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+--- Thread: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator (/showthread.php?tid=226287)
Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - AshG - 2015-05-06
Ok so clock/timer is probably not the right terminology! What the title of this post is trying to describe and the feature that I would like to request is :
Some kind of OSD to show how far behind your are in the buffer versus the Live TVstream when it has been paused.
So when I pause Live TV, I have no idea where I am in the buffer. E.G I pause for 5 minutes what I would like is a OSD say -5 min, i then Ffwd for 3 minutes (maybe to skip commercial) and the OSD would now say -2 min and so on until I reach the end of the buffer and continue with the live stream.
I'm not sure if this is already available? Certainly not in the skins that I have seen
RE: Live TV - Time shift clock/timer - FernetMenta - 2015-05-06
I have been waiting for this for a long time too. The problem is that obviously none of the skinners use PVR and cares much about this.
RE: Live TV - Time shift clock/timer - sualfred - 2015-05-06
Is this even possible? Never tried it and my TV cable is broken atm (Thx to my neighbour)
I would prefer an improved progress bar to indicate the timeshift and real-time position.
RE: Live TV - Time shift clock/timer - Woppie - 2015-05-08
+1 !
MediaPortal does this, and together with small steps (introduced in the next kodi version) I really miss this.
I changed over to kodi on my main htpc as soon as I got tv working properly and it's acceptable now, but just.
My main problems lay with what the current backend support; there hasn't been much development on that part as once it's working sort of it's enough...
Never understood what took so long to get proper PVR support in kodi anyways, now it's here and such small requests as this really make the experience a whole lot better.
This is also useful for timeshifting in livestreams at some point such as iptv.
RE: Live TV - Time shift clock/timer - AshG - 2015-05-09
(2015-05-06, 20:46)FernetMenta Wrote: I have been waiting for this for a long time too. The problem is that obviously none of the skinners use PVR and cares much about this.
So are you saying that this functionality is available for skinners to use but it's not being untilised ?
RE: Live TV - Time shift clock/timer - Woppie - 2015-05-10
Have been thinking, maybe buffer indicator is a better name?
Also I think FernetMenta means PVR development keeps stalling as few devs and skinners actually use PVR.
Like I said before I never understood why xbmc came so late to the PVR party, it is really a must and while they're not lightyears behind anymore they're still far behind. Now they have to support more platforms so it might not be as easy and you have to give the devs that but with every backend there are still some serious problems. Just as example look at here; https://github.com/manuelm/pvr.dvbviewer/issues (this use the backend I currently use as it's the best and most stable for my setup. issue #2 is just killing my setup as for my setup the buffer gets written to the ramdisk... and my HD streams are 150 MB/minute which means with a ramdisk of 6GB (out of 8GB) I can't watch a movie without changing channels at the point of the commercials. Could go on and on with examples. Just wish more people would develop PVR more; as it is it's just about acceptable and usable now.
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - FernetMenta - 2015-05-23
(2015-05-09, 12:11)AshG Wrote: So are you saying that this functionality is available for skinners to use but it's not being untilised ?
Not completely. I'll do this myself now. After this round skinners can pick it up and make it look nicer.
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - tripkip - 2015-05-26
This is not restricted to live tv/timeshift, same is required for showing the buffer of a web stream (youtube addon).
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - Woppie - 2015-05-26
@FernetMenta
Was researching a bit and found some other threads here, obviously it's not the first request and you've been busy with this for quiet some time now.
Also got an additional comment, don't know how far it's related but maybe if the code is being worked on at the same time support for commercials and com skip can be added a bit like this random pic from the internet; http://davidvielmetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/comskip.jpg
It would allow you to see for live tv where the commercials are and how far you need to scroll. Most backends support comskip but no support is currently in the mainstream version of kodi yet. Just an idea though, not to make your live any harder
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - FernetMenta - 2015-05-27
The last 2 posts we call feature creep
comskip and youtube are different stories and need their own tasks. If you try to put all somehow related into the same tasks it gets complicated, never ending, and finally fails.
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - Woppie - 2015-05-27
Ah ok, nvm then
Thought they might be close related to each other.
Unfortunatly Kodi doesn't support com skip yet so hopefully in a non to distant feature
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - FernetMenta - 2015-05-28
Thanks to BigNoid who did the skinning part. How is this?
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - da-anda - 2015-05-28
Nice. Thanks for working on this guys. As we already have buffer indicators for online streams, can't we simply extend this with a lower end indication? That way we wouldn't need two progress bars (which IMO clutter the UI too much and are quite confusing). Having a totally different concept for timeshift than for our other buffer indicators is IMO the wrong way.
The only downside of having the buffer indicator within the progress bar is, that when the next show begins, the progress bar will already show the info for the new show and not the info about the show that's still on in the buffer - but this info could be made match the buffer position as well I think, so you would see when you run out of buffer.
MediaPortal also handles timeshift indication within the progress bar by using different colours and IIRC it was the same for any settop box (Humax and D-BOX with Neutrino) I used so far.
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - RockerC - 2015-05-28
(2015-05-28, 12:59)da-anda Wrote: As we already have buffer indicators for online streams, can't we simply extend this with a lower end indication? That way we wouldn't need two progress bars (which IMO clutter the UI too much and are quite confusing). Having a totally different concept for timeshift than for our other buffer indicators is IMO the wrong way.Yes, could it be done in only one progress-bar with two different colors (and three colors when rewind), as it is how MediaPortal displays it for timeshifting in its video OSD?
The only downside of having the buffer indicator within the progress bar is, that when the next show begins, the progress bar will already show the info for the new show and not the info about the show that's still on in the buffer - but this info could be made match the buffer position as well I think, so you would see when you run out of buffer.
MediaPortal also handles timeshift indication within the progress-bar by using different colours and IIRC it was the same for any settop box (Humax and D-BOX with Neutrino) I used so far.
MediaPortal wiki on time-shifting for Live TV => http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_MEDIAPORTAL_1/14_Using_MediaPortal/3_TV/1_Watch_Live_TV#Timeshifting
Whenever you pause, rewind or fast forward using the timeshift buffer, a timeline will display in fullscreen TV.
- White Arrows: Your current position in the time line.
- Red: The part of the show that is not covered by timeshift (the timeshift buffer starts to fill from the moment you switch to that channel).
- Green: The part of the show that is covered by timeshift (meaning you could rewind until the spot where red and green meet).
- Orange: The part of the show ahead from your current position that is covered by time shift (meaning you can fast forward until the end of the orange bar which is the live position of the current TV program. E.g. when you hit pause and resume afterwards).
- 2x: The speed of the rewind.
Maybe show timeshift as two or more colors grades in only one progress-bar on the video OSD similar to how the caching indicator displays for online videos in Kodi/XBMC? Perhaps the skinning engine code for displaying the cache/buffer indication in Kodi's video OSD could even be extended to make both it and time-shift indication both consistent and skinnable?
Edit: TiVo video OSD design is another alternative that also shows these indicators in a different way but still only in a single progress-bar with only one color:
RE: Live TV - Time shift buffer indicator - jjd-uk - 2015-05-28
(2015-05-28, 12:59)da-anda Wrote: As we already have buffer indicators for online streams, can't we simply extend this with a lower end indication? That way we wouldn't need two progress bars (which IMO clutter the UI too much and are quite confusing)I agree with this.
FernetMenta's example might be a good 1st step, but ideally we should aim to have a single progress bar based on what we have for online streaming, so we could have something like:
11:35 -> 11:45:18 As empty, so the portion there is no buffer.
11:45:18 -> 11:46:59 As blue, so the portion of the buffer that has been watched.
11:46:59 -> 11:49:51 As grey, so the portion of the buffer that is ahead of the current point in playback.
11:49:51 -> 12:00 As empty, so the remaining portion of the program that has not yet been broadcast & buffered.
[edit]
Then in the single progress bar 11:46:49 time would appear marked as the current playback position, from which you can work out you're 2:52 behind live.