Mailing List Archive

At 02:03 PM 5/11/2003 -0500, Pete Hartman wrote:
>Why not install NTP on your system?

As a general matter, this will not solve the problem. TV stations are less
than reliable about starting their programs on the dot of the hour ... I
learned a long time ago (with my systems, all of which use NTP) that some
cable networks and broadcast stations start shows a minute or more before
the hour, others as much as 2 minutes after. (Perhaps they need to use NTP
on their systems?)

For years before I started with vidcaps, I knew I had to set a regular vcr
to begin taping about 2 minutes before the scheduled start time, and end
about 2 minutes after, to be reasonably sure of getting the show in
complete form.

Does anybody know how TiVo, or any of the other commercial PVRs, handles
this variability?

There is also the question of startup latency in recording. I've seen maybe
5-10 seconds of this with other capture programs. Perhaps someone knows
what MythTV's startup latency is? I do know I've been missing the first
little bit of every show in my tests of Myth here, but I haven't done the
needed checks yet to quantify "first little bit".


>>At 10:54 AM 5/11/03 -0700, Chris Petersen wrote:
>>>Not sure if this is in cvs or not, so ignore if it is...
>>>
>>>MythTV encoded my first scheduled program last night, and I was upset to
>>>see that it missed the first 15-30 seconds or so.. Any chance we can
>>>get an "encode x minutes before program" option on top of the "after"
>>>one that's already there?
>>>
>>>And what does Myth do when shows are scheduled sequentially but on
>>>different channels? I'd personally like it to ignore the before/after
>>>settings at that point...
>>>
>>>Anyway, back to playing (well, or going to see my mom and mother-in-law
>>>for mother's day).

On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 12:19:01PM -0700, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> Does anybody know how TiVo, or any of the other commercial PVRs, handles
> this variability?

TiVo has the option to begin recording early by a small number of
minutes and to stop recording late by several values up to 3 hours.
The donwside to TiVo's start early/stop late options are that they are
hard limits and will conflict with other shows that start right before
or after the recorded show.

David
--
David Engel
dlengel@attbi.com

> Why not install NTP on your system?

I do. runs daily via cron. The problem (as has been stated before) is
that the tv stations don't always follow times exactly.

-Chris

I requested this option a few weeks ago but it never seem to gather much
attention. I'm looking for a way to pre-record a few minutes. Find it
somewhat odd that you can record a few minutes after but not before....

Greg

On Sun, 2003-05-11 at 23:40, Chris Petersen wrote:
> > Why not install NTP on your system?
>
> I do. runs daily via cron. The problem (as has been stated before) is
> that the tv stations don't always follow times exactly.
>
> -Chris
>
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