Let iPad go to sleep when paused?

[nriley]

My family uses Channels on an iPad Pro to watch TV news at meals. They will frequently leave Channels paused after they get up to do something else, and it ends up with Channels displaying a static image on the iPad Pro's screen for hours. I don't think this is very good for the screen. It seems like Channels is preventing the iPad Pro from going to sleep, which ordinarily is fine, but not in this case.

Is there something I'm missing where the iPad Pro could go to sleep if Channels were paused for a certain amount of time (15 minutes? 30 minutes?)

Thanks!

(And yes, I've tried to help them remember to turn off the iPad when they're not using it without success…)

[Bobby_Vaughn]

Buy them a $35 android tablet and tell them they can use the IPad when they learn to respect it.

[maddox]

Channels doesn’t allow idle (screen saver and sleeping) while pausing live tv, as it would be backgrounded and wouldn’t be able to continue buffering.

This is why watching recordings allows idling and live watching does not.

[nriley]

I'm not sure why you marked this as a "solution" because it's not a solution to my family's issue in which they leave the iPad screen on for hours.

It sounds like there is no current Channels DVR feature that addresses this issue and you do not have any plans or interest in implementing one. For example, if the TV show is over, there's nothing more to conceivably buffer.

It'll be awkward, but I'll see if I can rig something up with timed Shortcuts that check the playback state of Channels and switches apps.

[maddox]

I marked it as a solution because I stated the reason it does not idle while watching a live channel. We cannot both let it go to sleep and also serve its DVR functionality of being able to rewind after being paused.

If we let it idle, the app enters the background and is not active. If the app is not active, it can no longer buffer the live steam and there will be discontinuity in the buffer.

It’s marked as solved because we won’t change the functionality while watching live TV and it is working as designed.

Again, the app does in fact go idle when pausing the playback of a recording, because it can.

[nriley]

Gotcha. I need to verify but I think in most cases they are watching an incomplete recording. So it is somewhere in between live TV and a recording, but does have a defined end time.