me too.
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