Patent ID: 7730510

Claim:
A method for conditionally managing an entertainment system, the method comprising: developing—by a directive provider—one or more conditional directives, wherein the directive provider is a third-party service provider that is external of, separate from, but communicatively connected to an entertainment system; configuring—by a directive provider—a conditional directive, wherein the conditional directive comprises: one or more conditions, wherein a condition defines at least one requisite circumstance for triggering performance of an action, wherein the one or more conditions comprise: determining if the entertainment system is set to record an event; determining if there is sufficient disk space in the entertainment system to record a television program which would not have been automatically recorded by the entertainment system based on an input received from a user of the entertainment system, wherein determining if there is sufficient disk space to record the event comprises: ascertaining current disk space being utilized to record other events; and ascertaining current disk space reserved to record other events not yet recorded that will occur in a predetermined time frame; and determining a priority associated with the event, wherein the priority associated with the event is assigned by a user of the entertainment system; and one or more actions, wherein an action defines operations that are performed when the condition is met, wherein the one or more actions comprise: recording the television program which would not have been automatically recorded by the entertainment system if the priority associated with the event is higher than a priority associated with any other event either already recorded in the entertainment center or is scheduled to be recorded in the predetermined time frame; electronically transmitting—from the directive provider—the developed conditional directive to the entertainment system.