# Make streaming more like another channel



## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

Whenever a commercial came on the streaming football game on Yahoo Sunday, I would think about grabbing the remote and channel surfing for a while, but that doesn't work very well with a streaming source. I have to go back to live TV first, then switch back to the streaming program and reconnect.

It would be nice if I could tell the TiVo (possibly implicitly by watching a stream long enough) to treat it as a channel. Let me channel surf, and come back to the stream as I go through the channels. Keep the stream active if I cut away for a little while so I don't have the overhead of reconnecting from scratch, but go ahead and disconnect if I'm away a long time.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

That's pretty much impossible. The apps are sandboxed from the main system to prevent them from crashing the whole thing if something goes wrong. There is really no way to drop out of an app and have it keep streaming video in the background. On the Bolt they do keep some of the apps loaded into memory so that they launch faster on subsequent launches, but they don't keep the video stream running in the background. In fact even if that was technically possible I think it would be a potential source for issues. I mean what if someone dropped out of an app like that because they were done and the app kept streaming in the background eating up their bandwidth and causing them to exceed their cap?


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

I'm just saying what would make the interface more seamless for a company that claims to want to rule the streaming world. Do they want to fix their software to make it seamless, or do they want to make the interface annoying because they aren't willing to spend enough on software developers who know what they are doing? .


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

With the Bolt they have started loading apps into memory so that the 1P feature of playing streaming videos is a lot more seamless, but allowing you to switch away from an app while it continues to stream in the background is a different story. If there weren't such things as data caps then maybe something like this would be feasible, but it seems dangerous in a world where there are data caps and going over can cost you hundreds of dollars.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Roughly speaking, better to keep the connection "open" without streaming when the event is in the background. This would let the user quickly reconnect without wasting bandwidth.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

trip1eX said:


> Roughly speaking, better to keep the connection "open" without streaming when the event is in the background. This would let the user quickly reconnect without wasting bandwidth.


I'm not sure the services allow this.


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## 59er (Mar 27, 2008)

I can't imagine the services have the bandwidth to allow everyone to keep things streaming in the background. Nor should they, most likely.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Live streaming is pretty rare anyway. Most streaming services are VOD. So the incentive to create such a feature is pretty minimal.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

If you have OTA, you can use the TV tuner for channel surfing without interrupting the streaming source on the tivo.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> I'm not sure the services allow this.


Not sure either. But besides the pt. Point being something should be done to make it quicker to get back to a live stream like this guy wants short of streaming in the background.

Maybe services could even stream really low bit rate for x minutes when moved to the background. And then ramp back up to full bit rate when returned to the foreground.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

trip1eX said:


> Not sure either. But besides the pt. Point being something should be done to make it quicker to get back to a live stream like this guy wants short of streaming in the background.
> 
> Maybe services could even stream really low bit rate for x minutes when moved to the background. And then ramp back up to full bit rate when returned to the foreground.


Do these services offer this feature on any other platform? Like can you switch away from the Yahoo! app on an Android device and then switch back without the live stream disconnecting? Just wondering if these services off anything like this, on any platform?


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> Do these services offer this feature on any other platform? Like can you switch away from the Yahoo! app on an Android device and then switch back without the live stream disconnecting? Just wondering if these services off anything like this, on any platform?


Computer. But not arguing anyone does it. Just brainstorming.


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