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

[fac13]

I guess from some of the replies, and from the current poll score, that about one third of Sage users don't watch live sport and if they ever watch the news they prefer to record it first (duh?). This allows them to say proudly "I never watch live TV anymore", and of course they are unaffected by this problem.

The remainder are probably like me - we watch mostly recorded stuff but would like to be able to watch live TV without the frankly amateurish pauses.

[jaminben]

Being an old school TV watcher I always watch live TV (90% of the time) and the pause when one show ends and another begins is quite annoying, especially if a show runs over. This would be my number one request if I had the choice.

[toricred]

I don't watch live TV very often, but my wife and kids do. I don't know that I've ever heard a comment about the pause from my wife, but my kids when they were younger used to think it was "weird". I can understand that some might find it annoying. On the other hand comments that use words like "amateurish" are probably not going to encourage rational conversation. It might also turn off any Sage developers that happen to read the posting. In my experience developers that are turned off rarely pay any attention to those that made the comments.

[DFranch]

The pause you are talking about never really bothered me that much. I do watch live sports, and it is just a very minor thing IMHO. Has Sage really matured to the point that this is considered a big problem?

[Chriscic]

I think the only real issue I see with the pause is what someone pointed out some time ago... they had guests over for new year's, at at the critical moment they got the "pause." That would be a very annoying unanticipated event!

I haven't noticed the ends of any shows cut off, but I can see if they run over this would be a problem. You'd miss it in a recording regardless though I suppose.

[49studebaker]

Originally Posted by toricred

In my experience developers that are turned off rarely pay any attention to those that made the comments.

Not a good idea in my opinion. Customers are the ones who pay bills and salaries.

[toricred]

I understand that, but most of the developers I have dealt with were pretty egotistical and since they didn't own the company they had a hard time caring about customers. I'm not saying this is the case with the Sage developers, but rather is based on my experiences. None the less the term "amateurish" is probably not the best way to win friends and influence developers.

[briands]

I have family visiting and it is just easier to let them watch live TV... I happened to be in the room during one of the pauses so I asked them if it bothered them... Their reply was "What pause"....

[49studebaker]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The real question is if it's possible to do such a thing within the confines of Directshow or not. I don't know the answer to that (though probably).

My gut tells me it's actually probably easier on the Linux side since there's no Dshow to worry about.

I think Sage use OpenGL for graphics in linux. Does anyone know if OpenGL has the same limitation as DirectShow?

[reeven]

We need an user option in Sage, turn OFF or ON.
I hate that pause thing, i pay v5 licence of Sage but never use SageTV...go back to christv until 2 weeks ago....now i'm on Sage and see that annoying thing still here.

[joejoeyjojo]

The pause nevers works correctly on Sage in my experiece for every version I have tried. I am up to 6.2 now and I watch a lot of live TV still. Shows often run over time especially shows they divide into two time slots.

In my experience the pause happens. then it does not start where it should have paused at and you miss the end of shows or peices of the show where it has run over time eevry time. This is very annoying.

In the latest release I have a slo found that sometimes it goes to a pause then never comes back and the screen stays black.

Does anybody else have this issue?

Joe

[sageGuru]

An option that allows a user the choice between live buffer or recording to a file would be nice. Doubt it will ever happen.

[slowpoke]

This is biggest flaw in the use of sage... I'm sure there are other technical issues but from a user perspective this is very obvious and actually lame.

[TBacker]

Originally Posted by Rico66

But when watching live you can get into this dreaded pause right at the last minute of a game, which quite frankly sucks.

I concur. Try having guys over for the game, with the game in the last minute before possible O.T., and have "The Pause" in the middle of a key play! Now you're banned from hosting armchair tailgating until you fix your damn TV.

To add insult to injury, the pause does not resume where it left off - that time in the program is gone forever.

If using an extender, the gap is a helluva lot longer than a second or two. Try 3-5 on good HD sources.

I've dabbled in audio programming with DirectX but not video, so I may be nieve here, but why can't Sage leave a capture graph built and just start writing to a new file? The timeline would be something like:

- Show is recording.
- With 15 seconds left to go before the scheduled end of show (EOS), Sage creates the next file and gets it ready to write to (simultaneously in the background).
- At the EOS / BOS, Sage continues as it did before but all future reads/writes go to the new file.
- At 10 seconds into the new file, Sage closes the last file / does cleanup.

Right now Sage seems to do this process very "serially" - stop recording, stop playback, close file, destroy graph, build graph, create file, start recording, start playback... Do the recording and playback processes even communicate? I.e. recording process signals to playback process "after frame 86,252, start to pull frames from file wxyz.mpg".

Am I missing something here?

[toricred]

I only use extenders and it's only a max of 2 seconds for me.

[rv73]

The pause is annoying, and the point is that off-the-shelf PVR's don't do it. It's what the majority of people know about and frankly is what Sage is measured against.

When it happened at my place, and the screen went black, my mate says to me. " What happened to the TV ? Is it broken ? Why is it black ?" etc.

[TBacker]

I wonder if any of the Sage guys have seen this thread and if they'd care to speak up about whether this is even something they will look into?

There's got to be a way to overlap file change, or at least tighten it up to under a second, without breaking the concept of always recording.

[TBacker]

Originally Posted by toricred

I only use extenders and it's only a max of 2 seconds for me.

I may have exaggerated some as many times it's around 2 seconds, but NEVER less, and many times MORE. It all depends on how busy the Sage core is at the moment.

That said, 2-3 seconds is enough to mess up an interception in football, an awesome shot in basketball, the ball drop on new years, etc. Plus, a lot of networks are tinkering with show timing and doing a hard transition at the top or just past.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by TBacker

I may have exaggerated some as many times it's around 2 seconds, but NEVER less, and many times MORE. It all depends on how busy the Sage core is at the moment.

That said, 2-3 seconds is enough to mess up an interception in football, an awesome shot in basketball, the ball drop on new years, etc. Plus, a lot of networks are tinkering with show timing and doing a hard transition at the top or just past.

Using R5000 the delay is 3 to 6 seconds as best and highly annoying

[Olias]

I hadn't thought much about "the pause" until today. My wife had surgery a few days ago and is laid up for a few weeks. So she is watching a LOT of live TV along with shows we've recorded.

We were watching the news a few minutes ago when "the pause" reared it's ugly head. She turns to me and says "It's been doing that all day. Can you fix it?" I didn't even try to explain what technically was happening. All I could say was, that's just the way Sage works. Not exactly the answer she wanted to hear.