Peter Lee wrote:
On 9/10/05, J. Donavan Stanley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Nobody wrote:
To have a petty argument about what a PVR is and question why someone would
want to watch live TV _without_ a buffer, was amusing to say the least. (it's
called buffer-while-paused-only) and it works very well:
Its a half-assed implementation that ignores one of the major pieces of
functionality _every_ other PVR has, the ability to REWIND "live" TV to
catch something you missed.
OK, I understand now that I am the only one here who holds this
opinion ;-), so I'll say this one more time and then drop it. I'll
reiterate that I am very happy with the way that MythTV works now and
personally I do not find live TV channel changing to be unacceptably
slow.
My "non-techie" user group consists of my wife and 8-year old son.
They both watch a lot more TV than I do, and both love MythTV. But
they both also channel-surf, even after having owned a Tivo for years,
and now having lived with MythTV for well over a year.
Anyway, here my key observation of my wife and son: When they watch
live TV, they find it natural to think that the program they are
currently watching is *not* being recorded, and thus they do not
expect things like pause and rewind to work. In fact, my son
consistently hits the "record" button on the remote control when/if he
wants to pause the program and go get a snack. Obviously, the mental
model that he has built for a PVR is that it records programs, but
only if you ask MythTV to do that, either via scheduling or via the
record button. By the way, I think my son learned this from my wife,
who did the same thing with our old Tivo, and only recently realized
that there was no need to do this.
So, bottom line: I don't think I am in outer space on this one. There
are at least two people who find this model to be a natural one. It
furthermore is a model that would not affect me (as a rather geeky
technie nerdy PVR user), so it wouldn't annoy me if MythTV (or Tivo)
worked this way, or had an option to work this way. And, finally, I
think its implementation would be simpler than the dual-stream concept
proposed by Cory and even potentially simpler than the "put timing in
everywhere and shave a few ms here and there" concept.
Well, I've said my piece on this topic. I'm sure it won't really have
an impact on anyone here, and I don't have time to implement this
myself which means I can't live up to the "put up code or shut up"
maxim. But I thought it important to state the concept as clearly as
possible, since it is clear that there are a lot of strong opinions on
the subject of live TV, including my own.
Peter
But as you said, neither MythTV, not Tivo, and I can say for a fact,
neither does the DVR/PVR from Scientific Atlantic follow the model your
wife use to have and you son has. To me this shows that the
fault/problem/need for change doesnt come from all DVR/PVRs mentioned,
but from the user. Their natural model goes against what is, for all
intents and purposes, the model that has been adopted by most
hardware/software in the industry. Why keep re-inforcing an idea that
is counter-current to the 'standard'?
Tom
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