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larkim – 27 mins ago »
Another feature request – does the Aura have the hardware to allow for a PIP experience? Would really like that to be available, with the ability to flip between the small and large screen.
Freeview Play – audio and video – Picture In Picture.
But if you’re not tuned to the programme when it starts, is there any impact (other than missing the start of the programme, obviously!)
I can never imagine needing to record 5 things though, and if I need to set reminders I might as well schedule the recording in the usual way from the EPG.
larkim – 1 hour ago »
grahamlthompson – 14 hours ago »
mullers63 – 13 hours ago »
Not sure if this has been mentioned but I would like the ability to skip backwards in Live TV without having to pause first. This was how the Foxsat HDR operated and is frustrating to not have it.
There is a big difference between the Foxsat-HDR and the Aura. The Foxsat cannot create a recording from the time shift buffer file (0.ts) and the Aura can.
I might be wrong, but I thought I’d tried and failed to get this to work as this is a very useful feature for me.
Let’s say I start watching a programme 1 minute into the broadcast, and enjoy the first 5 minutes. If I hit “record” at that point, what will be the content of the recording? From minute 1 or from minute 5? Or do I need to skip back to minute 1, then press record, to get the full buffer to be recorded?
My strong preference would be that whenever “record” is pressed during a live recording, as much as possible of the buffer is added to the recording too (i.e. to the programme start if the buffer extends that far back). Or a popup asking which choice I want to make (e.g. only record from now, record from beginning).
On a similar vein, I’d also like to see the buffer be available across multiple channels (ideally whole multiplexes, but that’s probably not going to happen).
So the scenario would be:-
I’m watching CH4 Formula 1 without recording it, and get bored because it looks predictable with 20 laps to go.
I flip over to BBC1 to catch a news headline
I return to CH4 before the F1 has finished and see that something dramatic has happened whilst I was watching BBC1, so on toggling back to CH4 I can skip back to any point of the F1 programme as it was all being live buffered.
My Thomson DHD4000 could do this back in the early 2000s I think; toggling between channels was done by using 0 as a channel button and it simply flipped between the two most recently watched channels and their accumulated buffers.
I’m not certain that the Aura *doesn’t* do this, but I’m pretty sure I’ve not noticed it being a feature that’s available.
You would need a enormous hard disk to buffer all 3 tuners and an massive one to record a whole Mux. The topfield pvrs could record a complete mux with the help of a tap. The Hard Disk sizes available made it impractical. Add up the total bandwidth of 3 Freeview Mux.
You should be able to use the on demand apps (including ones with live TV) without upsetting the time shift buffer pointers. On demand does not need a tuner.
As for multiple in/out time shift buffer pointers how would the box know what content was in which bit.
Why did you not push the instant record button before changing channels ? That would copy the current buffer contents to a recording and continue using the tuner to complete the recording.
My EETV box recorded the whole HD mux constantly and made the last 24/25 hours of it available on demand from the EPG. I assume the Freeview+ spec doesn’t allow that, but it was the single best feature on a PVR that I’ve not seen replicated anywhere else. That only had a 1Tb disk, and had plenty of storage capacity for ordinary recordings, so I don’t think the recording of a whole multiplex is that onerous.
But in any event, that wasn’t what I was suggesting for the Aura. The aura’s fundamental design assumes the catch up service work really well, but not all such services are as reliable (e.g. All4 doesn’t integrate into the EPG). However, it is clear that the aura is designed with an expectation of catchup service usage, so I’m conscious that suggesting somethng which inherently tries to undo that and make it more reliant on the HDD isn’t sensible.
However, my use-case of toggling between two live broadcasts and being able to pause (or buffer) each one, without recording them, is different to that; I wouldn’t expect to watch “live” TV, then flick to BBCiPlayer, then back to live seamlessly.
On size of recording a whole multiplex; is my maths wrong here?
40Mbit/sec is the bitrate of the HD multiplex.
40/8 = 5megabytes per second of data. x 60 sec x 60 min x 24 hours = 423Gigabytes of data. So say half a terrabyte disk, or 25% of the 2Tb models. Its a lot of usage but for a fabulously useful service. It’s a real shame no-one has replicated that functionality.
larkim – 51 mins ago »
On size of recording a whole multiplex; is my maths wrong here?
40Mbit/sec is the bitrate of the HD multiplex.
40/8 = 5megabytes per second of data. x 60 sec x 60 min x 24 hours = 423Gigabytes of data. So say half a terrabyte disk, or 25% of the 2Tb models. Its a lot of usage but for a fabulously useful service. It’s a real shame no-one has replicated that functionality.
That seems about right but the recordings are much smaller thanks to stat muxing.
The actual hdd capacity is actually less due to the same rounding using 1000. 4236/1024 TB
4236GB is actually less than half at just over 4TB.
The available pool is allocated dynamically (variable bitrate) according to the complexity of the current content. As a result simultaneous recording of 5 HD channels will be much smaller than your calculation for the full Mux.
grahamlthompson – 13 mins ago »
larkim – 51 mins ago »
On size of recording a whole multiplex; is my maths wrong here?
40Mbit/sec is the bitrate of the HD multiplex.
40/8 = 5megabytes per second of data. x 60 sec x 60 min x 24 hours = 423Gigabytes of data. So say half a terrabyte disk, or 25% of the 2Tb models. Its a lot of usage but for a fabulously useful service. It’s a real shame no-one has replicated that functionality.
That seems about right but the recordings are much smaller thanks to stat muxing.
The actual hdd capacity is actually less due to the same rounding using 1000. 4236/1024 TB
Where is 4326 coming from? the calculation shown above says 423GB and my calculation says 432GB.
LOL, I was confused by that too. Transposition error in my 423GB of course which should read 432. In any event, it worked (still works in fact) on my EETV box and is a killer feature that takes up a manageable chunk of the HDD and has distinct advantages over the online catchup services especially (most obviously, the ability to avoid adverts on the commercial channels).
larkim – 1 hour ago »
LOL, I was confused by that too. Transposition error in my 423GB of course which should read 432. In any event, it worked (still works in fact) on my EETV box and is a killer feature that takes up a manageable chunk of the HDD and has distinct advantages over the online catchup services especially (most obviously, the ability to avoid adverts on the commercial channels).
Intrigued how did you find a specific programme on a whole mux recording. I never tried the Topfield app as the IDE drives at the times were nowhere near enough to record even SD content (and of course the Topfield boxes were mpeg2 SD only) . If you kept the recording after the current epg content has gone how could you find a specific programme.
You didn’t need to find them; just scroll back through the EPG and press play. It was brilliantly implemented, you simply chose a multiplex and then selected I think 6 channels from that mux to be your “replay” channels.
In the EPG for those channels for the preceding 24 hours a small icon showed by each programme, and if the EPG entry was selected a “play” button displayed which could be selected.
larkim – 11 mins ago »
You didn’t need to find them; just scroll back through the EPG and press play. It was brilliantly implemented, you simply chose a multiplex and then selected I think 6 channels from that mux to be your “replay” channels.
In the EPG for those channels for the preceding 24 hours a small icon showed by each programme, and if the EPG entry was selected a “play” button displayed which could be selected.
In that case the the epg data carried on the mux must have been saved at the time of recording. If it was not the data would not have been there. It’s a seperate data stream on every MUX that has the full epg data on every Mux.
More data you did not include to make this work.
Huh? I can scroll backwards through the EPG on the Aura anyway. It’s not that hard to cache 24 hours of EPG data for a short period of time.
And anyway, EE managed it with great success!! I’m not expecting Humax to implement this in any event, just describing something that worked and was useful.
May I suggest that in a future update, the usb port has both read and Write access, instead of read only.
barrados – 2 mins ago »
May I suggest that in a future update, the usb port has both read and Write access, instead of read only.
The DLNA media server has write access.
grahamlthompson – 2 hours ago »
barrados – 2 mins ago »
May I suggest that in a future update, the usb port has both read and Write access, instead of read only.
The DLNA media server has write access.
Not much use when you want to backup configuration files for other personal installed apps to a USB stick via a file manager. An easy fix to be able to grant write access in android.
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