Patent ID: 7665111

Claim:
A method for scheduling recording, storing, and deleting of television and/or Web page program material on a storage medium in a computer environment, comprising: generating, in a multimedia recording device, a prioritized list of program viewing preferences; wherein said list contains a viewer's explicit preferred program selections for recording and inferred preferred program selections for recording; comparing said list with a database of program guide objects; wherein said program guide objects indicate when programs of interest are broadcast; generating a schedule of time versus available storage space that is optimal for the viewer's explicit or inferred preferred programs using said database of program guide objects, said schedule of time versus available storage space tracks all stored programs and programs that have been scheduled to be recorded in the future; wherein said explicit and inferred preferred programs include television broadcast programs and/or Universal Resource Locators (URLs); generating an ordered list of future showings of a specific program of interest using said database of program guide objects; checking showing(s) of said specific program of interest in said ordered list for input source or storage space conflicts with programs previously scheduled for recording using said schedule of time versus available storage space until a particular showing of said specific program of interest is found having no input and/or space conflicts for the time the particular showing is available such that a recording of said specific program of interest is made as soon as possible and scheduling said particular showing of said specific program of interest for recording; wherein said checking step makes a determination of conflicts for an explicitly selected program immediately upon the viewer making the explicit selection of the program to record; upon the checking step failing to find a particular showing of said specific program of interest having no input and/or space conflicts for the time the particular showing is available, sorting said ordered list of future showings; and wherein the ordering of said ordered list of future showings results in the viewer being presented with any conflicting explicit preferred program selections in order from least impact on programs previously scheduled for recording to greatest.