Keep some tuners open for live viewing

Channels DVR Server Feature Requests
#1

I have 6 tuners and found that Sunday they were all in use when I wanted to watch live TV.

How about a way to set up either a general “keep x tuners free” or the same idea but be able to specify days and times to keep tuners open for live viewing. With 4 people using the system and 6 tuners it’s pretty easy to run into logjams with no free tuners. I’m trying to make this husband-proof without setting up his own personal system. I may need to that anyway if there isn’t a better way to sort through recordings. But that’s another thread.

#2

I don’t think we would implement a system like this, especially since other apps and DVRs can grab a tuner at any time as well and we wouldn’t necessarily know.

A better solution for when tuners aren’t available might be to show what’s in use (what’s recording, and what other live clients are connected), and then let you cancel one of those to steal a tuner directly in the player.

#3

This is amusing, because there’s another recent thread requesting a way to allow the DVR to preempt Live TV viewing

Wouldn’t the easy solution be more tuners? Yes, I know: All it takes is money, but the alternative sounds to me like somebody’s going to be made unhappy.

#4

As it is, live tv doesn’t preempt recordings. I’m just trying to make this transition from TiVo to Channels acceptable for my husband. When we went to TiVo several years ago I originally went with Roamio Pro and 2 minis. That quickly became unacceptable for DH as he didn’t want to wade through a bunch of recordings. So I bought him his own Roamio. Not the Pro but the Plus. His watching is mostly recordings but sometimes he’ll keep it on live TV all day.

Whereas, the rest of us watch mostly recordings except for live sports.

I may buy another Quatro but that’ll have to wait until we get rid of cable and sell the TiVos.

#5

I could live with that.

#6

I think an option that would satisfy everyone is a popup boxes with choices. If you have something set to record and there are no available tuners it should prompt the live viewers a minute before the scheduled recording to either switch off or cancel the scheduled recording, if there is no user response the live channel should be stopped. In the event you try to watch something live and there are no tuners you should be given the option to cancel a recording.

We have 3 tuners, which is honestly enough. The issue we have run into are evenings when there are 2 to 3 shows set to record that overlap and one of the Apple TVs was left with channels playing a live channel. Often times the TV itself is off. This causes the recording to just skip, which greatly hurts the wife approval factor.

#7

This would be great. I currently have a script that monitors the DVR logs for “All Tuners In Use” then stops all channels streams via the api.

#8

I found on Homerun DVR even if you cancel a recording the software won’t let go of the tuner until the show is over! One reason I switched to Channels!