Download/buffer whole show?

[OttoNP]

Is there a way in placeshifter to just download the shows recorded on your server? I'm guessing you can only stream, but I think that would be a good option. I have other programs that I use to connect and can then copy the .mpg and use whatever player i like, so I have a work around.

I don't travel all that much, but usually my plan is to transfer some shows to my labtop via network or usb drive to watch on the plane, but then i get to busy. So I wind up watching something at the airport and then just before boarding I using another program to copy the .mpg files to my labtop to watch on the plane, but it would be nice I could just click on a option while watching the stream, transfer to labtop, or something like that.

The other time it would be useful is when I get lower speed connections and the quality sucks. Most of the time I get a good stream, but sometimes it is bad. In those cases, I close out sage, open up another program, transfer the file (which takes forever) and then watch it locally. It isn't that much of a hassle, but it would be nice if in those cases I could just have sage transfer the whole file over...

[nielm]

My webserver plugin can do that (rightclick on filename in detailed info page, Save Target As).

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by nielm

My webserver plugin can do that (rightclick on filename in detailed info page, Save Target As).

Its almost the same, only difference is you'll be downloading the original file (huge file size), instead of the streaming version (smaller filesize).

[BarkOLounger]

I've often wanted to request this feature as well. The ability to cache a whole program, or multiple programs locally at a set streaming quality would be great.

It is very frustruting to rely on the current buffer for a number of reasons.

1) If you miss something you can never rewind (without resetting the buffer)
2) commercial skipping almost always resets the buffer even if the commercial break is less than the buffered time
3) you can only buffer one show at a time, and if the show get's completely buffered placeshifter will often time lock up.
4) most hotel & other internet connections can't stream fast enough for a good quality viewing so you have to watch shows in chunks (buffer 5 minutes then watch it, then buffer another 5)

I travel for work and would love to be able to set my laptop to cache 2 or 3 shows while at dinner, then watch them in the hotel when I return.

[wvpolekat]

**************DISCLAIMER- I HAVEN'T TESTED THIS COMMAND****************
This would be pretty easy to script with robocopy. Of course, you would get full size files, so you wouldnt do this over the internet.

Let's say you want to keep the last 2 days of TV episodes on your laptop:

From the laptop you could run this:

robocopy.exe /MIR /MAXAGE:2 /Z \\sagebox\recordings\ c:\myshows\

In a nutshell here is what it is doing

/MIR = mirror source to target (remove files on target that are not on source) <- BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THIS IT CAN REMOVE FILES!!!!
/MAXAGE:2 = Copy only files less than 2 days old
/Z = Copy in restartable mode to survive network hiccup

I picture running this a scheduled task, or you could do it manually. Scheduled task has the advantage of always having the last 2 days with you.

You could add in a /MAX:n (where n = bytes) to roughly make sure you don't get any movies by limiting file size.

With some creativity and some wildcards, you could even specify what show and such if pressed for drive space on the laptop.

[Yalbik]

I'm sitting in a hotel right now, and really really wish I could watch my sage shows, but the quality just sucks too badly.

A "download and watch later" plug-in would be perfection. Though you could probably do this now with a combination of the Transcode options in 6.1 and Nielm's webserver plug-in...wish I'd thought to install that before I went on my trip!

[Osoksniper]

What is your network bitrate in the last lines of the SageTVPlaceshifter.properties set to?

enable_video_postprocessing=true
fixed_encoding/use_b_frames=false
fixed_encoding/video_bitrate_kbps=300

These three lines can make a big difference in the streaming quality if you have not already done this...the network I use is wireless N...300 bits so i leave this to the 300. Also, the fixed_encoding/use_b_frames=false instead of true made a really big difference in smoothness over slower connections. The enable_video_postprocessing=true did not make as big a difference so I left it to true however, if you are on a slower processor laptop, then set this to false will help. If you've already done these sorry to state again...