On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 06:49:33PM -0600, Dan Littlejohn wrote: > Noob question, but why is it necessary to have the buffer require a 2 > second start time? > > Why could it not just drop frames at a rate not easily noticed until > the buffer was full? That would solve the surfing problem in a > simpler way.
I think you probably mean to add frames, or am I misunderstand what you are saying? It varies from tuner to tuner, but many of them wait quite a while before they decide they have a lock, and if the driver does this there is nothing you can do to get around it. They all seem to do it, as I am sure you have seen how long it takes digital cable and satellite boxes to change the channel. When you combine those with a DTV it's murder. I presume the DVRs like to sit a second or so behind live as a safety margin. I have not seen what happens if you try not to have that safety margin, but if you are suggesting that you start as close to live as you possibly can, and then slowly slide back a second (by adding duplicate frames here and there) that sounds possible, if complex. I maintain that the right thing to do is to realize you no longer need to channel surf. But it is tempting sometimes to our idle minds, so most people never get fully weaned off of it, and they long for the old type analog experience which allowed instant channel change. You could pull off quick change with several tuners as noted. Far more interesting is quick back and forth among a set of channels and recordings. If it's live channels, you need a tuner for each one, but quick flick back and forth between a tuner and a recording is fully possible. The Tivo has a bit of this. I find it to be highly useful. Generally what happens is this. Two people are watching a show they wish to watch together. One of them needs to go do something -- answer the phone, bathroom, whatever. You want to instantly zip to playing a different source -- usually a recording -- that only you want to watch while the other person is occupied. As they walk back into the room you want to push a single button and you're back to what you were watching together. Kinda like surfing to another channel during commercials. What's being said here is that to pause is not the action you want when only one person in the needs to pause. Instead you want quick switch. I do this a lot and it works quite well.
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