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More Genres
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Posted by: Tyson Boucher

Because of the secrecy surrounding the Suggestions mechanism, I'm going to suggest a feature that may not apply quite as I imagine it, but here goes:

At times, suggestions seem to be far smarter than simply relying on genre and actor would indicate, and sometimes they seem far dumber. I believe I've gotten as close as I can to maximizing the number of good suggestions with the current system, but it still tends to suggest things I don't want to see, and I can't prevent it from suggesting those shows without causing it to stop suggesting things I do want.

I'm not surprised. After all, the TiVo is trying to profile my complex viewing preferences with only a handful of numbers, and it can't get any closer without more bits of information to work with.

But I'd like to see the success ratio improve for suggestions, and I think one of the ways that could be done fairly painlessly is by giving it those extra bits of information: adding more genres.

I've seen it mentioned before that Tribune tags shows with a far more detailed set of genre info than we see in our TiVo listings. If this is true, then does TiVo discard these genres or are they merely hidden from the summary screens, but still included in decisions for suggestions? I'm guessing, for the purpose of this message, that the extra, less-significant genres are actually discarded.

It would be nice if these genres were retained, to help differentiate shows which currently tend to fall in the same bucket, suggestions-wise. Some of the genres listed are quite broad and so suggestions tend to be conversely inaccurate.

It would be especially nice to have more genres when Teach TiVo comes around, so when we can finally tweak the variables ourselves, we also have more variables to work with. I also imagine Wish List would be more useful if genre combinations eventually got specific enough that people would be willing to apply a season pass to a particular intersection of genres.

Understandably, the prospect of more accurate suggestions and searches would have to be balanced with the added storage demands this would involve, but if bit fields are used to indicate genre membership, then even with a nearly worst-case scenario of every channel showing 15-minute shows all day, for two weeks, each additional genre listed would only add 168 additional bytes per channel for the whole two weeks. And for download times, it'd be only a few seconds more worth of data per day,

This would be a great way to make several TiVo features (both current and upcoming ones) more useful, with very few changes to the software running on the TiVo itself. It seems it'd mostly involve a policy change regarding what data goes into the databases and some degree of consideration for how far you can afford to expand the disk space requirements of first generation TiVos.

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--Tyson Boucher

Posted by: ahintz

That is really well written, and I have nothing to say except to chime in and say that I agree with you 100%.

--Andrew

Posted by: ILoveMyTiVo

Where did you hear that TiVo is not displaying all genre information? There are several shows that list many genres. If they are ignoring extra genre information, I'm sure there is a reason that would make it not simple to implement or not desirable.

Posted by: Tyson Boucher

quote:
Originally posted by ILoveMyTiVo:
Where did you hear that TiVo is not displaying all genre information?

TivoDataGuy's second post in http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum8/HTML/003725.html mentions this.

I think the primary reason for cutting back the number of genres, if what we see on the summary screens are the only genres associated with a given show, is to simply keep the list of genres small enough to fit onto the screen. They only have room for two or three as it's currently formatted. If they had a way of determining what the most significant genres were and could just display those, I'd have no problem with that. If I'm looking down there, it's usually only to get a general idea of what sort of show it is, especially if there's no description. But if there's no elegant way to show more, I don't have a problem with only seeing the generalized categories these shows fall under, as it is now. I'm more interested in the TiVo having access to these genres for search and suggestions.

They could keep the first sixteen genres (or however many are currently listed) as-is, and continue to display them as the primary genres for each show in the summary page. I'd be perfectly content if the subgenres were only visible from Search my Name, Browse by Channel, Wish List, and Teach Tivo. These are the places where I'm not just looking for what sort of show I'm looking at. I want the ability to find shows by specific criteria. The more parameters I'm allowed to use, the better.

[This message has been edited by Tyson Boucher (edited July 06, 2000).]

Posted by: ILoveMyTiVo

I took that comment to mean that they narrowed down the categories for when you filter in search by name, not in the description. I could be wrong though.

Posted by: Tyson Boucher

I sent Marcel a message asking for comments on this topic, so hopefully we'll get an answer on exactly how the genres are translated from Tribune's raw listings to TiVo's databases when he returns from his vacation.

If it turns out that the TiVo is getting all the genre info Tribune has to offer, I guess the next step would be to lobby for Tribune to work to refine and expand their genre space.

Getting Tribune to add genres when they can't even get proper descriptions or ID's for many shows may be asking too much, but I'm sure TiVo is working with Tribune and pushing for them to make their listings more TiVo friendly, so additional genres (or some other sort of categorizing data) could be just another issue to work on.

Posted by: Nonesuch

quote:
Getting Tribune to add genres when they can't even get proper descriptions or ID's for many shows may be asking too much,

Most of Tribune's issues are due to problems getting reliable data from the individual stations on the daily schedules- it should be relatively easy to add more genre information by show title once, compared to getting episode IDs and descriptions on a daily basis.

quote:
I'm sure TiVo is working with Tribune and pushing for them to make their listings more TiVo friendly, so additional genres (or some other sort of categorizing data) could be just another issue to work on.

I posted contact information for TMS under the 'old' forum system, we may want to directly petition them for enhhancements.

Posted by: TiVoDataGuy

quote:
Originally posted by Tyson Boucher:
I sent Marcel a message asking for comments on this topic, so hopefully we'll get an answer on exactly how the genres are translated from Tribune's raw listings to TiVo's databases when he returns from his vacation.

Sorry for the delayed response.

So, to answer your question(s)...Yes, we filter out the data, but not as much as you might think. Tribune supplies up to, but not necessarily, six genres per program. When we started they only ever used two of them because that's all their other customers ever needed. I've since got them to start applying as many relevant genres as they can to each program.

As far as the filtering out on TiVo's end is concerned, it's not as "bad" as you may think. We do things like take the three genres Business Financial, Business Financial Special, and Business Financial Talk and turn them all into "Business Financial". Another example is that we take the two genres Action and Adventure and make them one genre called "Action and Adventure".

When I get some free time I plan on revisting the genre issue. I agree with you that the more information we provide the better off TiVo is. I need to sit down, examine the decisions we made a year ago, and make sure they still make sense today.

Did this help? Once again, sorry for the delayed response. I was out of town for two and a half weeks and then swamped with non-AVS Forum work trying to recover from that.

-Marcel

Posted by: Coz

This is a very thoughtful and useful suggestion, and as always, I'm extremely impressed with the responsiveness of the TiVo personnel on this board. Thanks for suggesting this, Tyson. I agree that more detailed descriptions of each show can only help this technological marvel that we affectionately call "TiVo"

Marcel, I know you guys are busting your humps to make this the best product it can be and we all really appreciate it. Revisiting this particular topic
could have great benefits, I believe. I've been really happy with the suggestion algorithm, but I can see how splitting "Action/Adventure" into separate categories (to use your example), would help TiVo understand better why I like some shows and not others.

Posted by: Mars Rocket

The one genre I'd like to see split up is "Documentary". As it stands it's much too broad to be useful, and giving a few thumbs-up to different documentaries ensures that your Suggestions list is crammed full with them.

Like Passions, my TiVo seems to have an inordinate fondness for that documentary about dwarves ("Standing Tall") and a few others that I really have no interest in.

Posted by: TiVoDataGuy

quote:
Originally posted by Mars Rocket:
The one genre I'd like to see split up is "Documentary". As it stands it's much too broad to be useful, and giving a few thumbs-up to different documentaries ensures that your Suggestions list is crammed full with them.

Iterestingly enough, "Documentary" is not a genre we consolidate from others. I'll look into it, though.

-Marcel