The issue I’d like to see fixed occurs when I need to step forward manually through a commercial. Generally, I need to move ahead in 1-2 steps until I see the commercial end. Sometimes I have to wait up to 5 seconds between steps because the screen refuses to update after each step forward (or reverse if I overshoot the desired point) command. The wait time between steps is variable but can be 5 seconds. This is true for steps forward or reverse.
Example of sluggish “fast forwarding”
Try skipping quickly ahead 5 min during playback of any program. The position pointer will move ahead quickly in 10, 30 second steps. But then no screen updates will actually occur until about 4-5 seconds after the last step request, during which time the display is frozen.
The time to resume picture updating maxes out at about 4-5 sec after the step forward commands stop, no matter how many step ahead steps are requested. The resume playback starts up after about 1-3 sec for small number of steps.
I will guess that the Channels code is waiting to update the frame buffer in the TV receiver before it resumes playback.
Testing was done on the Windows 10 computer (that is running Channels DVR) monitor and on a remote FireStick TV.
For the above example, why doesn’t the software simply advance the disk read position in 30 sec intervals (or one 5 min interval) then display the requested new playback position after a small amount of time? Instead of waiting about 4 sec for the entire buffer to transfer to the TV, so I can determine if the commercial is over?
When stepping is being used, could the screen show a very small, initial portion of the buffer, instead of waiting until the full buffer is received? It could then begin continuous screen updates after the buffer continually fills.