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

[MeInMaui]

Somehow I just can't see SageTV changing the fundamental architecture of their software to address a relatively benign (though perhaps annoying) consequence of the approach. And I think the idea of having an option to choose between the current behavior and a circular buffer is even less likely to be implemented.

On a separate thought, I wonder if the length of the pause decreases with a faster processor on the server. I would think that it should since it is related to destroying and rebuilding the graph for the next recording.

Aloha,
Mike

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by trini0

So not true. My whole network is synced to a few external ntp servers, and my time is fairly accurate. I still miss out during pauses, that I have to run to a tv network website to catch what I missed, (which I've done a few times for a good show), then for me, whats the true value of the pause.

Regarding the time issue...that was mainly for people complaining that they constantly miss the last little bit of their recordings. If it happens all the time on most (or on all) channels, then you have a clock issue. You can sync your PC clocks to the most accurate time servers in the world. If the network broadcasters don't broadcast their shows with their timeslots synced to those same time servers, it won't do you any good. SageTV can't do anything about that.

For the missing gap between shows, check the SageTV server .properties file. Look for the videoframe/safe_fast_file_switching setting and try setting it to false. And in the server and any pc client SageTV .properties files, check the videoframe/time_to_start_into_tv_file_playback and be sure it's set to 0. That might help minimize it, but there will still be a gap of depending on how fast your server can tear down the recording graph and start up a new one.

Setting overlap wouldn't cure all situations (such back to back programs).

If you don't have enough tuners, no it won't be a 100% solution for everybody.

Regardless of what SageTV *allows* you to do, it doesn't *allow* for people like myself to *choose* whether or not they want the pause.

Me personally. I'm not asking for either pause or no pause. I respect that some like it the way it is.
I'm asking whether or not its possible to do both, and to let the end user decide what they want. A feature I would gladly pay for.

I agree. It's something that would increase the user experience for a significant percentage of users. If it's something the SageTV developers can do without disturbing the existing recording and playback stability, then they should certainly put it on their roadmap or bump it up if it's already on the roadmap.

[MitchSchaft]

This isn't benign at all. When you watch TV, the pause makes the software seem archaic or "broken" and keeps newer users away.
And I surely don't have a time issue. The problem isn't the show going over it's time slot.

[Lucas]

I can't say that it bothers me. In my part of the world, the broadcasters rarely stick to the schedule so I always set up padding, thus rarely miss any parts due to the change in the video file.

Having said that, when watching live, the pause has caused comments from people who are not used with PVRs.

I think I managed to reduce it to less that a second by reducing a parameter in the .properties file. I think it's the one about how much SageTV records before playback can begin.

[bunch92]

Well, it is annoying me. I can't believe some people on here are pleased to have that pause.

Stop the pause !

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by bunch92

Well, it is annoying me. I can't believe some people on here are pleased to have that pause.

I don't think anyone is "pleased" to have the pause. Some people just don't care. A lot of us have basically stopped watching live TV, and that's the only time you get the pause.

I think most of the resistance in this thread is really resistance to moving away from the way Sage handles live TV, which is to treat live TV basically like recordings, rather than using a circular buffer. And, I think you'll agree, the way Sage handles live TV does have pretty significant benefits which, to many of us, outweigh the annoyance of the pause.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I don't think anyone is "pleased" to have the pause. Some people just don't care. A lot of us have basically stopped watching live TV, and that's the only time you get the pause.

I think most of the resistance in this thread is really resistance to moving away from the way Sage handles live TV, which is to treat live TV basically like recordings, rather than using a circular buffer. And, I think you'll agree, the way Sage handles live TV does have pretty significant benefits which, to many of us, outweigh the annoyance of the pause.

Precisely. Well said.

[routerunner]

Yes, please get rid of that pause, I'm new to SageTV and we always watch LiveTV in my house, when I watched the first time Live TV with Sage and that pause appeared we immediately thought that something was wrong with the equipment...horrible, I'll go back to MCE

[Brent]

Originally Posted by routerunner

horrible, I'll go back to MCE

seriously?

The "pause" lasts about a second - 2 at the most and unless you're really watching LiveTV all the time I can't understand what brought folks out of the woodwork here. I guess the pause might annoy me if I really concentrated on it, but to me I prefer that method over the circular buffer option. I can't remember for sure, but doesn't Tivo do the same thing as SageTV? I remember Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD fame complaining that he can't record the buffer with MS MediaCenter...

Are you guys really thinking of the negative side of this equation?

1. You are watching a show and decide you want to save it. Hit record and it's saved. With circular buffer LiveTV is gone - no changing your mind.
2. Commercial skipping can be done while watching LiveTV (time delayed slightly so watching a currently recording show). So when I begin watching Lost at 7:30pm which started at 7pm my commercials are already marked and I can skip them! I do NOT want this feature to go away to avoid 1-2 second "pause" for watching LiveTV.
3. Snapstream has had problems with the circular buffer and in some cases gone away from a true circular buffer and used "slices" instead. That discussion gets pretty complicated & over my head though.
4. Not long ago there were numerous threads on Snapstream and even GreenButton complaining that you couldn't "save the buffer" with BTV or MC. Guess what that means - the exact opposite argument of what is being asked for here

With all of that being said, I think a circular buffer IS possible within SageTV as long as I'm understanding this stuff correctly. But it would require some work using this API called WatchLive. So maybe it could be done as an option for the LiveTV-with-No-Pause-crowd.

I'm all for reducing or eliminating the "pause" as long as it doesn't mean re-writing the way SageTV handles recordings. Add an option - fine. Reduce the pause - fine. Change to circular buffer - not so much.

In the scheme of things though the following things seem a little higher on the priority list:
1. UI Improvement
2. More Online Media Access from within SageTV
3. Improving the usability and ease of installation/settings
4. Music functionality improvement
5. Photo functionality improvement
6. DTS Downmix for HD200!!!! PLEASE!

But yeah, that's just my laundry list

[bialio]

So much hate here for the Pause.

I like it. Lets me know what time it is without having to look at my watch.

Long live the Pause.

btl.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by bialio

So much hate here for the Pause.

I like it. Lets me know what time it is without having to look at my watch.

Long live the Pause.

btl.

haha There ya go - it's a feature!

Guys, I didn't mean to say you're crazy or anything in that last post- I do notice that pause and the wife mentions it at times. But I want to be sure you're looking at the big picture including disadvantages of what you're asking for.

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by Brent

The "pause" lasts about a second - 2 at the most and unless you're really watching LiveTV all the time I can't understand what brought folks out of the woodwork here.

Unless you're using an HD PVR, where most people use the delay setting for channel changes, which seem to come in effect here (so it's around 5 seconds in this case). And I always think that the HD PVR has locked up when this happens.

I don't watch a lot of live tv, besides sports. And especially for sports programming it's annoying because the scheduling is quite often too short and events do last longer. When recording I'd always add at least 30 minutes, so there's no problem there. But when watching live you can get into this dreaded pause right at the last minute of a game, which quite frankly sucks.

Again I don't run into this too often, but it's definetly annoying. Coming from Media Center I wasn't used to this.

[jsin]

We have about 50 "favorites" in the Recording Schedule, but it's not likely we'll stop watching Live TV any time soon. Yes we can do without the "pause".

I don't really care whether it is implemented by using a circular buffer (and therefore might come with certain set of side-effects) or by some other method. Even if there were side-effects, once I understand what the pros and cons are, I'll make a choice and set it up the way I want.

I guess we are debating if this is a "bug fix" or a "feature request" (where a bug-fix would have a higher priority)? I guess I tend to lean toward the former, but hey, we all have different priorities...

[ruwackd]

I may be a bit naive here but why would you need to lose any portion of the recording when pressing record while watching LiveTV if using a circular buffer? Why not just have the circular buffer file become the recorded file rather than creating the recording file from the point at which "record" was pressed? Sure for that one recording you could have several minutes of extra time in the recording but that would be much more acceptable to me than to miss any part of the recording and it would remove the pause during normal live TV viewing.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by ruwackd

I may be a bit naive here but why would you need to lose any portion of the recording when pressing record while watching LiveTV if using a circular buffer? Why not just have the circular buffer file become the recorded file rather than creating the recording file from the point at which "record" was pressed? Sure for that one recording you could have several minutes of extra time in the recording but that would be much more acceptable to me than to miss any part of the recording and it would remove the pause during normal live TV viewing.

It would depend on how big the buffer was. If the buffer were just 30 minutes and you decided at the 45 minute mark to record an hour long show, you'd miss the first 15 minutes. The argument then becomes, well, make the buffer bigger! But, how big? 1 hour seems decent, right? But, what about a baseball game or NASCAR that goes for several hours? That's where SRE should come to the rescue, though.

[evilpenguin]

I'm still not sure I understand what people want here

Which of these scenarios accurately describes the situation people want solved...

1. Watching a Scheduled recording with another scheduled recording right afterwards.
2. Watching a Scheduled recording without another scheduled recording right afterwards.
3. Watching LiveTV with a scheduled recording coming up.
4. Watching LiveTV without a scheduled recording coming up.

For #1 I think the pause is just the price of doing business, but for the other three I could compromises.

For #2 would you want the scheduled recording your'e watching just extended if you happen to be watching it live? For instance if I want to watch the 7pm show live and when its over I just keep watching the 8pm show and Sage handles this by making the 7pm favorite a 2 hour recording that includes the 8pm show.

For #3 would you want the LiveTV you're watching included in the favorite thats coming up. For instance if I start watching at 7:45 for the 8pm show then that favorite will have 15 extra minutes at the beginning.

For #4 would you want it just to save everything your watching on that channel as a giant recording? For instance if i'm watching a bunch of un-favorited TV shows on the same channel it'd create a recording for the first episode I watch and if I just leave it playing it would just extend that recording to be as large as it needs to be to accommodate my viewing and result in a single recording that's X hours long.

[heffe2001]

For one, if you have several minutes of extra time in the recording, you'll have people come to the forums and complain"why can't they get rid of that extra time that's not part of this slot, all you have to do is trim it off when you convert it". As far as it goes, I don't think any of the methods mentioned above are a real 'suites everybody' fix. The only way I would think it could work, is buffer between the last minute of the first show, until the next show starts recording in memory, and feed that to the client (although I don't think this would be trivial to implement on software clients, the hardware clients may have an easier time with it). That way you avoid the circular buffer problems, but don't have the pause either. I'd be willing to bet though you'd still have pauses with some tuner configurations.

[sleonard]

I almost never watch live tv anymore and when I do it's just for a particular show. When that show is over I stop while the credits are scrolling and start looking through the guide for another show that I want to watch.

Besides, with the exception of sporting events and the rare shows that run over their scheduled time slots the only thing on live tv during the transitions is scrolling credits and commercials. Does it really matter that there was a pause while Smilin' Bob is hawking Enzyte?

S

For the sporting events that often run over try this:

1) make it a manual recording.
2) use the "SageTV recording extender" plugin.
3) watch it slightly time shifted.

[bunch92]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I think most of the resistance in this thread is really resistance to moving away from the way Sage handles live TV, which is to treat live TV basically like recordings, rather than using a circular buffer. And, I think you'll agree, the way Sage handles live TV does have pretty significant benefits which, to many of us, outweigh the annoyance of the pause.

I just thought we could keep all the advantages of SageTV + get rid of the pause but reading the comments from the sage icons here it seems to be very difficult to achieve.

I really like SageTV for all it does, but I would like it even more without this.

Might be silly, but what about a 5 hour circular buffer ? Wouldn't that please everyone ?

[aflat]

Originally Posted by Brent

1. You are watching a show and decide you want to save it. Hit record and it's saved. With circular buffer LiveTV is gone - no changing your mind.
2. Commercial skipping can be done while watching LiveTV (time delayed slightly so watching a currently recording show). So when I begin watching Lost at 7:30pm which started at 7pm my commercials are already marked and I can skip them! I do NOT want this feature to go away to avoid 1-2 second "pause" for watching LiveTV.
3. Snapstream has had problems with the circular buffer and in some cases gone away from a true circular buffer and used "slices" instead. That discussion gets pretty complicated & over my head though.
4. Not long ago there were numerous threads on Snapstream and even GreenButton complaining that you couldn't "save the buffer" with BTV or MC. Guess what that means - the exact opposite argument of what is being asked for here

Both Tivo and MCE I know use a circular buffer, and if you hit record, it records the show. If you have a 30 minute circular buffer, and hit record 15 minutes into the show, both of them chop off the first 15 minutes of the buffer, and just record the show. MCE has the advantage that you could make the circular buffer larger, I know I had mine at 1.5 hours.

Would I go back? No. Commercial skip with a slight time delay is too nice a feature to get rid of just to avoid a <1 second pause for me.