Warning for upcoming recordings

Channels DVR Server Feature Requests
#1

Hello,

Would anyone be interested in receiving a warning that there are upcoming recordings when you are watching live tv? I ran into an issue where I had two scheduled recordings at 7pm and I was watching live tv on another channel at 6:30pm. Since I only have two tuners, I wasn't even aware that when 7pm came and went, only one show was recorded since I was using a tuner for the live tv.

To me the expected behavior would be to either notify the user of the upcoming conflict or to just change channels to one of the recording shows so the other tuner can record the other scheduled show.

What are your thoughts?

Love everything else about the software!

gasmonso

#2

Great suggestion

#3

Since Channels does not maintain exclusive control over the tuners, it cannot know whether the tuners will be available at the time of the recording.

Conflict management is something the developers know they need to work on, but implementing it requires major reworking of how Channels fundamentally works. It is a very non-trivial feature-set to implement.

#4

Understood, but if Channels knows that you have two tuners for example and that two simultaneous recordings are coming up. It should know that watching a third is definitely a conflict and should warn or handle it some way.

Now if you have a more complex scenario with people utilizing the tuners from other apps and devices then yes it be far more difficult because it's out of Channels control.

But I think for now, Channels should and can handle it's own live tv watching/recording conflicts.

Just my $.02 :slight_smile:

#5

This is exactly the case, and why it is so complex. It would be easier to check if there are more recordings scheduled than total tuners (I think), but that only covers a small portion of the problem, so it’s not a complete solution.

#6

Searched for this exact feature request. Would be great to see instead of having to check manually which is cumbersome.

#7

Would be nice, but can't happen.
Channels DVR isn't a closed box system since anyone on the network can access the DVR or tuners.
Akin to sharing cars with the family, limited resources and requires cooperation.
Closest you could come is ensuring all clients use Channels and Tuner sharing.
Then it's still an issue of cooperation among users.

Or you could create your own closed box system where none of the sources are available to any client except through Channels DVR and create your own notification system to alert users they're about to ruin your scheduled recording by hogging the limited resources.

Or just buy more tuners and/or setup more Channels DVR servers.

P.S. ex-TiVo user, so know what you mean.

#8

If you have three simultaneous streams through Channels DVR on a two tuner system, one of those streams is not happening. It doesn't matter what other users might be doing or if they're using an outside application: # simultaneous streams in Channels DVR > # tuners is always wrong and shouldn't be allowed.

Side question: Do you know if there is any kind of warning currently for checking the number of scheduled recordings vs the number of tuners in a given time block?

#9

Hey, wish you luck with your request.
Nothing personal.
Been a Channels DVR user for a few years coming from TiVo.
Many users have more than one HDHR tuner and TVE and M3U sources.

1 Like
#10

I know it's been requested (I did myself) but never heard more than crickets chirping.

Many things we long time users want bad enough, we find "work-arounds" for.
Not blaming the devs, they're fantastic, just that some of us want things that aren't easily implemented.

1 Like
#11

Do you happen to know if that request still resides anywhere? Seems closely related and that these two requests should probably be linked together.

#12

Problem is I have too many posts to search through here.
Here's one of them from about 2yrs ago.

#13

With respect, surely your hardware setup would be based around the number of clients connected to the DVR server and how much recording of TV you generally do?

If you are regularly getting recording conflicts, why not just add additional tuners? I used to only have 1 x HDHomeRun Quad tuner box connected, based on having 2 TVs in my house, so thought that 1 tuner per room (for watching live tv) and 2 spare would be sufficient. I was wrong (due to the amount of TV I was recording), ended up with failed recordings, so bought a second quad tuner HDHomeRun box & this issue was resolved.

I do agree though, that the ability to see a message within the Channels DVR app when a recording has started / is in progress would be a nice feature.