[mythtv-users] NEW - BIG PROBLEM! Watching LiveTV is very slow !!!!!

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Thu Dec 16 02:58:41 UTC 2004


On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 01:13:20PM -0800, Bruce Markey wrote:
> to have something that you can watch to the end at your convenience,
> press "R". I know of no possible behavior of a temporary buffer
> that would make it a better option than to record.

I believe the "watching a very long event near live" qualifies.  Recording
the entire thing uses too much disk space to little purpose.

Another example would be the 6 hour Olympic broadcasts, which in hi-def
would take close to 50 gigabytes.    You want to watch them that day,
near live, because you don't want to hear on the radio about the results
before you watch, and you want to be able to chat with people about the
Olympics.

However, this would be even better served by a concept of a "transitory
recording," similar to that feature request in the bug database.  In
theory you should be able to have several of them (ie. imagine having
two tuners, and recording the Olympics on CBC on one and NBC on another
and switching back and forth as commercials happen.)

The difference here is that the command to the system is "Dispose of
the beginning of this recording as I watch it."  Preserving perhaps
30 minutes of rewind, but otherwise, losing the start once it has
been watched.

If you had this, then not having a live buffer makes sense.

You would also add to it the fact that these transitory recordings
vanish in general quite quickly, to make space for actual requested
recordings.

Note that this is a useful thing even for real recordings.  Sometimes
I have recorded a long item like a 4 hour movie -- again almost 30GB in
HD.   I start watching it but I don't finish.  It would be nice if
the system could be told to reclaim the start up the movie, up to
just a few minutes before my cursor.

In fact, it could even do this automatically for most recordings, figuring
you would normally -- though alas not always -- prefer to lose something
you have already watched to something you need to record.

Of course you would want it to be smart, if you only played a tiny amount
at 1x speed, you would not be considered to have watched it.


> >A common trick for sports and other live items on Tivo is as follows:
> 
> An even better trick is to just record the darn thing ;-).
> Watch something else when it starts and never fret if you've
> fallen more than 30 minutes behind and don't worry that you
> might forget and press the channel button while watching.
> The right answer is just a click away but I think the real
> issue is that old habits are hard to break.

I'm good at breaking the habits, but when it comes to events like the
Olympics, Superbowl, Academy Awards etc. I really do want to watch
them just shortly behind real-time, and I should not have to pay a large
disk space penalty to do so in an ideal setup.

On Sept 11/01, when we spent the day watching the TV, the ring buffer
is what you want.    Also, such events are _not_ following the program
guide schedule, so you would have to go in and set up a manual recording
in this case.   Lots of manual work.

Admittedly, these sorts of things will hopefully stay rare!


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