Live pause bug - any prospect of a fix?

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Live pause bug - any prospect of a fix?

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DavidLewis

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(Hi. First post, but long-time lurker.)

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGHHHH!!! For a treat, the family were allowed to eat their tea in front of the first episode of Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday evening. The children put the TV on ready, and paused the programme (aren't PVRs great!) for a few minutes just as it started because Mum was just bringing tea in.

Some time later I heard shouts and howls coming from the lounge - the blessed PVR had decided to "skip forward to live" to record Doctor Who on the same channel. The last ten minutes of Strictly were lost. And they weren't yet available on iPlayer either. Cue much grumbling from family, whose treat had turned sour.

The purpose of this lengthy post is to illustrate how this PVR fails to perform one of the simplest and most basic PVR functions, and to ask Barry whether he has heard of any prospect of this fundamental inadequacy ever being fixed by Humax?

Unlike various of the other bugs, this one has no workaround - you just have to accept that Live Pause will sometimes cause you to lose the end of the programme you're watching! We weren't aware that Doctor Who was scheduled after Strictly because we'd set the whole Doctor Who series to record some weeks ago, and forgotten about it. No other recordings were in progress.

I'm generally pleased with the HDR, and I'm aware that missing a few minutes of Strictly Come Dancing isn't exactly a life-or-death matter, but this particular bug is making me consider eBaying the box and swapping to a Samsung instead.

Please Humax, fix the live pause behaviour. Please.

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 8:52:17 #1 |
gomezz

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The rule of thumb is if it is worth watching it is worth recording. That is more than just a workaround, is a basic tenet of using any PVR.

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 9:09:16 #2 |
grahamlthompson

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Not sure if the Samsung would have coped with using time shift on a channel with a follow up recording. In my experience pvrs pretty well always allocate the same tuner for consecutive access to the same channel. In the OP's case had he pressed the the instant record button rather than live pause and 30 seconds later picked up the ongoing recording from the media list using chasing playback there would not have neen a problem.

In any case if the other tuner was being used to record at the time then without a third tuner it would not be possible to maintain the time shift buffer and make the second recording, so at least in these circumstances it's not fixable.

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 9:46:28 #3 |
DavidLewis

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Not sure if the Samsung would have coped with using time shift on a channel with a follow up recording.

I wonder, too.

In the OP's case had he pressed the the instant record button rather than live pause and 30 seconds later picked up the ongoing recording from the media list using chasing playback there would not have neen a problem.

True enough. I guess the button on the remote labelled "PAUSE" is just too much of a temptation for somebody who quickly wants to pause a programme(!). I do use a Harmony, so I guess I could simply disable the Pause button. But I'm pretty sure the box was advertised as being able to Pause live broadcasts, so having to manually disable the function seems rather unsatisfactory.

In any case if the other tuner was being used to record at the time...

Yes, but it wasn't.

...then without a third tuner it would not be possible to maintain the time shift buffer and make the second recording, so at least in these circumstances it's not fixable.

I'm loath to get into an argument about how many tuners are required, because it distracts from the complaint in the original post. But I do think that only one tuner is necessary to timeshift a preceding programme and record the following programme on the same channel. After all, by nature there's never a time that the channel is broadcasting both programmes at the same time!

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 10:24:36 #4 |
DavidLewis

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The rule of thumb is if it is worth watching it is worth recording. That is more than just a workaround, is a basic tenet of using any PVR.

OK. But the beauty of a PVR is that it *automatically* records *everything that you're watching* in case you want to rewind. It's such a shame that the HDR chooses to throw away that *already-recorded* programme segment in a couple of circumstances.

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 10:30:10 #5 |
Wallace

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I bet you won't get caught again!

Hit the record button next time and save the hassle.

BTW, That show was repeated on BBC yesterday anyway.

Anyone think that Dolly Parton looked like The Joker from Batman? (too much Botox me thinks)

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 10:43:06 #6 |
grahamlthompson

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DavidLewis - 41 minutes ago »

Not sure if the Samsung would have coped with using time shift on a channel with a follow up recording.

I wonder, too.

In the OP's case had he pressed the the instant record button rather than live pause and 30 seconds later picked up the ongoing recording from the media list using chasing playback there would not have neen a problem.

True enough. I guess the button on the remote labelled "PAUSE" is just too much of a temptation for somebody who quickly wants to pause a programme(!). I do use a Harmony, so I guess I could simply disable the Pause button. But I'm pretty sure the box was advertised as being able to Pause live broadcasts, so having to manually disable the function seems rather unsatisfactory.

In any case if the other tuner was being used to record at the time...

Yes, but it wasn't.

...then without a third tuner it would not be possible to maintain the time shift buffer and make the second recording, so at least in these circumstances it's not fixable.

I'm loath to get into an argument about how many tuners are required, because it distracts from the complaint in the original post. But I do think that only one tuner is necessary to timeshift a preceding programme and record the following programme on the same channel. After all, by nature there's never a time that the channel is broadcasting both programmes at the same time!

The problem is that the recording start resets the timeshift buffer to time zero as the box switches to the live transmission to make the recording. . If it did not the live pause would not function while you were watching a channel you were also recording. I can imagine the posts, live pause has suddenly ceased to work.
Live pause normally works OK apart from the circumstances already discussed plus the condition you are also recording what you are watching. In this case you have the option of chasing playback viewing or picking up the missing bit from the recording.

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 11:11:28 #7 |
grahamlthompson

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DavidLewis - 44 minutes ago »

The rule of thumb is if it is worth watching it is worth recording. That is more than just a workaround, is a basic tenet of using any PVR.

OK. But the beauty of a PVR is that it *automatically* records *everything that you're watching* in case you want to rewind. It's such a shame that the HDR chooses to throw away that *already-recorded* programme segment in a couple of circumstances.

You misunderstand how the timeshift buffer works. It's a single file (0.ts), each recording is a totally seperate file so there is no interaction. This file is constantly written to by the tuner currently giving you the live picture. Recording starts at the file beginning and continues either till you get to the end of the allocated space or you start to watch a different channel (when recording starts at the beginning of the file). Your content is still there you just can't see it because the viewing limits are reset. Doing it any other way would require a seperate file for a seperate time shift buffer operation. You would in effect drastically reduce the recording duration of the HDD.

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 11:22:59 #8 |
gomezz

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DavidLewis - 1 hour ago »
But the beauty of a PVR is that it *automatically* records *everything that you're watching* in case you want to rewind.

And because it is such a flaky feature for the reasons already given that is why I have it turned off on my Topfield Freeview PVRs. I would turn it off on my Foxsat HDR too if I could.

The availability of +1 channels and online catch-up services are there for the odd occasion I really, really do want to see what happened "earlier" on a bit of live TV I did not have the foresight to record.

| Mon 12 Sep 2011 11:36:21 #9 |