I can't turn off "always timeshifting"?

[deria]

Hi!

I performed a search (in both this forum and the troubleshooting forum) to see if this problem had been encountered before, but could not find any meaningful results.

I am currently evaluating Snapstream - and I like it. In fact, I imagine I'll be buying it today. That being said, however, I am encountering a strange problem:

I cannot seem to watch *actual* Live TV. Instead, I am shown a signal that is recorded and played back (ie: timeshifted) in real-time. I found the setting in the web-admin software, named "always timeshifting" but it says it is set to off already. So I turned it on, then off again, and retested. Same deal.

Am I doing something wrong? I realize the advantages of having the timeshifting active all the time, but honestly I don't really want to work my hard disk all that hard. I'm also not fond of the slightly grainy picture that results from viewing the compressed and played-back signal.

EDIT:

I neglected to mention my configuration. I have an ATI All In Wonder Radeon 7500. The computer is an AMD Athlon 1800, with an 80 GB HD. The PVS version is the 3.3 version (the free trial download). I have a TV, and a monitor -- but I could care less what the monitor is displaying. With the ATI software, my TV displays (surprisingly) the TV and my monitor displays a nice black box.

[Terminal]

Live TV is always timeshifted. If you set time shifting to always on that means you could start up your system and then rewind immmeditely. The reason Live TV is timeshifted is for pausing and rewinding. I don't believe there is an option to watch the TV without it being recorded in the timeshifting buffer. The best thing for that would be to watch the TV.

[jkoon]

or I suppose you could switch your default recording format to WMV, when recording in WMV you cannot timeshift.

[jkoon]

Originally posted by deria
I cannot seem to watch *actual* Live TV. Instead, I am shown a signal that is recorded and played back (ie: timeshifted) in real-time....I'm also not fond of the slightly grainy picture that results from viewing the compressed and played-back signal.

I just re-read your original post, snapstream is designed so that when you are watching live tv you are actually watching a recorded file. See this thread for more information. http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...?threadid=7966

[deria]

If that is the case, what is the difference between the two modes?

When I'm not in timeshift mode, does it just throw away the video that it shows me as it generates it, and start writing it to disk when it enters timeshifted mode (ie: the user presses pause)?

If that is the case, is there a way for me to exit the timeshifted mode after I've "caught up" to live TV?

My real concern is that I want to avoid excessive HD activity. I'm sure I can play with the quality settings to eliminate the graininess of the picture, but I have no desire whatsoever for my hard disk to be actively reading/writing 24/7.

[jkoon]

It basically keeps a buffer of a given size (configurable in the web admin) and you can just skip around in that file. So you can either be watching at the beginning (live) of the file or jump around in the file by pausing or rewinding.

I’m not sure if the hard drive is used when recording in WMV, its been too long since I have used it (and I have a pvr-250 now, so I cant try it myself). But I would guess that it uses the hard drive during recording also.

The difference between always timeshifting on and off is when it is on PVS is constantly keeping the buffer active even if you are not watching tv, this way you can (for example) bring up the live tv screen and backup 10 minutes. When timeshifting is off the buffer is only being created when you have live tv open.

I hope that was not too confusing.

[deria]

Actually that makes sense, I think.

I had assumed that when I exited the "Live TV" mode (back to the main menu) that it was completely idle. It sounds like, based on what you are saying, it will actually still be timeshifting during that time period so I could conceiveably go back to the live TV screen, then rewind for 30 mintues to the start of a show. Interesting! I'm still somewhat troubled by the hard disk usage, but I guess I can live with it for the convenience of never missing the start of a show.

I read that thread about the picture quality, and it looks like setting the quality to a higher setting will address the slight graininess I've been seeing so I don't think that will be a problem.

Thanks for your help, by the way, its been very good.