Initial Experience and Issues

Channels Android TV
#48

I will check to see if The PiP has an impact. Thank you for the data point that yours behaves differently from mine. If it isn't PiP, I might have to try the additional debloat. I do have an additional remote coming that might help debug the difference between the TiVo remote an other things.

I agree that the new show indicators can be wrong, but I would rather have a false positive than miss one. This request is really from my wife. She flat out said no to YTTV based on the handling of new recordings. I have to keep her happy to. :slight_smile:

The stretch issues were on the Android App on my S21 Phone w/ a 20:9 aspect ratio. Disabling stretch to fit helps, but then it crops the video because it still fits to width. Basically, there is no just basic fit to screen that makes sure the video fits both horizontally and vertically without stretching/cropping in all cases. I think this is a simple fix to just check the vertical as well as the horizontal. This is low on my priorities though because watching on my phone isn't a requirement (but a nice to have).

Thanks again,
Josh

#49

I think the debloating process will solve the LIve button problems he is having. I tried disabling things and the Live TV button still would not work properly. I re-did the debloat steps with adblink and now the Live button works the same as it does on Apple TV. Hit it and it cycles back and forth between the two last channels.

FYI, it took less than 5 minutes to complete the debloat steps and it can all be reversed. I went through the whole thing back a long time ago when there used to be issues with the remote configuration too. They did the update that removed the option to go into developer mode, and I decided to go forward with Apple TVs as our main streaming box and so I lost interest. We do have the TS4K on one of our TVs we rarely use which is in my office, so I've got it back now to being a generic Android TV box with the remote integration to Channels and glad I went back through the steps.

Now I just need to spend the time to get the favorites sorted out. Hopefully they will get that upgraded earlier this year rather than later. :slight_smile:

I haven't really used the Android version of Channels in a while and noticing that there are a lot of differences in the handling of the Library which I had forgotten about.

#50

I removed all the TiVo bloat and it is still (unsurprisingly) misbehaving. Here are some specific steps that I would appreciate it if you could try.

  1. Reboot TiVo Stream
  2. Press Guide button
  3. Pick Channel A and Select it to watch it live
  4. Press Guide button
  5. Pick Channel B and Select it to watch it live
  6. Press Guide button
  7. Press Live button
    On mine I will be looking at Channel A. It should be Channel B, because B was the last one watched.

Note: Behavior is the same with or without PiP enabled.

Thanks,
Josh

Bug:/Feature Request: "Live" button actions Edit: "Live TV" also impacted
#51

That is the way it works for me, and if you just hit Live a second time then you are where you want to be. While you are technically correct in what is "last", I think you are being a bit picky too. If this is a show stopper issue, then I don't know what to say. I have used channels for a long time, frequently use the LIve button to jump amongst live channels, and never even noticed what you are pointing out. It is also the kind of thing the devs might fix very quickly. But either way, I don't personally see it as a big deal.

1 Like
Bug:/Feature Request: "Live" button actions Edit: "Live TV" also impacted
#52

Maybe not a show stopper, but there are a ton of these little quirky things that frustrate me. Most of them have to do with the PiP, but that seems to be a newer feature. Maybe it isn't as flushed out.
Depending on how they have the PiP implemented, this bug might be causing one of the PiP annoyances I have. Basically, if you are watching something in PiP and you hit Live, I think it should go to Live full screen. This would be an easy way to handle exiting PiP (which is near impossible right now). Instead it toggles to the previous channel. For me to toggle to the previous channel, you should press Live (goes full screen), Live (toggles), and Back (return to wherever you were). The buffer toggle should be the secondary function of the Live button, not the primary. Bringing you to Live TV should be the primary.

#53

Anytime you make a platform change there are going to be little things that are annoying because they aren't built into your muscle memory yet, and not "comfortable". Any platform change is going to bring that "pain", no matter how robust. But there are an equal number of beneficial things too that come with the change. One of the huge ones is the thought that this is potentially the last platform change that needs to be made since its source agnostic. My wife is my tester because she hates change, and she is a real challenge to explain anything like this too. She has gotten on with Channels almost immediately. Now she gets frustrated when the UI in Netflix, Disney, etc. is different. So while these little things like having to hit Last twice to get to the last last instead of last might be something that would annoy me, she will never notice it.

On that last last thing, the reason its probably never bothered me is because if I am bouncing between two shows, it almost doesn't matter to me which one I bounce back to. I'm going to usually watch until there is a commercial and then bounce to the other. So if I hit last and the show is playing, I leave it... if not I just hit last again. If both are in commercial break then I'll end up back in Guide looking for something else.

#54

You are correct about the change. My issue is the far inferior Live TV buffers on Channels. Having to hit it twice guarantees you lose the one you have. Down the road, I am hoping that I am able to suggest some simple changes that would make that experience better. I used the heck out of it on the TiVo. I don't expect to get all the functionalities of the TiVo, but some basic ones would be a godsend to make the transition better.

I am not completely sure how all the back end of the DVR works and those changes would be much harder than these simple bug fixes, so I don't expect them to happen. I will ask down the road. If I tune a channel, it is streamed only to the client device right? How about the web streaming? It has to go through the DVR for transcoding right? I saw something about tuner sharing, what does that do for me? If I am recording a show and decide to watch it live, does it use a second tuner? If not, if I am streaming it live and decide to record, does it use a second tuner then?

I am sure I can come up with more questions, but those are the types of things I would need to know. Maybe I can build some kind of macro for myself that helps.

Thanks,
Josh

#55

Why would it lose anything? There is a last channel and previous channel. Live toggles between them. Nothing lost.

Yes, the stream is direct to the streaming device once selected. Another cool feature is that you can search Guide on your iOS device, pick a show to watch, and select it to play on one of your streaming boxes so you use your iOS device as the Guide, and play on the TV. Kind of a fancy remote.

I don't know how the web stream works.

Not sure. I would guess it does because it starts recording from the current point and the streaming box has a buffer.

It's your choice. It will prompt you if you want to watch the recording or watch live. If you say live, it will prompt you if you want to watch the recording from the beginning, or resume. The resume is server dependent, not streaming device dependent so you can pause in one room and resume in the other.

I mentioned earlier that if you want to watch to shows live with buffer, this is the way you would do it. You go to Guide, select a show, hit record, then back to Guide, select the second show (or 3rd or 4th), hit record. Now go to the Recordings tab and these shows should be at the top of the list. Select one to watch. Select watch recording, resume. To switch hit Back, select the other show and repeat. Its not a one click thing, but it works and generally when I'm watching to things I want to resume, I'm not going back and forth every minute.

#56

Thanks for all the info.

I will probably use this some. This does work for several use cases like when I am watching sports. It doesn't work well if you are watching back to back shows on one channel though. You would have to record them all. The one thing that I don't like about it though is that you have to go clean up your recordings when done. I haven't quite figured out how to write it all down, but an optional functionality where tuning a channel automatically starts a temporary recording and playback from the recording is floating around in my head. Key points to it are that if you don't do something with it in so much time it auto-deletes. If you continue to watch live it starts a recording on the next show as well. The problem is how to present it to the user. I personally would go for it looking something like the live TV buffer where it concatenates the recordings into a seemless view. However, that might be hard. The other less optimal option would be to do it like regular recordings, but then auto play to the next show and let you rewind where it auto loads the previous show. The user should be able to hit record to save the temporary recording (of current or previous show). A next step would allow this for the previous channel as well. The final step would be to share this functionality with other tuners so you can both be sharing the same buffers (which should be simple since they are really recordings).

#57

Because only the current live buffer is saved. The previous one is lost.

Maybe. By default, HDHomeRun tuners stream direct to the client. However, all web-based streams go through the DVR server before they are sent to the client device. (And, if you have enabled "Tuner sharing" on the client device, then the HDHomeRun stream goes through the DVR server, too.)

The same situation applies as above. If it is a web stream (TVE, Locast, etc.), then a second stream is not opened. Instead, the current stream being saved on the DVR server is sent both to the client and to the file to be saved.

For HDHomeRun tuners, it depends. If you have "Tuner sharing" enabled, then no second tuners/streams are used. In that case, the stream that is being saved for the recording is also sent to the requesting client. However, if you have not enabled "Tuner sharing", then the client will contact the tuner directly and ask for a second stream of that channel to be opened.

Again, it depends. For web streams, no. Since all of the content goes through the DVR first, there is no need to open a second stream. But, for physical tuners without "Tuner sharing" enabled, then yes. A second stream will be opened, because the first/live stream is going directly to the client; the second stream needs to be opened to be sent to the DVR for recording. However, if "Tuner sharing" is enabled, then it functions the same as for web streams, and a second stream will not be started.

However, when you start recording a while watching live, the recording will only begin from the point in time that the recording was requested. This is because the live TV buffer resides on the client device, but the recording must happen on the server. (Yes, you might think that if the server is sending the streams to the clients in the case of web streams and shared tuners, it has a copy of the data, and the previous buffer should be saved. But, the server only retains a brief buffer of a few seconds of the streams before sending it out to the clients.)

1 Like
#58

Thanks. All that seems to make sense. I think it is something I can conceptually work with for a wishlist (that I don't expect to get implemented). Interestingly, I feel like Tuner Sharing is only a small step away from DVR side buffers. It would be great if it was an option that could be turned on.

#59

Indeed. However, the responsiveness of direct tuning physical tuners and getting the stream to the client device as quickly as possible is a feature of Channels that the developers do not want to throw away. (This is most likely why "Tuner sharing" is not enabled by default: bypassing the DVR for live viewing and near-instant tuning makes Channels a true TV replacement.)

However, the developers are well aware that users want server-based buffers for live content to enable many features that are not possible presently:

  • Multiple live buffers that the client can switch between (à la DirecTV's Double Play feature)
  • When asking to record an in-progress live viewing, the content that had already been viewed can be saved
  • Increased live buffers (most Android devices have a paltry amount of free storage, meaning your live buffer is usually only 30 minutes, but can be as brief as 5 minutes depending the free space and quality of the content being viewed)
  • … and many additional things that presently are not possible
#60

Right, we weren't talking about buffers at that point. Further back in the thread we were talking about swapping live channels, and the buffers are obviously not retained in current implementation. I expect they don't want to do that because then they'd have two tuners locked for each streaming device to keep two buffers live.

#61

Those items are definitely on my list. But higher than both of them is the ability to do something and come back to at least something there for me. (It doesn't have be forever on.)

The two tuner thing is easily handled if you are already using Tuner Sharing. Basically, the client with two tuners loses its second tuner if someone needs it. Recordings and directly viewed clients always take precedence over background buffers. This is how the TiVo ecosystem works with the Minis. Interestingly, the Mini was limited to one buffer/tuner (directly correlated in TiVo land), but could take over a background buffer used by the main box. (I don't expect this behavoir, but I used to be in the middle of a show on the main box, switch tuners, then tune to that channel on the Mini and capture its buffer to continue watching in my bedroom.)

Thanks again,
Josh

#62

Tivo 4k is quirky to put it mildly.... I have one but never use it. I am a Tivo DVR refugee (looonnng time user). I set up Channels DVR on an NVidia Shield, connected a hard drive and voila !

#63

I had a Tivo and Minis too. Channels does not work like that. If all the tuners are busy, then you aren't getting one. That is why I have 2 x 4 tuner HDHRs. I don't want to run out. If they occupied 2 tuners for each live streamer, it would blow through tuners a lot faster than with just 1, so that is my guess as to why they don't retain multiple buffers for a single streamer. Channels can have a lot more streaming devices to deal with than most people ever had Minis, when you consider phones, ipads, TVs, etc.

It seems like your wish list is to make Channels exactly like a Tivo. There are a lot of Tivo refugees that are Channels users, including me. I don't think its the developers' goal to replicate everything that Tivo does in Channels, no more than to replicate everything that Plex does for all the Plex fans that have lists of Plex features that should be added. I hate to see someone get unrealistic expectations. There is a lot to like about Channels. It does what it does well better than anyone. I'm sure they'll tweak little things here and there, but I don't see them redoing the whole architecture.

They have said already that their next priority is to get the whole favorites management thing sorted which I will be very happy to see.

#64

I was able to reproduce this and it is fixed in the latest beta apk. Thanks for the detailed instructions.

3 Likes
#65

Thanks a ton. I loaded the Beta and it all seems to work. It fixed both the toggle within the PiP and the what comes up when first entering live tv. I appreciate it! It makes the PiP so much more usable for me.
Thanks,
Josh

#66

Agreed with all you said. The only thing that I was trying to get at is that Channels doesn't have the concept of a background buffer right now either. If they were to deem it worth adding, then I think they would think through the need to have a release mechanism. They would also need to work out when to stop buffering it at all as well (time based, activity based, etc.). The TiVo absolutely had to do that behavior as all tuners are used all the time. I love that functionality, but wouldn't ask for it on Channels. I think something in between is might be reasonable. Above any of that I would love to be able to save the live buffer. Basically, if I am in the middle of watching something and have to go (but am not caught up), I would love to be able to finish it later.

It isn't my intention, but maybe that is the effect of my ideas. I think there are some definite usage patterns that TiVo solved that aren't solved on Channels. I can give you a few for the TiVo as well.

That isn't how I see it working. I see that the second background buffer isn't guaranteed. Another device could steal it at any time. It means you would be using your tuners more often, but doesn't limit the max number of viewed streams. (I hate to say this, but this is how it works on the TiVo. A tuner continues to buffer the channel it is on until it is needed for viewing or recording. Again, I don't expect Channels to always be recording all its tuners, which doesn't even make sense with TVe. This behavior would have to work a little differently for it.)

I haven't quite figured that out yet. It seemed a little redundant in places and not clear what all choosing favorites impacted. However, it seemed like it would overall do what I needed, so I didn't mess with it much yet. Good to know it may get a bit more straightforward.

#67

Try to set up multiple TVs to have the same favorites and order and you will get the issue very quickly.

1 Like