A better fast-forward experience?

[amt]

Anyone else frustrated with the fast-forward ability of the HD 300? Two things stood out for me:

1) The video of the fast forward does not appear to update the frames as often as, well, every other DVR I have ever used.

2) Once you hit play to stop the fast forward, the video does not "back-up" a few seconds, like, again, every other DVR I have ever used.

These missing features seem quite common on all other DVRs, to the point where it's quite odd to see them missing. Honestly, I should have caught this before investing hundreds of dollars in Sage, but now I am stuck. What can we do to make this situation better?

[PiX64]

well your options are to

1)use comskip and set the commercial start/stop delay in the commercial ui config
2) use the fast skip or fast reverse x2 buttons which you can set to jump in increments like 5 seconds.

Thats all i can think of at the moment.


~PiX64

[amt]

Not really thrilled with either of those. I use Linux for my server, and I really don't want to resort to using WINE to run windows programs. I have used the jump forward button, but honestly, I just want the expected, common fast-forward experience you get with every other DVR out there. Maybe I am expecting too much for a commercial alternative like Sage. I would, however, like to understand the technical barriers in this situation. Is there a reason the fast-forward can't be more fluid? Or is there a technical reason the auto-back-up can't be done (and auto adjust based on FF speed)?

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by amt

Not really thrilled with either of those. I use Linux for my server, and I really don't want to resort to using WINE to run windows programs. I have used the jump forward button, but honestly, I just want the expected, common fast-forward experience you get with every other DVR out there. Maybe I am expecting too much for a commercial alternative like Sage. I would, however, like to understand the technical barriers in this situation. Is there a reason the fast-forward can't be more fluid? Or is there a technical reason the auto-back-up can't be done (and auto adjust based on FF speed)?

A couple of observations... 1st I don't know that every DVR out there behaves the way you are describing (my only other DVR is a Comcast box and it does not back-up - in fact I find it much much worse than Sage when it comes to FF and REW).

I seem to remember that old VCR's did what you describe and that was a nice feature. I could see it being a useful add-on to Sage if it could be done well.

I think there are some technical challenges to doing this (and it is likely that results will be OK with some videos but not OK with others, depending on how they were encoded). I'm not the expert here - there are probably others here who could explain better or more accurately, so I think I will leave that to them.

Now having said that, if you try the skip fwd/back functions instead of the smooth ff/rew for a while you may find that you really like them. Personally, I find it very hard to go back to smooth fwd/rew. I've set mine up so that fwd/back #1 is 7 seconds and fwd/back #2 is 90 seconds.

My only complaint is the way they laid out the skip fwd/back #1/#2 buttons on the HD-200 (the Hauppauge remote has these buttons laid out in a much more logical way).

[wayner]

I am personally totally happy with the SkipFwd and SkipFwd2 buttons - I think this is a much better way to do things and much faster.

I use these all the time when watching sports. When a foul is called in Basketball I hit the SkipFwd twice and the shooter is generally about to shoot, after his first shot hit SkipFwd again and you will get the second shot.

For commercials the SkipFwd2 works perfect for Basketball but is a bit long for hockey, I should reduce it to 120 seconds from 150 seconds.

What I would like to see is an easiery way to change the parameters for these buttons in the UI so that they are easy to adjust quickly rather than having to dig through muliple menu levels or change a props file.

[White94Cobra]

Coming from Tivo many years ago I initially HATED the skip forward options. I frequently complained about it in the forums. However, I now hate smooth FF/RW and prefer the skip options (mine are set at 5/30).

Most commercial breaks are 6-8 30-second skips. Using smooth FW you have to concentrate for when the show comes back on so you can attempt to press the play button as quickly as possible.

Once I got comskip working reliably, I rarely have to do anything but press one button to skip all commercials.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by amt

Not really thrilled with either of those. I use Linux for my server, and I really don't want to resort to using WINE to run windows programs.

It is small command-line executable, and is pretty trivial to run under wine. If you insist on a native binary, you can build it yourself from the google-code project. The native version will be slower, and probably buggier unless you have the time/patience to fix all the 32-bit assumptions and windows-isms (and MAcOSX-isms).

Get the code from http://code.google.com/p/etv-comskip/source/checkout
Then apply the attached patch, which works for me to compile it as a 32-bit binary on my 64-bit 10.04 server.

In a quick test on my server (specs in my sig), a native version is about 15% slower than the the windows version running under Wine (167fps vs 141fps) for a 1080i recording.

Drew

[osx-addict]

Try the COMSkip stuff -- it works great and 99% of the time you do not need to do anything -- just hit play and let her rip -- all commercials will be skipped without using the remote. It's REALLY nice.. We've been using TiVO's for the past 8+ years and I find the COMSKip stuff a really nice alternative!

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by wayner

I use these all the time when watching sports. When a foul is called in Basketball I hit the SkipFwd twice and the shooter is generally about to shoot, after his first shot hit SkipFwd again and you will get the second shot.

For commercials the SkipFwd2 works perfect for Basketball but is a bit long for hockey, I should reduce it to 120 seconds from 150 seconds.

Don't forget football. I set my "Skip1" to 10 seconds, and if you jump as soon as someone is tackled, four skips (40 seconds) usually takes you right back to when they are ready to snap the ball. Unless they're in the hurry-up offense, in which case it's 3 skips.

We were at a Super Bowl party last weekend and had to leave at halftime (young daughter, bedtime), but my wife had been chatting with the girls and had missed the entire first half. When we got home, we watched the entire game (from the beginning) this way, skipping between plays. If not for the fact that we had to watch every commercial, we'd have caught up to real-time before the game ended. As it was, we were only a couple of minutes late.

I set my "Skip2" for 2 minutes. On most shows, I hit that once, then the Skip1 a couple of times, and the show is back on. On some shows (i.e., American Idol), you can pretty much count on 4-minute-plus breaks, so I just hit Skip2 twice.

[trk2]

The "back up" feature is patented by Tivo. DVR's that have this feature are paying a license fee to Tivo or are being sued by Tivo (Dish Network).

[wayner]

What do you mean by Tivo(Dish Network)? Do they jointly own the patent? I don't think they have common ownership.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by wayner

What do you mean by Tivo(Dish Network)? Do they jointly own the patent? I don't think they have common ownership.

he's saying tivo is suing dish for infringing on its patent

[davidjames]

I'm not sure if this is the correct thread to make a suggestion...

I dropped Directv a couple weeks back and one of the things I miss is the way their fast forward worked.

When fast forwarding through a commercial (for example) and I hit stop when seeing the show returning, the recording would "back up" to compensate for the delay in recognizing the show returned. This meant that almost all the time we would end up right where we wanted.

With SageTV, it stops when we say stop, but we have to rewind to compensate for the response time to recognize the commercials were over.

The software would compensate based on how fast you were fast forwarding. So if you were going 16x, it would back up further then going 4x.

I know, I could use plug-ins to eliminate commercials but that's not my point as it's valid for any times when you want to advance a recording.

Thoughts?

* merged *

[GKusnick]

See the last few posts in this thread.

[davidjames]

Wow, automatically backing up is patented! Amazing. Thanks for the link.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by trk2

The "back up" feature is patented by Tivo. DVR's that have this feature are paying a license fee to Tivo or are being sued by Tivo (Dish Network).

They might as well patent fast-forwarding itself or video playback for that matter. This is totally ridiculous.

Now that I think about it I have an old Sony VCR in the basement that "backs up" in this same fashion after fast-forwarding so look out Tivo...

[Fuzzy]

The old Smooth FF and Rew import from v6 and previous did support the back-up. Though I'm not sure it would be as smooth as what the extenders have built in though. Probably won't get much attention though, as I think most users have been swayed to the superior method of skipping vs. ff/rew.

[trk2]

In case anyone is interested here are the providers that have deals with TiVo that allow them to use TiVo patented technology:

Comcast, Cox, RCN and DirecTV

And here is a list of providers the TiVo is suing for violations of their patents:

Verizon, AT&T and Dish Network

I only follow these stories with passing interest since I'm a Dish Network customer and relatively happy with their service. Dish Network has lost numerous appeals against TiVo but so far has not been forced to pay penalties or fees. There is some thought that Echostar (Dish Network) will simply buy TiVo if/when forced to settle up.