live tv weirdness

[johnsonx42]

sub,

before you finish the 2.4.x release, can you check LiveTV? Had an odd situation occur today, but the log really doesn't show anything (attached just the same).

My wife had been watching a show for about 15 minutes, and was well into the second liveTV buffer file. She paused briefly to say something to the kids, then hit play. After a few moments, she realized it had jumped back 5 to 10 minutes, and she was watching the same portion of the show over again. I wasn't watching intently, but I recognized the same portion of the show I had glanced at before myself. I had her hit the timeline button on the remote, and the timeline insisted she was only 8 seconds behind live.

In the log, she started watching at 18:02, did the pause and play at 18:17, and hit the Ctrl-B at 18:20.

After that, I opened the livetv buffer files from my desktop using media player, and as near as I could tell when she paused and then resumed playback it went back to the beginning of the 2nd buffer file (by this point it had started a 3rd buffer file).

So back on the NPVR machine, at 18:24:49, I hit Ctrl-B again to confirm the timeline still showed just 8 seconds back of live, and then hit a single forward skip. I could tell by the video being played that it had jumped all the way forward again to roughly live (and I did a few more skips to see if I could get any further). Then I skipped back a whole bunch to get to the approximate spot I had jumped forward from. It was around 7 minutes behind live.

Can you have a try at reproducing this? I tried to reproduce it just now, but it doesn't seem to work if I just watch for few minutes still in the first buffer file.

[mvallevand]

I am not sure there is anything TSReader2 related there. It's hard to duplicate because usually works, but I watch a lot of live tv and pausing for more than one rolling file has caused me grief since rolling files were introduced. It's a lot better than in the beginning though. Also seeking between rolling files is usually pretty good but if I really wanted to break it I am sure I could with the right mix of long and short skips around the rolling points pauses. Since the Timing.Info is not in play, sometimes it could even be the stream. For the most part if I know I really want to watch something and I am going to be away, I record it instead of pausing and I consider it my loss if and when the live tv roll fails.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

I do know that if you pause LiveTV for a really long time weird things can happen, but the pause in this case was for only about 7 seconds, and I know that it didn't roll to the next file during that 7 seconds. When I played the files from my desktop computer, I found the 3rd rolling file had just under 2 minutes of video in it, and that was about 5 minutes after the pause/play occurred.

[mvallevand]

I meant I felt anytime I paused after the first rolling file, all bets are off. I'm also biased because I dislike the rolling file so every time it screws up, I notice it more than most people.

Martin

[DaveE]

I've also noticed this issue a couple times. I've been able to skip back ahead to where I was. This only seems to happen after you have multiple buffer files.

[johnsonx42]

I thought this was something new with the skip updates, since I'd not had this particular symptom before. Admittedly, I don't watch livetv all that often, but I really haven't had much trouble with it when I do. I've paused & skipped after watching live NFL games for an hour without incident.

[johnsonx42]

I was able to re-produce this again, as I discovered my wife had left the room with LiveTV playing for a couple of hours. So I hit pause and play, and it immediately jumped back 5 to 10 minutes. Then I hit one forward skip, and it jumped back to live. After that, all functions worked normally - I could pause and play, and it would resume instantly at the same spot.

So it seems like a variable the controls the current playback position in the rolling file isn't being initialized properly... but once I pause, play, then skip forward once, the variable gets set correctly and everything works from then on.