Correct but you have to go back to the main menu (killing the current buffer), recordings, scroll to select your previous show, resume. Then you want to go to a second tuner you have to do the same process which is a rather painful to repeat every time you want to swap a tuner.
I feel your pain, @Blake_Bishop. Dual buffers is still the feature I miss the most from my old Directv DVR, especially now that itās football season again. I used to use the āDouble Playā feature almost all the time when watching college football on Saturdays and NFL on Sundays.
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Have you heard anything from Devs about adding any similar functionality?
Seems crazy to have potentially 6 tuners (or more) available (a Prime 6 if it ever comes out or 2x Primes) but really only be able to easily watch 1 tuner at any given time.
I know they want to conserve tuners. There are plenty of posts that are about people wanting recordings to kick them off of live tv or vice versa, to avoid buying more tuners, but Iām willing to order more tuners to have this capability, in some form.
You can also record all the shows you want to bounce around between, if for example you know you want to check out multiple games. I would love to just start recording a couple channels at 11 am Sunday and stop at 10pm.
I think once people realize that Channels and Channels DVR isnāt a closed/black box system theyāll see that itās impossible for the DVR software or an app to control their one or more network tuners.
Any other DVR software or app can access the HDHR network tuner device/s and none of those clients (DVR is also a client to the HDHR tuners) can get exclusive control over it.
Think of your HDHR Tuner box as a water diverting device that diverts house water through hoses (individual tuners) and all of your neighborhood (or whomever has access to them) has access to those hoses. How can one hose holder control what every other hose holder does? Maybe a poor analogy, but first thing that came to mind.
All other devices Iām aware of that give you that capability are closed box systems that have total control over its tuners and what theyāre used for.
Vote for Manual Recording capability? 
https://community.getchannels.com/t/set-a-manual-recording-of-a-channel-for-specific-date-time-and-duration/7621
Multiple buffers are mostly a feature found on hardware DVRs with local tuners. Channels utilizes tuners over the network. Buffering those tuners locally is a breeze on Tivos and DirectTV boxes, especially when no other software/clients/dvrs even have access to them.
1 large bitrate mpeg2 stream is already hard on peopleās networks, expecting 2 to work well would be a disaster. Would it work for us with ethernet and gigabit connections from our tuners to our clients? Totally. But most people are on wifi. Some streaming boxes donāt even have ethernet options.
Shipping features that only work for SOME people because of their home network topology isnāt something weāre interested in right now. We want to make the best TV experience for everyone. Yes for some people the feature would work great, but for most people it would just crash and burn, and thatās not a great way to run product.
Weād love to be able to do something like this, but itās just not something weāll be spending time on any time soon at this point in the product.
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The channels DVR is what would be doing the buffer for 1 or more tuners correct? And that would likely reside on a NAS or hardware that is connected via Ethernet. So wouldnāt the channels app just access a given single tuner at a time when needed. How are you able to accomplish the pause in one room and resume in another?
The buffers exist on the clients not the server. Pause and resume only works for recorded content.
I guess thatās why when you record a show you are currently watching it doesnāt store in the recording the portion buffered on the device. I was basing my understanding on what Iāve seen from the HDHR Dvr and Emby live TV. Whenever I change channels I can see the recording buffer start on the dvr server drive.
Is there a significant performance hit storing the buffer locally on the client vs. on the server as a recording? Seems like there wouldnāt be any difference if you store recordings that way. Plus the data has to be transferred one way or another.
Additionally, it seems odd to store the buffer on the device. Most streaming devices used some kind of NAND storage or SSD, both of which a finite number of I/Oās over their life span. Personally Iād prefer to have all my recordings (and Live TV buffers) stored to my WD Red NAS drives in RAID 1 (so I can pop in a replacement if a drive fails without loosing my backlog of recordings).
So yeah, based on your response of how this works I donāt see why this feature request wouldnāt be considered.
I feel like the suggested UI tweeks in post 18 above would provide a nice user experience and rival if not beat all other products Iāve tested on the market. Seems like a no brainier to me but maybe people donāt like to watch multiple shows like I doā¦
Channels works stand alone for regular live TV without DVR service, so the buffer must be on the client. This is how the app first worked, so thatās why it works like that now. We could do it on the server in the future, but itās a lot of opportunity cost for a small team like us.
I here you and can respect that.
The over tasked pessimistic developer side of me, sitting in weeds with a ton of outstanding requests I canāt currently fulfill, sees the opportunity cost like: āWhat if we spend all this time and energy building out this new incredible feature, along the way alienating and disregarding the existing requests of our most loyal customers here on the forum, and as a result we donāt expand our user base and the company takes a downturn.ā
On the other hand, the optimistic entrepreneurial side of me sees the opportunity cost as āIf we build it they will come.ā Meaning the current market for cord cutters/shavers consists of thrifty technical people (like most, if not all of us here) who want to get around the excessive fees and the sub par UI implementation the cable industry currently restricts us too. I canāt speak for everyone here, but I see gold in this localized DVR solution. However, it has quite a few short comings based on the way it currently handles tuners locally on the viewing device instead of on the DVR. Changing the way live TV is streamed to clients for DVR subscribers opens up doors for so many feature enhancements that I would want to make that the companies top priority.
Putting the tuner buffers on DVR server would address many if not all of the concerns you brought up. Again, this could be a feature that is unlocked in the settings menu for paid customers. I would envision there being a āTV Buffer Storageā slider in settings that would default to āClientā (so it would work as usual) with āDVR Serverā as another option. When the slider is changed to āDVR Serverā you could present a warning box with potential issues and a link to a dedicated support page with minimum and recommended hardware requirements. Below the āTV Buffer Storageā slider, you could display a grayed out list of all features people are currently requesting, but canāt be implemented because tuners are currently stored on the clients. Current non paying users could always see these options grayed out and be intrigued to upgrade as well as being able to market this product with all the full features to the masses.
Sorry for the rant, but this is by far the closest implementation Iāve seen for a local DVR for cord cutting/shaving but would really like to see it get to a point were I could recommend it to friends and family.
Thanks for your time, youāve got a great product thus far.
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Added my vote for dual buffers. This is a pretty crucial feature for sports. I have a wired Gigabit to my ATV 4K, however it seems like implementing on the server side would be the best way to do this for max compatibility with all clients.
Thanks for listening.
This is the #1 feature by far that I miss after making the switch from EyeTV on a Mac mini.
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Iāve been staying with Directv pretty much only because of dual live buffers. I did a month of channels and then cancelled. Iāll be back to channels the MOMENT they add dual live buffers.
Iām happy to revive this topic!
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I think a dual buffer would only be practical on atv4k (10 hr buffer) or firecube (3.5 hr buffer). I think it would crush fs4k and ts4k which is about a 30 min buffer which is no better tivo and one reason I moved away from tivo.
I hope this was addressed already elsewhere but multiple searches in the forum just keep bringing me to this thread - so if nothing else there needs to be something added to this thread to point to newer info if it exists!
1 large bitrate mpeg2 stream is already hard on peopleās networks, expecting 2 to work well would be a disaster. Would it work for us with ethernet and gigabit connections from our tuners to our clients? Totally. But most people are on wifi.
So only enable more than one buffer if someone has the networked tuners on a second ethernet port - or make it an advanced feature you have to go into an .ini file to enable and don't worry so much about people shooting themselves in the foot if they go out of their way to do so. Some idiots are going to be stupid no matter how hard you try. The old saying: the problem with making something foolproof is fools are so ingenious!
I'd love to see Channels at least have an advanced option (with all the appropriate cautions that some people will ignore - oh well) to buffer ALL the HD tuners all the time; which means unless it's changed since 2018 already (but searching the forum only really brings this thread up) the client would have to go to the server and not the HD HomeRun.
However I think it is something that would be HUGE for getting people to migrate off of other DVR's. I just set channels up for my parents and so far they are really liking it. Never thought I was going to be able to pry them off of DirecTV - but the buffer thing came up almost immediately. Took me by surprise - I never watch live TV - it's why I love DVRs! But they constantly watch live TV. My dad in particular likes to bounce between a couple of channels, especially with sports (thankfully found out in the forums double clicking the play/pause button swaps between the last two channels - nice!). So far the lack of a buffer hasn't popped up as an issue but at some point they will probably go to do something they always could with DirecTV and Tivo and the missing functionality is going to be pretty jarring!
Outside of Apple TV and Shield TV, no streaming devices have the storage to even do this. They barely have enough storage to buffer a single stream while youāre watching, past 20 minutes.
Itās not something thatās a priority right now.
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I'm not talking buffering on the streaming devices; I'm echoing others that I'd love to see the DVR do the buffering. On the DVR I have a LOT more control on the hardware resources I can dedicate. I was hoping maybe the architecture had changed to shift it from the clients to the DVR since this thread originally came up; apparently not.
That the devs are in the forum was a huge selling point for me to so I do appreciate your response and don't expect a further one. Thanks again!
And I get the priorities; personally I think my parents will do fine with the double click play/pause thing, so it being a low priority is probably the right call. We love absolutely everything else out about Channels and I am already actively getting other friends turned onto it. I don't think it's going to be a hard sell; just show them the UI and how easy it really is to set up and they will be hooked! I don't think there is anything else remotely close to what Channels can provide - and I've been scouring for solutions. About the only other thing missing is support for non-streaming content like Smithsonian channel, but I think I understand why you guys can't handle it from reading a few threads. While I wish there were ways you could plug into content like that, I get it. I find it pretty amazing you are able to do what you guys are doing and looking forward to what the future holds!
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I think the devs have hard time justifying the increased complexity of what this would entail server side. The difference between TiVo and Channels is that on TiVo I have 4 tuners constantly buffering so I can always go back 30 minutes on each one of these channels. How often is this feature used? Hmmmmm, not very often. 
On the other side losing a buffer while trying to peek into another channel while 7 other tuners are idling is not great.
I hope the devs will agree tuner management by the DVR server could use some improvements, how far they would take it to make it better we should let them decide.