If I click record while watching something, the DVR will open a new stream and record from live. However it will not include what I have in the live buffer. Is this possible or planned?
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Might be possible, but definitely technically challenging. Not something we’ve put a lot of thought into yet.
This is the number one requested feature from the wife. She often doesn’t get to finish what she’s watching due to kids, so she’s used to just hitting the record button to record the show. She’s telling me to go back to Myth TV because of this.
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I would love to see this feature integrated somehow. I will often be watching a live program such as the local news and see a segment that I’d love to revisit or show to my wife/kids at a later time.
(BTW, I’ve just started the DVR service and love it so far! Keep up the amazing work.)
I agree. This is kind of a standard DVR feature that I’m surprised has not been implemented yet.
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It is not surprising because live tv and the live tv buffer doesn’t run through or use the dvr at all.
It is inherently an architectural challenge. live tv buffer resides on the device while DVR recording happens on the DVR server. Therefore to include this feature, there needs to be a seamless method to merge the two, which as @tmm1 mentioned, is not a trivial matter based on the selected architecture.
Myth TV works differently in that “live tv” is really just a near-time replay of a DVR buffer. There is no separate video stream. Therefore, when a user hits record, Myth flags the live buffer to save.
Yeah, I’m bumping an old thread. We had this with both uVerse and Layer3. It is the one fearture that we miss most. If it is possible to implement, maybe as an option for folks who don’t want it, you would make me and my wife very happy 
Sorry to bump an old thread here but I'm a new user experiencing this same issue. Perhaps a more technically plausible solution would be to have a hot button or menu option to find a replay of the current show in the program guide and record it in the future?
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I too am interested in this. I figure for client with "Tuner Sharing" enabled this shouldn't be much of a problem because the server is already accessing the stream. It's a shame that tuner sharing doesn't also enable a shared timeshift buffer, as this would make this feature infinitely easier to implement.
Thanks for reviving this thread guys. I’m still using this service and it’s been good enough. I think after two years, if it hasn’t been implemented, it never will be. Need to see what’s in the state of the union for future features. @tmm1
Is there a workaround on this....? LIke loging into your player device and manually saving the live buffer? Can somebody point me in the right folder where I can find the TS file from live buffer? I'm using Android TV
It is not exposed in a user-accessible location. It is saved in the app's private data location.
Can we request a feature to export this from it's current location.... like there can be button on main admin page to export currently being watched buffer.....and save it in local place by defaut...or a local folder at my choosing....This would be a work around this since architecturally it's difficutl to provide a better solution.....I can see on the admin page it tell me I'm watching this such channels....just put there a button to save the file....and not loose it...This would be better than nothing at all....I also need this functionality
Only a minimal buffer of a few seconds is saved to the DVR server, even with tuner sharing.
All local live buffers are saved to the client device; there is no live buffer on the server.
Took me awhile to figure out Channels after migrating from my TiVo's.
A TiVo can do it because it has exclusive [closed box] control of all its tuners (no outside access except for TiVo Mini's) and buffers to its internal [closed box] drive.
TiVo just continually records (buffers) each of its tuners in a FIFO for 30/60/whatever mins. Somewhat like a security camera DVR system.
Closest you could get with Channels is to have it continually recording from all sources and all channels.
Channels DVR doesn't have exclusive [closed box] access to some of its sources.
@tmm1 I could be wrong but I think this should not be too difficult to implement on the DVR server using ffmpeg. You should be able to use the hls flag to build a hls index with your choice of segment type and size on the fly from the input source. Just a suggestion because I would really like to see this become a reality.
It’s been explained in the past that including the current buffer in the recording is incredibly complicated. It is not trivial. There are many ways to accomplish this, but none of them can be done without a significant change in the architecture of the app.
We have lots of other important problems to solve in the meantime. For now, this is how Channels works.
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I understand the architecture....if a buffer already exist...on the client....that should not be hard to expose that client side buffer and allow the user to save that on the client. It's not great compare other solutions but it give the abiltiy to not loose something which already being saved. All we need is a buttion in the client or the admin page to save the buffer on the local client.....easy peasy...It's very frustrating to be watching something in timeshift but a sudden mistake let you all of it... One reason why I like hulu live....I catch up on the show since its beginning even if i was not watching it.....Yes that's another level.....all we asking is saving what I've been watching...even if it would be saved on the client....and not on the server...
Not asking to change the architecture...just a work around to save only the timeshift buffer on the client.....many times the clients and server are the same machine...and even when it's not the same machine this gives the user a way to get to watch the file later. It's better than nothing...and this sould not be hard to implement on the client.
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