RFE: Request for Enhancement, Instant Recording

My wife is still lukewarm about channels and is mad that I cut the cord (to save a ton of money).

She said that the thing she misses most is the ability to instantly record a program while watching it. She said all she had to do before was press record on the remote. Although channels is an app that didn't download its own remote, perhaps you could add a shortcut to make it easier to record a program that you've started watching. Ideally, the recording would start from the earliest available time in the buffer (or the whole show if the live buffer is long enough.)

To facilitate this, obviously there would have to be some kind fo setting for a temporary buffer of whatever stations the tuner has a hold of, even if the user isn't actively watching it. Perhaps even let the user select a few key stations and ask to always keep a 30 minute (user selectable) live buffer running.

Say for example, I've told the app I want a 30 minute buffer available on the major broadcast networks. I flip on the morning news and I catch the tail end of a story about the Swedish Bikini team bus got a flat tire, but I missed the part about where it happened. With the live buffer I could go back and see the beginning of the story.

Or, suppose I happen to catch my favorite team playing, but I forgot to set it up to record and I need to head out the door to pick someone up. I could just hit record, and it'd start recording from the beginning of the live buffer through to the end of the game.

Is this pie in the sky dreaming? You tell me - I don't have to figure out how to write the code to make it work, Is it impractical and guaranteed to burn out even a SSD in a week because of continuous activity? I don't know, but I would rather you guys think about that and tell me the answer, I figure as a user I can just tell you what I wish I had and let you guys worry about if you want to do it or not.

Good Luck!

In the app you can swipe down the Quick Guide and hit Record.

This will start recording as soon as you click the button and won't include any previous buffer.

Wouldn't it be cool if it did include the previous buffer?

It would, but the buffer is all local on the client, so it would be very difficult technically to implement this, unfortunately. It’s been requested more than once. :blush:

Maybe buffer is a bad way to put it. What if the last one or two viewed channels were just always recording, and deleting prior programs as if they were scheduled to record? In that way the currently playing programs are always available to record from the start? I am not sure how bad fragmentation would be, but I assumed that modern OS would not have this issue anymore.