Mailing List Archive: More UI thoughts

So, I'm sitting here thinking about UI stuff. Two thoughts just popped
into my head.

1. The user really doesn't care how many megabytes are free. They
really just care how much time is available to record. (Well, at least
the users who don't do division for fun.) Could the application compute
average encoding rate based on recorded shows that have the same
encoding as the currently selected encoding, then display the minutes
available based on free space divided by average encoding rate? I think
that would be useful.

2. On the main menu, it might be nice to have a status display that
says if the machine is currently recording, and if so, what. That way,
the user will know before they choose "Watch TV" if they are going to
need to cancel recording or whatever.

Comments?

On Tuesday 12 November 2002 01:25 am, rob wrote:
> So, I'm sitting here thinking about UI stuff. Two thoughts just popped
> into my head.
>
> 1. The user really doesn't care how many megabytes are free. They
> really just care how much time is available to record. (Well, at least
> the users who don't do division for fun.) Could the application compute
> average encoding rate based on recorded shows that have the same
> encoding as the currently selected encoding, then display the minutes
> available based on free space divided by average encoding rate? I think
> that would be useful.

Yeah, it would, but it's a little trickier than that -- If you're using
rtjpeg, file sizes can vary rather widely, depending on the input signal.
It could probably get a reasonable approximation, though.

> 2. On the main menu, it might be nice to have a status display that
> says if the machine is currently recording, and if so, what. That way,
> the user will know before they choose "Watch TV" if they are going to
> need to cancel recording or whatever.

Yup -- especially when its able to re-compress files in the background, or
burn a VCD or whatever.. or even show if email's available or whatnot. A
status bar that's visible anytime video's not being played would be nice, but
I'd need someone to do graphics for it.

Isaac