A context-based search system (3800) for control of a digital personal media stream manager (102), for example, to control the programming of a video recording device (114). Such a system may be maintained by a service provider and can identify a program and date and time without receiving complete details thereof; the DPVSM (102) can then control the recording of the program using IM or e-mail based-techniques. The context-based search system (3800) includes a message receiver (3902) for receiving the DPVSM message; one or more databases (3808, 3816) for storing keywords and program information; a confirmation message generator (3818) for informing the user of identified programming; and a DPVSM control (3820) for causing the DPVSM (102) to supervise the media recording once one of the identified results have been selected by the user.