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

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by sportera

Yep, like about 99% of the rest of the "working people" in the world who come home in the evening and turn to the news channel to keep abreast of current world and local "news" everyday. What planet did you come from?

Don't sound so surprised... Local and national news viewership has been dropping steadily in younger audiences lately. The combination of internet news, as well as the lack of trust in modern 'news' organizations has seriously decreased that habit. in fact, I'd not be surprised if very few of the people here even WATCH the news, let alone do so live, or at 6pm when they 'get home from work'. Besides, with sagetv, i always have plenty of better things to watch when iget home anyways.. :-)

[wayner]

I almost never watch TV news - I subscribe to two newspapers every day, plus a weekly newspaper (The Economist) and get more current news from the internet and business news from Bloomberg.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by ytulpan

One of Ms Pearson’s subjects, a 27-year-old man, claimed to watch recorded television 90% of the time. In fact he watched live TV 69% of the time. He was probably not so much fibbing as misinter-
preting the question.

I know that I don't watch that much live TV as when I pick up the remote I go into Sage - RecordedTV. I almost never directly watch TV from my cable box and I almost never go to LiveTV in Sage.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by sportera

Yep, like about 99% of the rest of the "working people" in the world who come home in the evening and turn to the news channel to keep abreast of current world and local "news" everyday.

And 99.99% of those "working people" don't use SageTV or probably any other DVR except the one that comes from their TV provider.

One thing we can be quite certain of, the "average" SageTV user is very, very different than the "average" "working people". You just don't go seeking out an alternative DVR (to the one provided by your provider), a Tivo or Moxi, and you certainly don't go so far as to track down a PC based solution unless you've got some serious issues with the features/capabilities of said provider DVR.

And Since Tivo/Moxi/SageTV/etc don't do anything for "live" TV that said provider DVR doesn't, it's rather safe to assume that the typical Tivo/Moxi, and much more so PC solution (SageTV) user is looking primarily for a recording solution.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by mmanville

I never said every night. Come on.

Does it have to be "every night" to be a problem? If it's only a couple times a week, then it's OK. Is that your point?

My "point" was that you said

Originally Posted by mmanville

Do you ever watch the news (or sports)? Do you have friends that like to watch sports, so you sometimes invite them over?

If you do care at all about these two viewing genre ... are you telling me you never watch them live? You schedule news programs in advance and watch them time-delayed? Really?

Acting suprised and almost incredulous that someone might not watch sports or news live, to the point that you insinuated the the person was lying to you, e.g. are you telling me you never watch them live? You schedule news programs in advance and watch them time-delayed? Really?

I just turned it around on you, so perhaps you could see how ridiculous it was (a point you CLEARLY missed). Just because you watch tv a certain way, don't assume that everyone else watches that way too.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by sportera

Yep, like about 99% of the rest of the "working people" in the world who come home in the evening and turn to the news channel to keep abreast of current world and local "news" everyday. What planet did you come from?

Well, I dont come from the planet of denial, which is where you must reside. When you look out of the front window, does it look like the subburb from Edward Sissorhands? In the world where I live the "working people" of the world dont pull into their driveway's every day at 5:50 in their American made cars and turn on their Philips or Zenith tvs to Watch Walter Cronkite tell us the Way It Is every night.

In my world "working people" have jobs that can run long. They have commutes with traffic that can delay them. They have meetings, reports to finish, projects to complete, buildings to construct, etc. On the way home they often have errands to run, shopping to do, children to cart around, and even, god forbid, dinner to pick up from the local restaurant. They cant always be in front of the television every night at six. But what is more important in my world is THEY DON"T HAVE TO. The "working people" in the world I come from are not afraid of technology and actually know how to use it to, for instance, record the news program that airs every night at six, so that they can view it later in their leisure.

It's a nice place. We call it 2010, also known as reality. You might think of joining us sometime.

[sportera]

Originally Posted by nick_l

In my world "working people" have jobs that can run long. They have commutes with traffic that can delay them. They have meetings, reports to finish, projects to complete, buildings to construct, etc. On the way home they often have errands to run, shopping to do, children to cart around, and even, god forbid, dinner to pick up from the local restaurant. They cant always be in front of the television every night at six.

Been there. Done it. Still do it occaisionally when I have to. When I do, I turn to the news station on the car radio while driving home. When there is a current world or local news story I want to monitor, such as a hurricane is in the gulf (I"m a New Orleans boy), I will set the news to record "just in case". But again, my point being, this is the exception rather than the rule. And further more, I want the news as it is happening if possible. Maybe thats why they call it "NEW"s. I want it when I come home because I don't want to be watching it later at night during priime time TV when I choose to watch LIVE TV with my family. I'd rather find out who got voted off Celeb Apprentice when the show airs rather hearing about it on the way to work, or at the office, the next day (kind of like having someone tell you how the book ends before you've read it). Then I go to bed early to get up early in the morning to begin MY 10-12 hour workday. This is me and my lifestyle. You opened this up by mocking another for his LiveTV watching habits, and I called you on it. Get over it.

Originally Posted by nick_l

But what is more important in my world is THEY DON"T HAVE TO. The "working people" in the world I come from are not afraid of technology and actually know how to use it to, for instance, record the news program that airs every night at six, so that they can view it later in their leisure.

It's a nice place. We call it 2010, also known as reality. You might think of joining us sometime.

You'd be surprised at how much technology I use in my daily life. My job is all about technology and my home is probably more high tech than yours and most others. But I'm not going to brag about it or mock someone who doesn't choose live like a "teckie" or "geek" like I do.

I'm not going to get into a "forever" word exchange with you over this and let it take over this thread. You might want to refer back to the page 1 of this thread. It's about getting feedback on the "majority" of the people who hate THE PAUSE, which by the way is directly related to who watch LIVE TV. And when you do, pay particular attention to the results of the poll. WE are 75% (currently and growing everytime I look at it) of Sage users that choose to live in the "day" and not in the "delay".

[Dingdul]

We use Sage for a good deal of live TV yet depending on time of day may watch only recorded shows. We've grown indifferent to the peculiar pauses (although I still hold my breath until the picture returns).

Irrespective, I've always been amused - occasionally astonished - at a few Sage stalwarts who speedily dismiss or ridicule the views/needs of others who've spent no less $ than themselves and are absolutely entitled to a fully functional product.

Sage's sales pitch heavily promotes the 'live TV' functionality - "TV how you want" (or maybe that should be "TV how other forum members want")

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by sportera

I want it when I come home because I don't want to be watching it later at night during priime time TV when I choose to watch LIVE TV with my family. I'd rather find out who got voted off Celeb Apprentice when the show airs rather hearing about it on the way to work, or at the office, the next day (kind of like having someone tell you how the book ends before you've read it).

You know, watching "recorded" doesn't necessarilly mean waiting days to see it. I quite often watch recorded prime time the same day. But since it's recorded, I can fit 3 shows into about 2:15 instead of 3 hours. And not have to sit through all the annoying drug commercials.

And when you do, pay particular attention to the results of the poll. WE are 75% (currently and growing everytime I look at it) of Sage users that choose to live in the "day" and not in the "delay".

What you need to realize is that (no offense to the OP) the original question was rather poor. The debate has never been about whether it should be fixed yes/no period. It's been about how soon it should be fixed, and how much of Sage's finite resources should be taken away from other things to fix it.

If you don't watch much TV live, it's a tiny nit that you probably couldn't care less about (like me), so my point has always been Sage has bigger things to fix (like the interface that I see referenced all the time on other forums as reason people won't even touch Sage).

Frankly I'm surprised given the open endedness of the question (Should it be fixed [ever]?) that the percentage is only 75%, I think that's telling in and of itself (in the opposite way you think).

Originally Posted by Dingdul

Irrespective, I've always been amused - occasionally astonished - at a few Sage stalwarts who speedily dismiss or ridicule the views/needs of others who've spent no less $ than themselves and are absolutely entitled to a fully functional product.

It's not ridicule, it's experience. Many, most of us who "defend" the pause (and please note we don't actually defend it, we defend SageTV's choice not to fix it, and we "promote" the idea that their resources are better spent elsewhere) have found that once we got a good PVR system setup, one that works as well as Sage and can record shows whenever they're on, we don't just plop down on the couch and watch TV live much anymore. There's no reason to since there's a huge catalog of stuff that we actually want to watch.

And as for the prime time TV examples above, the "I don't want to find out what happened the next day before I watch it". We have those issues to, we just watch the shows late, since we can skip through commercials.

Sage's sales pitch heavily promotes the 'live TV' functionality - "TV how you want" (or maybe that should be "TV how other forum members want")

What sales pitch is that? Sage hardly has a sales pitch, and for me it's always been the recording functionality. Like I said, Sage doesn't bring anything new to the table WRT live TV, so I just don't see how people would "flock" to Sage for it's live TV functionality.

[sportera]

Originally Posted by stanger89

What you need to realize is that (no offense to the OP) the original question was rather poor. The debate has never been about whether it should be fixed yes/no period. It's been about how soon it should be fixed, and how much of Sage's finite resources should be taken away from other things to fix it.

If you don't watch much TV live, it's a tiny nit that you probably couldn't care less about (like me), so my point has always been Sage has bigger things to fix (like the interface that I see referenced all the time on other forums as reason people won't even touch Sage).

Frankly I'm surprised given the open endedness of the question (Should it be fixed [ever]?) that the percentage is only 75%, I think that's telling in and of itself (in the opposite way you think).

Ya know stanger, I can really appreciate your opinion, and others like you, with respect to Sage development priorities. In the end we have to agree to disagree. And I do disagree with your last statement, "Frankly I'm surprised...should it be fixed [ever]?...".

Apparently there is a line drawn in the sand with respect to "those who record everything" and "those who don't". It is my opinion the poll says it all with the majority being "those who don't" (record everything).

So this will continue to go on until Sage releases V7. I, and others like me will continue to speak out against the friggin', aggrivating, PAUSE, and request priority be given to fix it. And those like you, will continue to state your case as to what should be fixed first.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by sportera

Ya know stanger, I can really appreciate your opinion, and others like you, with respect to Sage development priorities. In the end we have to agree to disagree. And I do disagree with your last statement, "Frankly I'm surprised...should it be fixed [ever]?...".

Apparently there is a line drawn in the sand with respect to "those who record everything" and "those who don't". It is my opinion the poll says it all with the majority being "those who don't" (record everything).

So this will continue to go on until Sage releases V7. I, and others like me will continue to speak out against the friggin', aggrivating, PAUSE, and request priority be given to fix it. And those like you, will continue to state your case as to what should be fixed first.

No offense, but the numbers from the poll are really quite useless. Even if sage users ARE divided as you say, with the wording of the poll, the 'record everything' camp would just as likely check on the 'Yes! : Sage Please give us the option of eliminating the "pause".' option. I don't think anyone would be UPSET if they made it work smoother. Therefore, you can't accuratly (or even remotely reliably) say that because 75% of people chose that option, that 75% of people watch a lot of live tv, or find the pause that detrimental to their experience. A good portion of those could just as easily be people that feel the improvement would make sage a stronger product, so of course they would LIKE it to be fixed.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

No offense, but the numbers from the poll are really quite useless. Even if sage users ARE divided as you say, with the wording of the poll, the 'record everything' camp would just as likely check on the 'Yes! : Sage Please give us the option of eliminating the "pause".' option. I don't think anyone would be UPSET if they made it work smoother. Therefore, you can't accuratly (or even remotely reliably) say that because 75% of people chose that option, that 75% of people watch a lot of live tv, or find the pause that detrimental to their experience. A good portion of those could just as easily be people that feel the improvement would make sage a stronger product, so of course they would LIKE it to be fixed.

I fall into this category of people. I don't get upset about the pause, but I wouldn't care if SageTV changed how it buffers content.

I do think that a circular buffering system where the end user can specific how much they want to buffer (and allow for large amounts - multiple hours instead of limiting it to 60 minutes) would be the better than the current linear buffering system.

I think currently more people are negatively effected by the "Pause" than are postively effected by the endless linear buffering per show. I just don't think many people watch live TV for hours (without changing the channel) and then decide at the end to save whatever show they were watching. I'm sure it happens sometimes, but much less frequently than the "Pause" happens.

Just my two cents.

[Fuzzy]

I in no way want them to change to a circular buffer, all I'm wanting is a method with which they can seamlessly transition from writing one file to the next when a program changes, but is on the same channel, without having to rebuild the recording graph. This would take a more sophisticated writer filter, that understood the different video formats, such that it would only perform the split on the next B frame after program change.

[mmanville]

Originally Posted by nick_l

Acting suprised and almost incredulous that someone might not watch sports or news live, to the point that you insinuated the the person was lying to you, e.g. are you telling me you never watch them live? You schedule news programs in advance and watch them time-delayed? Really?

I just turned it around on you, so perhaps you could see how ridiculous it was (a point you CLEARLY missed). Just because you watch tv a certain way, don't assume that everyone else watches that way too.

OK, I'm sorry. We have very different viewing habits regarding the news. I confess I am surprised that so many people watch news via timeshifting. Guilty as charged. Let's just move on. Peace. No one was calling you a liar, or anything like it.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by sportera

Ya know stanger, I can really appreciate your opinion, and others like you, with respect to Sage development priorities. In the end we have to agree to disagree. And I do disagree with your last statement, "Frankly I'm surprised...should it be fixed [ever]?...".

Fuzzy really hit my point on the head. Given the wording of the question, there being no time frame on "when" just "if", I'm surprised the vote wasn't closer to 100%.

I mean, I watch live TV rarely enough, and when I do I am paying little enough attention, that I've never been bothered by it. But even so, I think it's not optimal behavior and should get fixed at some point (if only to end the "pause" threads ).

I actually voted no (apparently) but I believe I took the question to mean, "Should it be fixed 'soon'?". I'm guessing most of the 25% opposed answered like me, not that they don't think it should be fixed, but that we don't think it's a high priority.

I think the split would be different if one of the following questions were asked:

Should the pause be fixed in the next version of SageTV?
Should the pause be fixed before a UI overhaul?
Should the pause be fixed before better BD support?
etc...

Apparently there is a line drawn in the sand with respect to "those who record everything" and "those who don't". It is my opinion the poll says it all with the majority being "those who don't" (record everything).

The line is between those who are bugged by it, and those who aren't. Though I assume those who are, watch a lot more stuff live than those of us who aren't. Like I said above, based on the question you can't say that "75% of Sage users don't record everything" since yes votes could be people who record everything but want the threads to stop

[toricred]

Interestingly this thread http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48115 indicates that the UI is a high priority for significantly more people than the pause. Of course that is at the time I'm writing it and it is relatively early in the poll.

[Suntan]

Personally, I'm surprised that so many people use Sage to watch live TV. Why not use the onboard tuner in the TV? Sage changes channels too slowly to channel surf (which is really the only use for live TV anymore, imo.)

I guess I never knew there was a "pause" issue until I read about it here.

-Suntan

[scoful]

I think the biggest challenge with this issue is likely hardware.

It would probably be easy to overcome this issue if Sage only worked (or was bundled with) with specific hardware.

Sage is VERY accommodating to a wide variety of tuners, encoders and STB's.

This means that they must use a pretty bullet proof approach for handling stream transitions. I would expect that some hardware may require a shutdown of it's filters to change the channel or may have unpredictable results (lockups or BSOD's etc).

While I do find it occasionally irritating, I find truly live television far more irritating at this point (can't stand commercials).

[mmanville]

Originally Posted by Suntan

Personally, I'm surprised that so many people use Sage to watch live TV. Why not use the onboard tuner in the TV? Sage changes channels too slowly to channel surf (which is really the only use for live TV anymore, imo.)

Possible answers to your question

1. People don't want to have to change the input source to watch live tv
2. There is no antenna hooked up ot the TV tuner (ATSC users)
3. People want to either pause, rewind, or start recording live TV while watching (remember? that is the whole reason the "pause" exists, to allow live TV users to do this, according to earlier posts?)
4. "Channel surf" is not the same as "live TV." Channel surf means "I don't have anything specific I'm trying to watch, I just want to watch something." If there's truly nothing I want to watch on live right now, then ... that's why I have media center, so I can watch something recorded! I think you just need to accept that some people like to watch certain things, especially sports, and news, live. And they know exactly what they want to watch, they don't have to "channel surf" to find it (besides, why are you surfing when you have an EPG?!?) I don't know why this is so hard to grasp, and it is nothign new. I think the vast majority of people who watch sports, watch it live, whether the technology is DVR or VHS.

[reggie14]

I think this is also one of the things mmanville meant, but keep in mind you also get the pause between shows when you're watching live-shifted material that is still recording. For instance, if you're watching NBC's Thursday night lineup, and you start 20 minutes into The Office, you'll get the pause when you switch over to 30 Rock.

I really think this can be fixed in software, at least in some situations. You can imagine playing live/timeshifted TV from a circular buffer, yet still recording to normal files. You can imagine that even for favorites that are recording. But, the downside is that automatic commercial skipping isn't going to work. At least, not without some coordination between the commercial skipping marker and Sage. Alternatively, only non-recordings (i.e., not favorites or manual recordings) could go into the circular buffer, but then that's such a niche area (where both the previous and the next TV shows are not recordings) that I'd fairly rarely run into it. I do watch a lot of shows only slightly timeshifted, so I get the pauses between shows, but that seems to be a lot harder to fix.