Media injection based on time blocks.

[justinemter]

Add “blocks” of time and write a method of filling the block with as many episodes (or movies) as it has room for. (i.e. Friends 1 - 2 PM = 2 episodes or Looney tunes from 6 - 7 AM = like 10 episodes…)

[MoeFwacky]

Fleshing this out based on some of our earlier discussions.

Block injections would be defined in pseudo_schedule.xml with other scheduled content. Injected blocks could scheduled alongside regular scheduled content, or after, but before commercial injection. Injections would work in the same way that commercial injections do now, but restricted to a defined block of time.

If the blocks are scheduled sequentially with the daily schedule, it would be useful in selecting random movies to fit within a specific block of time, or to define entire movie channels with one xml entry.

Example xml entry for random movies
<time title="inject" type="movie" strict-time="true" time-shift="5" overlap-max="240" xtra="genre:action">13:00</time>
This uses the title entry to define this as an injection block, type to define it as a movie block and overlap-max to determine the length of the block (4 hours in this case). Other entries behave as expected. Keeping time-shift at 5 minutes keeps the potential for a few minutes of commercials between movies.

With this format however, specific show titles would have to be defined in the xtra entry like below.
<time title="inject" type="series" strict-time="true" time-shift="2" overlap-max="60" xtra="looney tunes">13:00</time>
This one sets up a one hour block to inject Looney Tunes episodes with the potential for some commercials in between.

The latter method could be used as method to replace commercials between scheduled content for a block of time. For example, a block between 8am and noon on Saturday and Sunday could be defined to only inject media from a library of toy and cartoon commercials. These would be injected in between scheduled programs instead of the commercials libraries defined in the config. An xml entry for one of these might look like this.

	<time title="inject" type="commercials" strict-time="true" time-shift="0" overlap-max="120" xtra="toy commercials,cartoon commercials">10:00</time>
	<time title="Justice League" type="series" strict-time="true" time-shift="15" overlap-max="10">10:00</time>
	<time title="Superman&#58; The Animated Series" type="series" strict-time="true" time-shift="15" overlap-max="20">10:30</time>
	<time title="Batman&#58; The Animated Series" type="series" strict-time="true" time-shift="15" overlap-max="20">11:00</time>
	<time title="Young Justice" type="series" strict-time="true" time-shift="15" overlap-max="20">11:30</time>

This defines a 2 hour commercial block with xtra limiting the selection to commercials with the customSectionName of "toy commercials" or "cartoon commercials".

Currently, my thought is that all injections need to be random, so episodes of shows scheduled through injection blocks should not affect their lastEpisodeTitle entries.

[MoRBiD-MaNGLeR]

It would be great if we had these options for injection blocks:

1. Single specific series/collection in order. [I would use this one the most.]
2. Single random series/collection in order. [This would be a great way to rediscover content AND potentially get sucked into a marathon.]
3. Single specific series/collection shuffled. [Think: Looney Tunes, Robot Chicken, Schoolhouse Rock, The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, etc.]
4. Single random series/collection shuffled. [I would use this one the least.]
5. Multiple random series/collections each airing a single episode. [Essentially, a "To Be Announced" grab bag. This would be another great way to rediscover content.]

Again, with injection, the user would not have to worry about individual duration or number of episodes when scheduling (which can be screwed up by double-length episodes, TV movies, etc.). Instead, the user would schedule total duration for the block. It would be set and done.