Record, Play and Live TV pause

[NicZ]

Dear all,

I really need to verify my understanding on how the whole Record / Play and Live TV works.

I own  a brand new OLED 65GX6LA TV of which I am very satisfied with picture quality and all but...

I have noticed that when I am watching a program that I am recording and use Time machine to go back to some past bits, when the record has finished I am kicked out of my viewing and I need to go back to the list of recordings to start again and then I need to look for the place where I was. Additionally I can't record a program from the satellite tuner and watch from the terrestrial Tuner (or viceversa) even though they are separate tuners.

To me it looks that the current Record / Play and Pause Live TV functionality has been implemented using a single memory buffer which doesn't allow any of the above.

Is my assumption correct or is there anything that I haven't done in my set up that makes it so limiting?

Many thanks,  Nic.

[td47]

@NicZ Unfortunately, from my experience of LG TV's, some of the functions and supporting "apps" are very clunky, buggy, and have limitations. Especially the built-in browsers on older "smart" LG TV's that do not get updated, due to no WebOS updates (often due to hardware/architechture limitations of older models).

So, "smartshare" and "Time-Machine" comes under what I said above (clunky and buggy, limitations in functionality).

I am not familiar with the models that have TV-SAT and normal Antenna tuners, but I have read forum posts that say there ARE restrictions with some TV model tuner builds. Some lower spec ones (and probably the majority AFAIK) can ONLY record what you are actually tuned to at the time (i.e. a scheduled recording HAS to use the ONE tuner to receive and do the recording of that specific channel feed). So, that ONE terrestrial HD tuner can ONLY tune to ONE channel at ONE time. As your TV also has a T-SAT Tuner, you would have thought that you could record on THAT tuner, and VIEW another program on the OTHER. However, it may well depend on the WebOS and internal motherboard hardware architecture to be able to do that, and it is quite possible that they could not get the firware to do that (becuase of the need to continually monitor multiple inputs and digital streams, buffer them correctly, and pass to the correct "output" data lines to the output source, AND monitor the date/time and schedule data for programme end, files closing off and all that at the same time). Even if you get recordings OK, this Time Machine functionality has NO real intelligence to automatically react to Programme Guide changes so you can easily foul up with a late-start programme and miss the end!

I guess if you wanted the FULL PVR (set-top-box recorder) functionality, you need to get a seperate box, like a HUMAX, or a Sky (UK), or Foxtel (Australia) or whatever is popular in your country, as these have multiple tuners, for less restrictions, and it is easy to "add 20 minutes" to each schedule, AND a "series link"  to intelligently get the whole series of a TV show, WITHOUT having to "know" what day it is on.

As you probably guessed, I ONLY use my Time Machine recording as a last resort, when there is a (very rare) recording clash on my Foxtel iQ2 box (the iQ4 boxes have EIGHT tuners I believe)!!

[NicZ]

@td47 Many thanks for replying. I am sort of accepting these limitations, just needed to make sure it wasn't me doing something wrong.

I am a software developer with 30+ years of experience in real-time systems and such so I believe I can have a pretty good guess how this works. It really looks to me that they haven't made the effort of spending a bit of time to improve it.  According to the specs the hardware should very happily support recording a stream for live pause / separately from the recording, and maybe have a third stream for the other tuner. If a £100 box can do that I am pretty sure a £2000+ equipment is able to do that too. And it is Linux based, so pretty standard really.

I just hope that LG reads this forum and takes this as a feedback.  

Nic.

[td47]

@NicZ I agree with your views on this. I am a retired IT system admin and DBA, so I can sympathise with your frustrations, in that in 2020, the "smart TV" technology should  be MUCH BETTER than it actually is in reality. My LG is from 2014, but I don't think that the "Time Machine" functions have got any smarter over the 6 year period, despite all the screen advances (OLED etc). Older sets suffer from lack of WebOS updates, and browser updates, and of course, as internal achitechures are nowhere near the "multi-core CPU" TV Motherboard specs in current sets, those suffer the most.

I was surprised myself when I played with Time Machine on my TV, that for a "smart TV", the very BASIC use of the TV GUIDE for driving any recording schedule, meant that programmes easily missed endings, or kept going each week when I had forgotten to manually stop the weekly repeat. This thing is very "doors to manual" I am afraid.. 😒 The most irritating thing for me, is that if I elect to start a programme s few minutes early, it will name the file (programme name), with the program that was on-air BEFORE the actual main one I am aiming for. Hence 99% of stuff I record is on my iQ2 Foxtel box!!

Unfortunately, as this is just a peer-to-peer enthusiasts forum, LG has no ownership or control of it, nor does it have any obligation to look at, or respond to any comments or criticisms on here.  I am not even sure that they have  a Twitter or Facebook page, but if you DO find one, be sure to put your experiences on there, as often the "embarrassment" of being worse than a competitor, can cometimes elicit a response.

Edited December 9, 2020 by td47
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