Is there a way to force buffered recording. . .

[sdsean]

So as is known by most users. . . SageTV records whatever show when watching liveTV, and as the show changes (ie staying on the same channel for a long time) it saves each show. It does the same thing when changing channels, but just deletes the file at for said show at a later time.

Is there away to force Sage to just use a buffer and stay in one file unless I specifically say record something? This is how beyondTv works, and then if you actually decide you want to record the whole show the stitch the buffer back to a recorded file.

The reason I ask is that I tend to like the buffered method better. . . to me it makes for a smoother channel change experience, and in theory could let you rewind through multiple channel changes. . .

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by sdsean

Is there away to force Sage to just use a buffer and stay in one file unless I specifically say record something? This is how beyondTv works, and then if you actually decide you want to record the whole show the stitch the buffer back to a recorded file.
.

No.

Gerry

[MitchSchaft]

This is THE biggest complaint about SageTV across the board. For all the praise it gets, this is a huge downfall. It's kind of embarassing that Microsoft can get that part right, but nothing else. Sage can get everything else right, but not the buffered recordings... I really hope this changes in version 7!

[stanger89]

It's a design decision/philosophy thing. For a lot of us, we like this better than a circular buffer.

[MitchSchaft]

I don't get why you would like the pause .

[stanger89]

I can pause.

Oh "the" pause

I don't think anyone "likes" it, but circular buffers have their own issues, like:

Whatever is recorded is blown away when you change channels, so if you were to go back and decide you wanted to keep the show, you'd only keep the last chunk, Sage's method would save everything you saw, though there'd be the break where you changed channels.

Buffer size/length is determined arbitrarily, a short buffer isn't long enough to save the whole show if you decide to watch something long (Lawrence of Arabia?), a big buffer wastes a lot of space.

Sage's method can (theoretically though I've never tried it) be "shared" between clients, you are (or should be) able to pick up on a different client from the begging if you want.

Neither method is perfect. I think if Sage could eliminate the "pause" then the Sage method would be "perfect", since that seems to be the only thing people really complain about.

But then again as Gerry notes below, Live watching is such a non-issue on a good PVR the whole discussion is "sort of" moot.

[gplasky]

I almost never watch Live TV so I never experience the pause. Most people with SageTV will spend the time setting up Favorites and watch them when we want to. Probably the only exceptions would be live sporting events. But when that's over it back to watching recorded tv so still no pause.

Gerry

[MitchSchaft]

I get the "pause" at the end of every recorded tv show, too . Whether it's live or not.

Whatever is recorded is blown away when you change channels

I guess I'm still used to that from MCE! I say we offer a bounty and pay the Sage folks to get rid of the pause

[nick_l]

What is this "live tv" you all speak of? Seriously though, I usually have about 40-50 shows recording per day, so I have never once been tempted to watch something "live". There is always something interesting waiting for me.

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

I get the "pause" at the end of every recorded tv show, too . Whether it's live or not.

I guess I don't understand what you mean here, how could you not get a "pause" at the end of a pre-recorded show? when it's done, it stops.

Nick

[sdsean]

To be honest, I just want the option. I know how much space I have, and what a good size (given recording quality) the buffer should be. And while your right that I don't watch "live" tv very often, when football season starts its really painful b/c the channel change is so slow.

Actually you'd think that you'd be able to do both. . . use a buffer, and just don't save it off until the channel change has already happened.. . which would/could elminiate the pause, although its going to come down to IO speed on the machine.

I see no reason why this would be that hard to change from an engineering perespective. The only time consuming part would be builiding in all the screens for options and control.

[MitchSchaft]

Before a recorded show stops, about 5-10 seconds before it stops, it pauses . Not the command "pause", but an actual hiccup in the recording.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

Before a recorded show stops, about 5-10 seconds before it stops, it pauses . Not the command "pause", but an actual hiccup in the recording.

That definately is not normal Sage behavior. I would find that annoying too! Hopefully someone will have some suggestions for you. Then you will just have to break your family of that live tv watching and you assimilation will be complete.

Good luck

[MitchSchaft]

It is normal since a lot of folks complain about it . If it's not normal, I wonder if it's my tuner card or something.

[gplasky]

The pause is only normal when viewing in LiveTV and it goes from one program to the next. If you are choosing already recorded TV from the Recordings list and you get a pause before the end then that is NOT normal. Play the video in another player like Windows Media Player and see if it acts the same. If it does then it's the actual recording and may have something to do with your tuner card. The other thing is are you using comskip or Showanalyzer and are you skipping commercials? If so you may have an errant markiing near the end.

Gerry

[sdsean]

no i don't have a comskip plugin of any kind (never really felt like i needed it).

its just that one of my pet peeves is channel changing. . . especially going back to the prev channel. . .its just slow.

of course that being said. . .i suppose if i added more tuners it wouldn't be as big of a deal anyone using 3+ HD-PVR's ;-)

[stanger89]

I don't think a circular buffer would be any faster.

[toricred]

I'm using 3 HD-PVRs.

[Fuzzy]

The sage model really does work well with more tuners.. for me, I just set it up to record all the football games, so switching between them doesn't cause any sort of pause (as the recording in uninterrupted). I guess this doesn't really work well with sunday ticket, unless you've got LOTS of boxes and lots of HD-PVR's... but since I have Dish, I only have to deal with the locally broadcast games.

[sharker]

This is a comment to a thread in the Customization forum, but I don't think that is the right place for it and I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on this i.e. would it be of any benefit.

People have asked for a way of having Sage playback Live TV without recording. A lot of people responded that this was what Sage was for and that if you don't want it to record, you should use a TV. For me, the benefit of not having Sage always recording is simply to limit hard drive access. What I was wondering is if you couldn't set a very large buffer or virtual drive (providing would had a lot of memory) to keep from accessing the hard drive during channel surfing or stopping to watch an old Simpsons episode.

I think you can assign a specific tuner to the "Live" tv, but I'm not sure. If you went with a virtual drive, it would be nice if you could have Sage dump to a physical drive once you exceeded a certain space limitation. For example, if I was channel surfing, I would be recording to the virtual drive. If I stopped surfing, it would record up to about a Gig or 2. Once it reached the end of the VD, it would begin to dump the file onto the physical drive. This could also be used as an extended buffer, where when you went to close down Sage, you would get the option to dump the buffer onto a physical drive. Does this scenario sound stupid? I think the benefits are 1) extended HD life, 2) Power savings, 3) Wake-up time would be much faster (you would not have to wait for the HD to spin up, 4) less fragmentation (that one's a stretch I think), 5) Quieter for HTPCs as you wold not have the drive noise.

Any comments on the merit or de-merit of this would be appreciated as I have wondered for sometime the toll on the drives always being on.

* merged *

[wayner]

After years of using PVRs, including Sage, leaves me asking the question "What is Live TV?"