[Dec64]

The way I understand it (and I stand to be corrected) is that without set top mode they only refresh when PTVL is first started. With set top mode they can refresh in a more piecemeal manner while PTVL is running. The idea being that it will be like you set top box where it will update as it goes rather than needing to turn it off and back on again to refresh the EPG.

Basically PTVL has to be running for set top mode to be useful. That means that unless you manually pause it the video will be playing on whatever channel is selected at any given time.

100% Correct

The project objective is to replace your cable box... At this point i'm not interested in building up "off and on" features. Users can run this plugin casually, but it's designed to run all the time...

If you are a casual users and don't like waiting for PTVL to load each time, just turn of "Automatic" channel reset, and choose something longer, every week? Also turn on background updating.

the exact opposite, im not a casual user, im a heavy one
thats why i want all my home units to work in sync,
my xmbc machines (living room, kids computer, bedroom android...) are closed during daytime, after the kids coming back from school or i come back from work we start them up, my server is up 24/7, i want my server to do all the caching/updating and the other will read from it, and its working great!
my only problem is that the server wasnt meant to run videos, he doesnt have video card or monitor attached, but it has a built in speaker that woke me up after starting PSTL videos ,

my solution is to run it manually every day or two and configure all the slaves to uptate on a week basis with background updating.

thanks anyway luna

I was thinking about doing the same. One solution is setting PTVL to auto shut down after an hour or so. Then using another plugin like schedular to auto run PTVL every x hours/days. If you run PTVL in set top box on the server box it wont update other plugins ect so that is a decent enough way to do it. Also you would need to create a channel 999 or something, and on the PTVL server have it set to start on channel 999, then make channel 999 a looping youtube video of something, maybe a fireplace/fishtank. Or a local video file, as to not hammer your bandwith or use up a tv tuner.