Are we ever going to get rid of the "pause"? YES WE DID!

[rosemary]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Don't you think that's a pretty bold statement, coming from someone who has never seen the source code?

Possibly, but no more bold than the statement I was replying to ("Such a change would almost certainly introduce all kinds of new bugs") which also came from someone who has never seen the source code.

Sorry, I thought it was obvious from the lack of anyone from Sage posting in this thread that we're all armchair quarterbacking.

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by rosemary

...

Sorry, I thought it was obvious from the lack of anyone from Sage posting in this thread that we're all armchair quarterbacking.

Speak for yourself. I'm driving from the backseat!

S

[bastafidli]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Don't you think that's a pretty bold statement, coming from someone who has never seen the source code?

http://www.google.com/search?q=java+...ient=firefox-a

[toricred]

Actually since there is no "buffer" currently, just reading from a file as it is being written, I wouldn't assume it is in a separate black box.

[stanger89]

As it stands today, recording and playback are entirely separate. Watching Live TV isn't really live, it's the client/extender/placeshifter telling the server it wants to watch an "airing", and the server determinining it needs to start a recording, and then telling the client which media file is associated with that recording.

A circular buffer would basically require that that all be reworked. And managing circular buffers for an arbitrary number of clients, extenders, placeshifters, and tuners is not a trivial undertaking. This is probably the reason Sage (Frey at the time) opted for a "bufferless" design.

For example, what do you do if two clients request the same channel live, but starting at different times?
Create two buffers?
"Connect" the second one to the first's buffer?
etc

This all just automagically happens with the current architecture.

[jsonnabend]

No, it's one circular buffer per tuner max, isn't it?

As for point two, how can you have two people watching the same live program from different time? One isn't watching live, right?

In any event, even if the "multiple live people tuning in at the same time" were an issue, perhaps that's a corner case. It certainly seems less common to me than the case where some is watching live tv from program to program. Design entails compromise all the time. Good designs make the right compromises.

- Jeff

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

No, it's one circular buffer per tuner max, isn't it?

As for point two, how can you have two people watching the same live program from different time? One isn't watching live, right?

In any event, even if the "multiple live people tuning in at the same time" were an issue, perhaps that's a corner case. It certainly seems less common to me than the case where some is watching live tv from program to program. Design entails compromise all the time. Good designs make the right compromises.

- Jeff

You have to think this out very carefully. SageTV is one of the few "whole-house" PVR solutions. Your Tivos, cable-box DVRS don't have to contend with this because it is one DVR per TV and no multi-user. There is no "central server" recording and delivering shows to each TV client.

As far as point two-you have the wife in the study watching program A from the beginning. Now I go into the living room and decide I want to watch the same program A and start watching from current time. And now I run downstairs for laundry, paused it in the living room and flipped it on in the basement. This could be very common for people who haven't weaned themselves off the "LiveTV" syndrome.

I believe initially BeyondTV also had the buffer until they moved into the multi-user. client/server architecture. I'm not sure if they left it as an option or not.

Gerry

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

No, it's one circular buffer per tuner max, isn't it?

The question is does each tuner automatically get it's own buffer or do you try and "save" tuners by sharing buffers if two users are watching the same channel.

As for point two, how can you have two people watching the same live program from different time? One isn't watching live, right?

As Gerry said, you can have one user start a show/channel at some time, and then another user join the same channel later.

For example say User A had been watching the current show from the beginning, and User B joined it half way through. What do you do if User B hit's record, to save it? What if user A does too?

In any event, even if the "multiple live people tuning in at the same time" were an issue, perhaps that's a corner case.

It may be a "corner case" but it's something that has to be considered in the design.

It certainly seems less common to me than the case where some is watching live tv from program to program. Design entails compromise all the time. Good designs make the right compromises.

The point is just to make everyone think about the issues that come with handling "live" TV usage in an unlimited user, distributed system like Sage. I'm sure these same sorts of questions got asked by SageTV/Frey themselves when they were designing the recording engine. Their one-file-per-show solution to those questions is very elegant in that it, by it's nature solves all those multiuser use case questions.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by bastafidli

http://www.google.com/search?q=java+...ient=firefox-a

LOL!

[jsonnabend]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Their one-file-per-show solution to those questions is very elegant in that it, by it's nature solves all those multiuser use case questions.

At the cost of an enjoyable, apparently more common, single user case. That's my point.

- Jeff

[HelenWeathers]

I'm not advocating one way over another. And I'm certainly not a programmer.

But I would like to understand why when watching "live" TV, you couldn't have a single file written to the hard drive that continued to record to the same file until the user either (1)changed channels, (2)pressed the stop button or (3)ran into some arbitrary extended time limit that could be defined in the Setup section of SageTV (for those who might fall asleep).

Tuners permitting, maybe you could even have seperate files for each user based on program name and client ID or mac address.

[toricred]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

At the cost of an enjoyable, apparently more common, single user case. That's my point.

- Jeff

But the single user case may not be Sage's target audience. There are better solutions for that case.

[sleonard]

There are PC based DVR's designed for the single user, standalone case. Sage was designed primarily as a client/server whole house solution. IMO, everything in Sage is secondary to that feature.

Maybe Vista Media Center, Tivo, or a provider supplied DVR is a better fit for some of the posters in this thread.

S

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

At the cost of an enjoyable, apparently more common, single user case. That's my point.

- Jeff

You already got jumped on this I see, but I don't think that's a safe assumption. If you look at the threads around here discussing where people came from, most came from other DVR/PVR solutions to Sage because it offered a better multi-user, multi-client solution.

Sage has been designed from the ground up as a multi-client system and you can see that in the way many things operate, but most notably in the way the recording logic is architected.

You can contrast it with say Windows Media Center where multi-client/multi-user functionality has only (rather poorly) been bolted on after the fact. And I know I've read a few comments about how Snapstream had to rethink things when they brought out BTVLink and were thrust into the multi-client realm.

No doubt this is one of the top nits about Sage, but I think it's just that a nit largely. Sage has been around for at least 6 years, if the pause were the fundamental flaw it's sometimes made out to be, ie if it were really bothering a large portion of SageTV's user base, I have no doubt SageTV would have fixed it by now.

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

But I would like to understand why when watching "live" TV, you couldn't have a single file written to the hard drive that continued to record to the same file until the user either (1)changed channels, (2)pressed the stop button or (3)ran into some arbitrary extended time limit that could be defined in the Setup section of SageTV (for those who might fall asleep).

Tuners permitting, maybe you could even have seperate files for each user based on program name and client ID or mac address.

But is that ideal? If another user tunes in to the same channel currently, they have the benefit of being able to go back to when the first user started viewing, which could be the beginning.

IMO, the ideal solution would be for Sage to re architect their Dshow recording filters so they can write multiple files. This would allow starting the next show's file before terminating the current show, and thus allowing a seamless transition between the shows. This wouldn't impact the recording logic at all, and would retain all the benefits of the current system, while fixing the pause.

Let's be crystal clear on this, I do believe this is something Sage should have on their list to "fix". The disagreement is where on that list it should be. I definitely don't think it should be a top priority. I see far more negative comments about the UI than this, so I think a UI overhaul would be better for Sage's growth than this. I'd also like to see things like HD audio decoding on the extenders, better Blu-ray support (PC and extender), and I think all of these would be more beneficial to Sage than fixing the Pause.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Let's be crystal clear on this, I do believe this is something Sage should have on their list to "fix". The disagreement is where on that list it should be. I definitely don't think it should be a top priority. I see far more negative comments about the UI than this, so I think a UI overhaul would be better for Sage's growth than this. I'd also like to see things like HD audio decoding on the extenders, better Blu-ray support (PC and extender), and I think all of these would be more beneficial to Sage than fixing the Pause.

I am in full agreement with you on your assessment of priorities.

I watched the Thursday night football game (which ran over) and didn't even notice the break. My OTA tuners switch in under 2 seconds (about 1.5 to be as exact as I can be).

My DirecTV receiver is another story. But after reading through this thread, I've been tweaking my channel change on DirecTV's rather slow and bloated software just to see if I could get a faster transition. Using the USB-UIRT, I've been able to trim 3 seconds of the break time by shortening the time in between ir pulses and adding the enter command after the channel numbers.

I do have "Always Tune Channel" turned on and might try turning that off to see if it makes a difference as well.

EDIT: stanger89, I see you started a thread on the "Always Tune". Good.

[DigitalMan]

I've had 'always tune channel' turned off for some time and it doesn't seem to have any effect on the 'pause'.

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

I am in full agreement with you on your assessment of priorities.

I watched the Thursday night football game (which ran over) and didn't even notice the break. My OTA tuners switch in under 2 seconds (about 1.5 to be as exact as I can be).

My DirecTV receiver is another story. But after reading through this thread, I've been tweaking my channel change on DirecTV's rather slow and bloated software just to see if I could get a faster transition. Using the USB-UIRT, I've been able to trim 3 seconds of the break time by shortening the time in between ir pulses and adding the enter command after the channel numbers.

I do have "Always Tune Channel" turned on and might try turning that off to see if it makes a difference as well.

EDIT: stanger89, I see you started a thread on the "Always Tune". Good.

[briands]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

Not a bug? That label is besides the point, really.

When something doesn't work as consumers expect, consumer satisfaction suffers. When it really doesn't work as expected, consumers may consider the product defective.

General expectations are, I'm confident, that TV does not have The Pause between live TV shows. How many anecdotes have we read where someone asked "is your tv broken?" How many other DVR systems introduce The Pause?

Nearly three quarters of those responding here want it removed. So bug or not, it's something SageTV might consider changing.

- Jeff

This could be simple squeeky wheel... I usually just skip over this thread because I am of the opinion (as are many others) that this is not the highest priority, but should be on the to do list.

[jsonnabend]

Originally Posted by briands

This could be simple squeeky wheel... I usually just skip over this thread because I am of the opinion (as are many others) that this is not the highest priority, but should be on the to do list.

No, guys, it's not a "squeaky wheel" nor a question of "target audience". 75% of respondents said this is an issue. A "squeaky wheel" is a vocal minority, not a majority. The "squeaky wheel" here is the 25%, not the 75%. (and heck, Briands, you even say this "should be on the list".)

And it defies logic to say that the "target audience" is a subset of the actual audience.

Of course, that all assumes the poll has some statistical validity.

- Jeff

[toricred]

What we're saying is that Sage is first and foremost a multi-user software. That's why it runs as a client/server application. If people want to use it as a single user application that's fine, but that isn't the way it was designed and there's a reason for it. There really are better solutions for single user applications specifically because of the pause if nothing else.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

Of course, that all assumes the poll has some statistical validity.

Which is not a safe assumption for most forum polls

Statistical validity requires a random or representative sample. What you get with a forum poll is a sample of only those interested in the subject. With a question like this, where there's nobody opposed to the idea in question, you get only those who want to see it fixed, and then a handful of others.