# Pause Live TV for Longer 30 minutes



## ayoung1012

I have had the cable tv dvr's for the past 4-5 years. I have never owned a Tivo until now. I bought a Series 3 because of the functionality and better interface. The only thing cable tv dvr's beat the Tivo hands down is the ability to pause live tv for 1 hour. I love everything about the Tivo but being able to pause from 30 minutes to 1 hours is big to me.


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## chip_r

Keep in mind that pause live TV is recorded at the best quality level so the buffer is "expensive". One quick solution is to just hit your record button. The buffer level will then be as large as the remaining space on your Tivo. You can watch and pause while it records.


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## Da Goon

My S2 tivo's have a 120 minute buffer (not an official feature of course).  
Tivo could do it if they wanted to.


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## brnscofrnld

Yeah, it would be nice. 

But as chip mentiond above, the "cost" of that would be HDD space and could start to bump some shows off of the NP list.


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## ayoung1012

That is true about HD space but can couter that by a larger HD. Again this is the only arguement a lot of forums have about Tivo's to cable company DVR's. They say the interface is cool but you can only pause for 30 minuts and I can pause for 1 hour. :up:


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## MikeMar

Rather have 30 min buffer and 1 hour more recording 

Adjustable would be good, but VERY low on the priority list.


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## brnscofrnld

MikeMar said:


> Rather have 30 min buffer and 1 hour more recording
> 
> Adjustable would be good, but VERY low on the priority list.


Something adjustable would be very nice, and something that i believe could be easily added


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## WayneCarter

> Something adjustable would be very nice, and something that i believe could be easily added


That depends on where the live buffer is located - IF it's in the same partition as the recordings, you're probably right. However, if it's in a system partition (which I suspect it is so the live buffer will still work if the TiVo is "Full"), it's probably pretty tough.


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## virshu

Adjustable may not be important, but extending the buffer from 30 mins to an hour would be a must. Yes, it takes more space; but it's for a good reason.

I got TiVo after several years of DVRs from cable / satellite companies. And on the WAF list this is the second reason why I will most likely return it. The first being that you can't have two tuners for a satellite feed


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## bcwaller

It's not like this has not been solved by others. The buffer can be limited to that portion of the disk that is not for shows you actually want. If you take all the actual season pass and requested recordings and look at what is left, the buffer could be hours. With my ReplayTV, I could hit pause, go out to lunch, do some errands, and come back home four hours later and finish the football game - assuming I had space. Since I usually had ten or more hours free, this was not a problem.

Why not just use the available space? I don't care if TiVo deletes shows that are marked for deletion or shows TiVo thinks I might like. If the 45 shows in the suggestion folder went to zero, but I had a few hours of hold time that would be great.

A half hour is not long enough when you want to interrupt a show to eat a meal, but you don't want to record it.

One other benefit of a longer buffer would be that if you turned on the TV and saw a show you liked, you could just hit "record" and you could have the whole show, even if it was already 90 minutes in progress.


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## WayneCarter

Do you _really_ want TiVo's live buffer to freeze indefinitely? I can see all sorts of potential problems with it.

BTW The behavior you say you want is pretty much what TiVo does now - for recordings. Why not record the shows you want instead of trying to "redesign" TiVo's handling of the live buffer?


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## Luke M

bcwaller said:


> A half hour is not long enough when you want to interrupt a show to eat a meal, but you don't want to record it.


What's wrong with recording it? You might not be able to return to a paused program, if there were two programs scheduled to be recorded.



bcwaller said:


> One other benefit of a longer buffer would be that if you turned on the TV and saw a show you liked, you could just hit "record" and you could have the whole show, even if it was already 90 minutes in progress.


Yes, that's a benefit.


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## virshu

Luke M said:


> What's wrong with recording it? You might not be able to return to a paused program, if there were two programs scheduled to be recorded.


I put DVR on the news channel before I go to sleep and watch it in the morning. I don't need to record it; I just want to watch the last hour of news. With half-hour - between commercial and not interesting segments I catch up too quickly.

Overall, I switched to TiVo for the ability to hack it. While I understand that there is a hardware limitation why I can't use two tuners with a satellite receiver, I hope that somebody can explain how I can do it; rather than give a dozen reasons why I _shouldn't_ be doing it.

So far, frankly, TiVo has been disappointing.


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## bcwaller

Luke M said:


> What's wrong with recording it? You might not be able to return to a paused program, if there were two programs scheduled to be recorded.


Ease of use. Pause is one button and you are done. Recording it is not a one button process. Now, if TiVo had preferences that set default recording options that were assumed (and I could set first run only as my default), then recording might be easier and faster.

As for it recording something else, this should not happen much. The paused show should override TiVo suggestions, and double conflicts don't happen all that much. I was able to do this with my single tuner ReplayTV all the time and rarely had problems with a recording causing problems.

For example, let's say Monday Night Football looks like boring game so you don't bother recording it. You watch a little and it looks like a good game after all, but it is time for dinner. Since no 8 PM shows are new this week and you know there are no recordings possible, you hit pause and go eat. 45 minutes later you finish off the game. I've done that with my previous DVRs and I can't with the TiVo.


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## WayneCarter

> Recording it is not a one button process.


True, it's a two button process (3-4 if you want to record at other than full resolution).



> You watch a little and it looks like a good game after all, but it is time for dinner. Since no 8 PM shows are new this week and you know there are no recordings possible, you hit pause and go eat. 45 minutes later you finish off the game. I've done that with my previous DVRs and I can't with the TiVo.


So, to make it work, you need to know (or find out) that there are no other recordings that will need the tuner that will be paused. Pressing "record" warns you of any conflicts.

Extending the live buffer(s) to 60 minutes (or even more) would be a good thing to do now that disks are larger and cheaper. Beyond that, handling of the live buffer(s) should IMO remain pretty much the same.

An indefinite "Pause" ties up the tuner until it is unpaused. The only way around this is to record the paused buffer - so your suggestion becomes "Automatically record the paused buffer when it fills up", which has its own set of problems such as lots of long, unwanted recordings.


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## bcwaller

WayneCarter said:


> An indefinite "Pause" ties up the tuner until it is unpaused. The only way around this is to record the paused buffer - so your suggestion becomes "Automatically record the paused buffer when it fills up", which has its own set of problems such as lots of long, unwanted recordings.


That's not it at all. Maybe you use all the TiVo suggestions and your box is recording shows all day. I don't do that. I like to have the unit record what I want when I want. I also like to pause. I know right this second that one tuner will be available all day Saturday and Sunday as I only record a few shows during the day on those days. If I *want* to pause a football game and I have 20 hours free on my TiVo, I should be able to pause it for at least 10 hours.


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## WayneCarter

Press "Record" and you can pause for weeks if you want.

Pausing Live TV only pauses _playback_ from the live buffer. The live buffer continues to fill while paused. Do you want the live buffer to be "schedule aware" (ie only continue buffering for the remainder of the current show), or do you want it to continue buffering indefinitely? If the live buffer is schedule aware, what do you want to happen at the end of the show (record the show to disk, stop buffering, dump the buffer, ...)? I, for one, would definitely not want it to buffer indefinitely and unaware of schedule - having TiVo's disk filled up with hours and hours of unwanted video in one huge file sounds remarkedly akin to the "good ol' days" of VCRs. No thanks!


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## WhiskeyTango

Here's a much simpler solution. If the 60 minute buffer is that much of a deal-breaker for you then Tivo is not for you, go back to the cable co dvr.


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## bcwaller

The FiOS DVR is awful. ReplayTV and Moxi have a buffer that is long enough. They solved all these problems brought up and came up with solutions that work really well. The buffer is variable based on free space, and is schedule aware so that you can press record and get the presently running show.


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## WayneCarter

> The buffer is variable based on free space, and is schedule aware so that you can press *record* and get the presently running show.


TiVo's "Record" button is also schedule aware so you get the presently running show.



> ReplayTV and Moxi have a buffer that is long enough. They solved all these problems brought up and came up with solutions that work really well.


If you are so much happier with other DVRs, why not just return the TiVo?


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## Luke M

WayneCarter said:


> TiVo's "Record" button is also schedule aware so you get the presently running show.
> 
> If you are so much happier with other DVRs, why not just return the TiVo?


If you aren't interested in learning anything or having a meaningful conversation, why are you posting here? Just to spread your fog of ignorance?


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## bcwaller

No, he loves the TiVo as it is, and could not stand to deal with any change whatsoever. After all, why mess with perfection?


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## nirisahn

chip_r said:


> Keep in mind that pause live TV is recorded at the best quality level so the buffer is "expensive". One quick solution is to just hit your record button. The buffer level will then be as large as the remaining space on your Tivo. You can watch and pause while it records.


I had a Dish Network DVR once upon a time. I liked having the one hour buffer. As for quality level, Dish only had one level - best.

That's another suggestion for TiVo. Memory is cheap. Why not just put monster harddrives in the box and have everything record at 'best' all the time? Harddrives are so cheap now is there really a reason to save space with recording at different levels? Add to that the ability to move the recordings off the TiVo and on to a computer.


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## WayneCarter

> I had a Dish Network DVR once upon a time. I liked having the one hour buffer. As for quality level, Dish only had one level - best.


Programs delivered digitally have already been digitized, and therefore do not support specifying "Quality" - the "quality" was set when the video was digitized for delivery. "Normal" TiVos receive programs in analog, and therefore can support selection of "quality" during conversion to digital.



> That's another suggestion for TiVo. Memory is cheap. Why not just put monster harddrives in the box and have everything record at 'best' all the time? Harddrives are so cheap now is there really a reason to save space with recording at different levels? Add to that the ability to move the recordings off the TiVo and on to a computer.


I'd certainly second the suggestion of putting in a larger harddrive, but I see no advantage to removing support for setting "quality" - lowering the bitrate (aka "quality") reduces the size of the files on disk, which also speeds up transfers.


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## WayneCarter

bcwaller said:


> No, he loves the TiVo as it is, and could not stand to deal with any change whatsoever. After all, why mess with perfection?


Who is the "he" you're referring to?


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## megazone

nirisahn said:


> That's another suggestion for TiVo. Memory is cheap. Why not just put monster harddrives in the box and have everything record at 'best' all the time? Harddrives are so cheap now is there really a reason to save space with recording at different levels? Add to that the ability to move the recordings off the TiVo and on to a computer.


On the S3 & HD digital content is always *best* - it is saved to the drive as-is. And for analog content Live TV is always Best as well. Recordings are whatever level you specify - if you want Best, set the default to Best and there you go. There is no reason to take away the option of setting the encoding for those who use it. personally I use 'High' on my S3, which looks better than 'Best' on an S2. I can't really see the difference between High and Best even on my 61" DLP, so why use so much more disc? That's more room for the HD recordings.


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## EvilMidniteBombr

nirisahn said:


> That's another suggestion for TiVo. Memory is cheap. Why not just put monster harddrives in the box and have everything record at 'best' all the time? Harddrives are so cheap now *is there really a reason to save space with recording at different levels?* Add to that the ability to move the recordings off the TiVo and on to a computer.


Even on my TiVoHD, I use the level qualities all the time. Particularly when I am recording shows for the kids. There is no reason for me to record Little Einsteins at Best Quality and fill up my HDD with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. My two year old doesn't give a crap if the picture doesn't look it's best. She just wants to watch her favorite shows.

FYI, memory and hard drives are two different things. Just sayin'.


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## jlb

EvilMidniteBombr said:


> Even on my TiVoHD, I use the level qualities all the time. Particularly when I am recording shows for the kids. There is no reason for me to record Little Einsteins at Best Quality and fill up my HDD with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. My two year old doesn't give a crap if the picture doesn't look it's best. She just wants to watch her favorite shows.
> 
> FYI, memory and hard drives are two different things. Just sayin'.


+1. I use Medium on my TiVoHD for my daughter's stuff and stuff I know is not broadcast in HD (i.e., Survivor, at least until next season). There would also be a slight uptick if I used the digital version of the analog channel, but again, not enough of an improvement to use the extra space.


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## lrhorer

megazone said:


> There is no reason to take away the option of setting the encoding for those who use it.


Very correct. There is absolutely no reason to remove this feature.



s2kdave said:


> I can't really see the difference between High and Best even on my 61" DLP, so why use so much more disc? That's more room for the HD recordings.


Oh, I can, even on my 62" Mitsubishi in the livingroom. In the theater the difference is obvious. The point you made so well, however, is that there's no reason to remove the option. I myself employ the "high" setting when recording TV series. I don't archive them, and only watch them for casual entertainment. The additional resolution doesn't add much to things like Night Court, Frasier, or Law and Order. The stuff I record from the National Geographic channel and the like is another matter.

Bringing it back to the main topic, however, the fact is the length of the record buffer is just a simple constant held in a memory location somewhere and loaded off the hard drive when the tivoapp runs. Making that constant a user settable configuration would be trivial, so while I'm not sure whether or not I would take advantage of the setting, I see no reason not to provide it.


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## lrhorer

megazone said:


> On the S3 & HD digital content is always *best*


I would argue that it is always *worst*.


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## lrhorer

virshu said:


> Overall, I switched to TiVo for the ability to hack it. While I understand that there is a hardware limitation why I can't use two tuners with a satellite receiver, I hope that somebody can explain how I can do it; rather than give a dozen reasons why I _shouldn't_ be doing it.


If you truly understand the hardware limitation, then you understand why it can't be done. Not shouldn't, can't. The satellite receiver only has one output, regardless of the number of receivers it has built in. Unless you intend to try to physically intercept the two digital streams on the motherboard of the satellite receiver, there is no way to send two streams to the TiVo. It would be possible to use two satellite receivers to create two streams, but then you have to rig a way to get the TiVo to control the two independantly. Since no TiVo knows how to manage or control two external devices, and since no TiVo whihc handles dual input streams knows how to handle an external device, the project is pretty much a non-starter, unless you can intercept the control signals to the two tuners inside a Series 3 Tivo and translate that to commands the satellite receivers can understand, you're stuck.


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## hmm52

lrhorer said:


> ......Bringing it back to the main topic, however, the fact is the length of the record buffer is just a simple constant held in a memory location somewhere and loaded off the hard drive when the tivoapp runs. Making that constant a user settable configuration would be trivial, so while I'm not sure whether or not I would take advantage of the setting, I see no reason not to provide it.


Sony DHG DVRs allow adjusting the buffer to 30, 60, or 90 minutes. Scheduled recordings will of course override unless user intervenes. There are a variety of recording and playback settings which are user adjustable on the Sonys, 250 and 500gb. These units can't be expanded or hacked in any manner though. Extensive flexibility in one way; none in others. User adjustment to limitations. I use the S3 much more than the Sonys, which are now around primarily for backup recording. The 90 minute buffer was very nice to have particularly with limited HDD storage. Change channel for free space return.


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## WayneCarter

lrhorer said:


> Bringing it back to the main topic, however, the fact is the length of the record buffer is just a simple constant held in a memory location somewhere and loaded off the hard drive when the tivoapp runs. Making that constant a user settable configuration would be trivial, so while I'm not sure whether or not I would take advantage of the setting, I see no reason not to provide it.


Are the live buffers in the same partition as used for recordings? If so, I agree - it should be a relatively simple change to make its size user settable or at least selectable, and should be implemented. On the other hand, if the buffers are in another partition, making their sizing changeable could be very difficult.


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## SpiritualPoet

I've always wanted the TiVo to allow the user to set the "buffer" to the slow recording speed (in the event one wishes to "save" the buffered portion and balance of a recorded program. I never record at the fast speed.


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## lrhorer

WayneCarter said:


> Are the live buffers in the same partition as used for recordings? If so, I agree - it should be a relatively simple change to make its size user settable or at least selectable, and should be implemented. On the other hand, if the buffers are in another partition, making their sizing changeable could be very difficult.


The buffer is in the same partitions as ordinary video. The MFS file system is spread across multiple partitions. There is a small, but significant, amount of space ordinarily reserved for the commercials and other small videos, but I'm virtually certain the live buffers are implemented in the MFS partitions. Note even the reserved space can be freed up for ordinary recording. The Win-MFS "supersize" utility releases the space for ordinary recordings.


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## sweavers

Having had a couple of ReplayTVs in the past and gone through Motorola Cable DVRs from Comcast, RCN, and Verizon I had hoped that the new TiVo HD XL would give me everything I need - and it comes close. ReplayTV never went to HD, and the cable DVRs never work properly with cable company software. But the live pause is one place where every other DVR I've used has been better than TiVo. To limit this to 30 minutes when there is a 1 TeraByte disc is nuts! The pause time was only ever limited by the available disc space. With the cable DVRs you could even backtrack to a past programme and record it. 
A long pause is useful if you turn on the TV in the middle of something and get interested, you can backtrack to the beginning. Or if there are continuous programmes that you want to watch, you can easily get a hour or two behind.
I guess people adjust their viewing habits to suit the technology they have. I'm having a hard time adjusting to this.


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## TeamW

I had a ReplayTV that just let you record paused TV until there was no more space on the HD left. It wouldn't delete any recordings it just used whatever space it had left. If your Replay was really full you wouldn't even get a half-hour but most of time it was plenty of time to capture an entire movie or even a football game. 

Replay managed the drive space very differently than TiVo - it wouldn't tape a show if there was no room on the drive and it generally didn't auto-delete things once they were recorded. TiVo manages the drive space far more actively than the Replay did, and so it purges away old shows if they go unwatched unless you tell it to keep them forever. You wouldn't want to link that auto-delete feature to the pause button or one careless press of the pause button could wipe out your whole library in favor of 40 hours of some random channel. 

It seems like TiVo solves this issue by establishing dedicated space just used for rewinding and pausing live TV rather than using empty space like on ReplayTV. This is the only reason I can think of for why the limit is still at 30 minutes despite the fact I have a Terabyte drive sitting in there with room for 150 hrs of HD content. But since the TiVo can already just record the show at any point by just pushing record, there is a simple software tweak to resolve this issue:

At the end of 30 minutes, when the buffer is full - the TiVo should just assume you want the show and record whatever the current show is until the end of its scheduled time. In other words, it should essentially automatically hit the record button by itself.

That assumes other stuff isn't already scheduled to record during the remainder of the show, there is room on the drive with stuff not tagged as keep until I delete, etc. If there is room on the drive - just grab the show. 

No-Muss/No-Fuss. This is such a simple and obvious solution, I'm really surprised they haven't already implemented it.


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## WayneCarter

TeamW said:


> But since the TiVo can already just record the show at any point by just pushing record, there is a simple software tweak to resolve this issue:
> 
> At the end of 30 minutes, when the buffer is full - the TiVo should just assume you want the show and record whatever the current show is until the end of its scheduled time. In other words, it should essentially automatically hit the record button by itself.
> 
> That assumes other stuff isn't already scheduled to record during the remainder of the show, there is room on the drive with stuff not tagged as keep until I delete, etc. If there is room on the drive - just grab the show.
> 
> No-Muss/No-Fuss. This is such a simple and obvious solution, I'm really surprised they haven't already implemented it.


How does TiVo know you're even watching the TV at the time? TiVo is always buffering something, so your suggestion would just be a quick method of filling your harddrive with colon detox infomercials and other such video detritus .


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## ZeoTiVo

I can count the one time I could have used more buffer so I could record something.

Now I have a 1 TB drive and I have news on a wishlist with a keep at most 3 so TiVo is always recording the news.
Also I have a wishlist for movies with keep at most 10 so now when I flip on the TV and go "Ooh, cool movie" My TiVo is already recording it. :up:

sure TiVo could up the buffer to 60 or 120 minutes and on my expanded drive TiVo DVRs I would find that probably useful for football and the like. Someone with a small stock drive especially on the S2 models, probably not so much.


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## TeamW

WayneCarter - 

Huh? This whole discussion assumes you pushed pause, indicating you plan to return to this particular show later. In other words, as the user, you have told TiVo this is something you want to come back to at another point. Why does it not just keep it for you, assuming there is space available on the drive? Nobody is suggesting that the thing just record a show without any indication the user might want to see it.

This isn't some bizarre scenario - your phone rings or your child starts to cry while you are watching a live show you haven't already told the TiVo to tape. You push pause and walk away. You don't expect to be gone long, but you are delayed longer than 30 minutes...you've lost your place in the show and only have the last 30 minutes. That's just stupid when you have a Terabyte of storage in the box. 

It is a very simple thing to fix. Particularly when watching live sports, which is pretty much the only thing I watch live anymore, this would be quite handy.


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## spocko

I totally agree with TeamW here. The remainder of the current program should be auto-recorded if the pause limit has been reached. This is simple and intuitive. Regardless of the buffer size, the buffer is finite, and the Tivo should do something user-friendly when the limit is exceeded. The current behavior of simply un-pausing is NOT user-friendly, because the user is losing programming that they most likely wanted to watch.

I submitted this exact feature request to Tivo via the suggestions page a few weeks ago.

http://research.tivo.com/suggestions/


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