TiVo Community Forums Archives - Automatic buffer recording

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Automatic buffer recording
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Posted by: kensteele

Did someone think of this already?

What bothers me is that while I have all this free disk space and my Tivo sat idle, I missed part of my program like the Friends or the ER incident. If I am to record from 7-8pm and Tivo knows that primetime is the most important and the most volatile time period, why not do this:

Between 6-midnight, if you have the space and no conflicts, Tivo will automatically record and save the buffer. So in my example, you'll get buffer B1 which is 6-7pm on Channel 2, ER 7-8pm on Channel 2, B2 from 8-9pm on Channel 2, B3 from 9pm-930pm on Channel 2, B4 from 930-10pm on Channel 5, the News from 10-1030pm on Channel 5, B5 from 1030-1130pm on Channel 5, and B6 from 1130-midnight on Channel 5. B1-B6 goes in the buffer folder and it's only space available, lowest priority. This is auto buffering and either it is either fully automatic or you can designate which SPs get it. Did someone already suggest this? What do you think?

Posted by: JimSpence

I guess I'm a bit thick. I don't see what you want to do is any different than having SPs. Say it does as you suggest. You come home at 9pm and want to watch your automatic 30 minute buffer of the 8-9 show. You are missing the last 30 minutes. If you extend the buffer to 60 minutes then you might as well use SPs. Designating which SPs would be buffered is the same thing as having SPs. Help me understand what you want.

Posted by: kensteele

Let's take one example:

You record Fear Factor from 7-8pm every Monday and for weeks, the show starts exactly at 7 and ends exactly at 8. You never pad because you don't need to.

One week, for whatever reason, the show runs long, it ends at 8:02. You will miss two minutes. But your Tivo actually recorded the show from 8:00 - 8:02 but it turned around and deleted that segment after 9pm. Right?

If you have 100 hours of space available on your hard drive, does that make sense? Why can't hour slices of buffer get saved to your hard drive just in case you need to check into one of them. If you never watch them, they go away....

Is there any harm in this? The method I described provided for an orderly way to accomplish this which I think maximizes the intent, which is to try to capture flaws in the schedule, including last minute changes, overruns, etc.

Posted by: dsmdriver

Here's an issue- I watch shows months later. I have whole seasons of shows I haven't gotten to yet. So this only really helps people that watch shows within a few hours.

Better would be to automatically pad shows by 10 minutes on each end (if possible), and then go in and delete those pads as space gets tight. That way it would be associated with the show, not some random buffer.

Posted by: kensteele

quote:
Originally posted by dsmdriver
Here's an issue- I watch shows months later. I have whole seasons of shows I haven't gotten to yet. So this only really helps people that watch shows within a few hours.

Better would be to automatically pad shows by 10 minutes on each end (if possible), and then go in and delete those pads as space gets tight. That way it would be associated with the show, not some random buffer.

True. I too have an entire season (four months of episodes) that I have yet to watch. If there was a problem back in February, I'm screwed and would be in this case, too. :(

Yes your idea is better but I'd guess in our current configuration, it would be impossible to delete just that part of the recording labeled as "the buffer".

BTW, I attempt to keep the buffer in my example from being so random by saving the recording on the same channel as that day's recordings were completed.