[fasteddy]

A friend was telling me about his htpc using <insert name of software that I've forgotten here>. At any rate, one interesting feature was the ability to assign an expiry date to tv shows (any show older than 30 days gets deleted automatically). Personally, I'm very lazy. I set up my torrent client to download all my favourite shows automatically via RSS feed because I can't be bothered to look for new torrents every night. This would be one extra little thing to aid in my descent to complete sloth.

[Edit: I did a search for this topic, but came up empty. If it's already been suggested, my apologies.]

[MDPauley]

I currently manually run a python script to organize my shows, clear out old shows and then update the database. Maybe I'll clean it up and release it...

[spiff]

definitely NEVER going into the core

[althekiller]

definitely NEVER going into the core

...because managing your files is your job, displaying them nicely is ours.

[natethomas]

And because 30 days after it went into the core about 10,000 people would show up and say, "Where did all my episodes of Friends go?"

THAT would be an unpleasant conversation.

[fasteddy]

And because 30 days after it went into the core about 10,000 people would show up and say, "Where did all my episodes of Friends go?"

THAT would be an unpleasant conversation.

Well, I imagined that it would be turned off by default...

[althekiller]

Problem is people like to flip options without knowing what it does. We don't like to add potetially destructive options for just this reason.

[stagecrew]

I agree with it not going in the core (I like having the computer do everything in the background.. it allows for having a completely seperate backend that doesn't require the XBMC frontend being on, plus way more flexibility... etc..).. but with the python scripts you (Mpauley) mentioned... any chance of getting a post?

[Rand Al Thor]

This feature is built in to most pvr clients so once the pvr interface is done it shouldn't be an issue. The way I look at it is like this. I have ripped all of my Simpsons dvds and added them to my library because it is a show that I want to keep at all times. From time to time, there will be a documentary or something that I really want to watch. I just have mythtv record it and I watch it through XBMC later. If it is something I am likely to watch more than once, I will transcode it and add it to my permanent library. If it is not something I am likely to watch again, I let it be removed from myth when it hits the expiration date. This really makes the most sense, at least to me.

Once the unified pvr front end is in the main branch you can just make a custom "job" for your shows that you would want to keep, that transcodes them, then moves them to a folder. You can have program like tvrenamer monitoring that folder to renamet them properly, then that folder is monitored by xbmc and they get added to the permanent library. All the temporary shows you can just not transcode. It might be nice to be able to access your myth recordings right from the TV shows node of the library though. Not that they should be intermingled in the proper show/season etc of your main library (if you want them permanently you can do as I suggested above). I was thinking something like if you click on TV Shows it would show the usual, Title, Genre, etc and also Recordings. I haven't played around with Alcohecha's branch so this may be taken care of already. I am sure once it hits the main branch it will be all sorted out Cheers.

[MDPauley]

I delete all tv shows that are 90 days or older using this script. I have cleanonupdate & hideemptyseries turned on in advancedsettings.xml. I don't have any series that I want to save so this is a quick and dirty solution...

Code:

import re
from urllib import quote_plus
import datetime

#delete old tv shows
d = datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(days=-90)
minusdays = d.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

new_sql = "SELECT path.strPath AS path, files.strFileName AS filename FROM episode JOIN files ON files.idFile=episode.idFile JOIN path ON files.idPath=path.idPath WHERE episode.c05 <= '"+minusdays+"';"
records = xbmc.executehttpapi( "QueryVideoDatabase(%s)" % ( quote_plus( new_sql ), ) )

p=re.compile('<field>(.+?)</field><field>(.+?)</field>')
match=p.findall(records)
for path, filename in match:
    print path + filename
    xbmc.executehttpapi("FileDelete(%s)" % (path + filename))

xbmc.executebuiltin('XBMC.updatelibrary(video)')