Pause LiveTV for 90 minutes?

It already uses as much storage as it can without starving the system of available disk space. The system needs some available, or the device will go haywire.

The only reason to have a setting like that would be to make the buffer smaller.

2 Likes

Thanks for that explanation

1 Like

This is just an observational idea. I don’t personally have an issue with pause in my use behavior. But it looks like some people, either through stability or usage habits or client storage space, have begun to start recording when they want to pause. Maybe for these types of users, a client side setting could be available that would on pause automatically start a server side recording in addition to pause (as a supplement to the client side pause buffer). Since it would be a playback setting it would only apply to users who expressly want it. Just an idea.

The problem seems to be that it is not a cylindrical buffer .. If you have enough to pause 90 minutes... as soon as it hits those 90 minutes the entire buffer is deleted and it resumes livetv.... and if you hit record it will also lose the full buffer.... If someone can tell me what is good about this please do I could be wrong.

This is completely untrue and if you’re seeing this, please submit logs and open a ticket with [email protected].

The buffer is cylindrical. The expected behavior when the buffer gets full is that playback is forced, but you can still go back.

If your buffer is being cleared without leaving the video player or changing channels, this is some kind of bug.

But it’s not one anyone has reported or that we’ve seen.

OK maybe I am mistaken ... this is what I am seeing on my FireTV 4K I paused the today show with 5 minutes remaining I walked away and after 5 minutes it started resumed playback all on it's own. when the next show started it resumed playback of the pause show. Tuner sharing on.

It appears that tuning the next show on the same channel is triggering playback.

The Fire Stick has a tiny buffer because it’s entire storage is 8GB. Get an OTG cable and a thumb drive, format it in the Fire Stick Settings and you’ll get a nice buffer. It’s ridiculous this thing has such a small amount of storage. I’d pay 2x for a 64GB option if they have one coming up. OTG cable works well though.

1 Like

Just a thought here, but if I have a DVR server set up - why isn't "LiveTV" just a recording until I change channels? At least have it as an option to record until the channel is changed. And, while I'm wishing, how about the server keeping the current channel recording for maybe 3-5 minutes in case I accidentally popped out, and then reattaching the client? The server knows which client and which channel it was watching, and could also handle multiple clients tuning into the same channel since it is now a recording.... (unattached LiveTV recordings are available for early reaping if no other tuners are available, but there's no reason to cut them immediately) Just seems like a couple of features that would serious help performance and the user experience. And yes, I realize that is at least 4 feature requests.

1 Like

LiveTV is purely a connection between the HDHR and the client. No server involved unless you turn on Tuner Sharing.

1 Like

Either way tuner sharing or not the problem still exists where the buffer is at the Client and any keystroke like back, home you lose the buffer.... and the buffer is limited by space on the Client even though the server has plenty of space.

Maybe there could be a checkbox somewhere on the server or client that says it will treat all live TV watching as a recording (never buffered on the client).

Note: If you didn't like this option, you could leave it unchecked, so this added feature wouldn't affect you in any way.

1 Like

That's exactly what Tuner Sharing does. I'm not sure if Tuner Sharing keeps a buffer on the server.

Tuner sharing uses a small buffer in memory, nothing on disk for an HDHR source.
For TVE (and I assume M3U) source, looks like it's buffered to disk.

1 Like

I think a quicker solution would be to let the user know how long the buffer would be when they hit pause based on the data rate of the channel being paused and the available client storage.

I have a related question.
As I understand it, with tuner-sharing off, the live-TV buffer is entirely on the DVR Client. The length of the playback buffer is dependent on the balance of available client memory and the bitrate of the live-TV source -- ultimately capped at 90 min.

So, for the nVidia Shield, if I add adopted storage to the Shield to 'expand' it's internal memory can/will the DVR Client make use of the extra adopted storage to enlarge the live-TV buffer and allow it to stretch out to 90 min for higher bitrate HD channels?

What I really miss is the ability to save the buffer ... Sometimes I am watching LiveTV for example the news and I see something I really would like to share with a family member not at home ... but there is no way to save it.

4 Likes

Yes. Add SD card to your shield pro. Shield tube has no SD slot. You would need USB.

This is the feature that I miss most from SageTv when I used it years ago.

3 Likes

So I've been looking over the Channels API. Until I get around to it myself, it should be a very do-able project for an intermediate programmer to write a script (in a language of your choosing) that uses the Channels API to:

  1. Find all Channels clients on the LAN
  2. Foreach client:
    2a) Poll its status
    2b) If it's streaming something live (rather than a recording), and that stream is not already being recorded, start a recording of the stream

The trick is deciding when to stop the recording. For instance, an argument could be made that you should schedule the recording to keep going until the end of the current program. Problem with that is, say, you're channel surfing and you watch just a few minutes of each of a bunch of difference channels - you'd run out of available tuners real fast with that many concurrent recordings.

So you'd probably want to stop the recording when you observe that the client has stopped, or changed to a new channel.

I still use SageTV to watch a lot of LiveTV ... I do a lot of pausing so I am always a bit behind and if something comes up and I have to leave all I do is hit record in SageTV.... and I have everything from when I started watching until the end of the show. I use Channels DVR as a backend to SageTV.

1 Like