Tvheadend

Recordings are not purged at the moment. The entries from the schedule tab are removed after x days (configurable via the DVR config page). The actual recordings remain available in the recordings directory. And because you do not watch the recordings via Tvheadend there is no way for Tvheadend to know if it has been watched or not.

That's why I also requested to view the recordings via tvheadend. Then it would be possible to know when it's played and by who.
I think it's a minumum to compete with mythtv-backend. A database shouldn't be the problem, sqllite should do the trick...

IMHO we need several purge policies including date and watch status. It would also be good to specify the number of episodes to keep so that the last x number of episodes are always available. This type of purging should be invoked post recording and at least once per day. In addition purging should occur prior to recordings starting when there is not enough space available. This should consider the recordings age and priority. I would suggest that recordings with higher priorities should not be removed to accommodate recordings of a lower priority. Once you start to get your head around it purging is quite a complex subject!

Some thoughts on this subject has already been jotted down here:
http://www.lonelycoder.com/redmine/projects/tvheadend/wiki/Tvheadend_recording_management