[mythtv-users] LiveTV conflicts with scheduled recording - despite unused tuners on the same box!

[Yeechang Lee]

Mike Perkins <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> says:
> So... you recorded 9/11 to watch it later?

Yes, I did. I was at work already (US West coast stock-market hours)
when the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred,
and by the time we were sent home the bulk of the "news" that day had
occurred already, if you will. I remember coming home and watching
TiVo recordings from that day that had turned into coverage.

Live TV makes sense with two constraints: A) An unscheduled,
unexpected event occurs, with coverage on multiple channels and no
particular reason to choose between any one of them, and B) only one
tuner. That was the case for the 2002 and 2004 US elections, but I
can't think of any other times that I used Live TV with a TiVo (which,
back then, was only a single-tuner device except for DirecTV
subscribers). It certainly doesn't make sense for me today, with four
tuners.

Yes, if space aliens attack Chicago tomorrow, I'd use Live TV to flip
between channels, but only because setting up recording rules to
record each news channel using preexisting scheduling data (news
program at 10am, talk show at 10:30, etc.) would be unwieldy (but
still possible, if desired). Now, if the aliens' attack was known
about in advance, I could be sure that every channel would have its
version of special coverage of the events, so this problem wouldn't
exist.

Sports, by contrast, isn't the ideal example for Live TV. Only one
channel is used, and the start of the program is known ahead of
time. As has been advised both in this thread and many, many other
times on this list over the years, sports-recording rules should use
padding at the end.

> There *are* occasions when you want to watch something as it
> happens. Like the moon landings, for example (3:30 am here in the
> UK. I was one of the few with a TV. My room was crammed with other
> hostel dwellers).

And, looking back, you don't wish you could've saved it for watching
again later? Or that there weren't moments when it'd have been nice to
skip back a few seconds to watch a moment of the coverage again, like
to figure out whether Armstrong said "One small step for man" or "for
_a_ man"?[1] The latter is possible with MythTV's Live TV, but not the
former for any meaningful length of time.

[1] Still unclear, even today.

> I agree that myth is primarily a dvr, but that's the way that
> development has been emphasised lately. The "myth" in myth is from
> "mythical convergence device", and we would do well to remember what
> it is we're supposed to be converging: live tv is one of those
> functions, and our tv habits go back to the fifties.

Perhaps ingrained habits, or lack thereof, do make a difference
here; I was never much of a channel-flipper even before buying my TiVo
in mid-2000, and certainly that device weaned me of any remaining
live-TV inclinations.

That doesn't change the fact that, except in very, very, very specific
circumstances of the type described above, using Live TV is
unnecessary. Yes, this means that the best thing to do with those who
insist on it is to explain to them how much nicer it is to have a
Watch Recordings list jam-packed with good stuff already.

Actually, thinking of Live TV this way shifts the onus. How about
this? "Using Live TV means you haven't recorded enough."

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