Changing channels

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rudig
Posts: 254
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:21 pm

Changing channels

Post by rudig » Thu Jun 26, 2014 6:23 pm

On the dutch forum I quite frequently read that people dislike long zap times of argus.
Is there a way to solve this by opening up other streams already without showing them? Kind of like the double clutch gearbox from Volkswagen, :D

The next channel is already active so when user wants he can instantly zap to this channel.
Of course this will only work when there is "room" to acces this other stream.

I know that it would consument power / resources etc, but could also improve the user experience.

Personally I record almost everything so zap-times are not an issue for me, but al to often I read that others fine it annoying

Christoph21x
Posts: 1070
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:39 am
Location: Berne / Switzerland

Re: Changing channels

Post by Christoph21x » Thu Jun 26, 2014 8:17 pm

This idea had been discussed already a couple of times.
First: how to predict, which channel should be taken into account?
And most arguments against: effort (programming) versus value...
For Argus this would mean, that you have quite a frequent recalculation of the scheduler planning - which is, due to the options you have, quite intensive...
It´s probably smarter to buy an additional TV set if you have such an issue (which is not always faster, by the way) :D :D . I made some benchmarks in 2012 - my Samsung D series was not always faster. You should find this by searching in here...

... and don´t forget: this is also depending on the client you use.
"One must still have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star." (F. Nietzsche)

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fishsticks
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Joined: Mon Dec 23, 2013 1:08 am
Location: UK

Re: Changing channels

Post by fishsticks » Thu Jun 26, 2014 9:55 pm

IMHO, this is very low priority. For those who make use of DVR technology (focus audience of Argus), very little actually gets watched in real time (exceptional "must see" events like live sports). Zapping between channels is an even less truly needed event (multiple "must see" in realtime...?). Most individuals I've witnessed zapping since the introduction of EPG have typically been because they didn't know how to use it.

Yes, switch in 1 second instead of 4 would be nice, but far bigger improvements can and should be made to core functionality. I can see the benefit of having the previous channel kept going (the one button back-forth between 2 channels as so many TVs have) for some, but if any of this existed I'd switch it off for better tuner and disk efficiency.

Caesium
Posts: 328
Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:40 pm

Re: Changing channels

Post by Caesium » Thu Jun 26, 2014 11:42 pm

I'd say exactly the reverse. Argus is my primary method of watching live TV.

With all due respect, just because you don't see any need for a particular use-case doesn't mean the need doesn't exist ;)

Christoph21x
Posts: 1070
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:39 am
Location: Berne / Switzerland

Re: Changing channels

Post by Christoph21x » Thu Jun 26, 2014 11:58 pm

OK, then please read this "small comparison" (of 2012!) and then we may start to discuss - please with FACTS.
viewtopic.php?p=22821#p22821
"One must still have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star." (F. Nietzsche)

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fishsticks
Posts: 79
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Location: UK

Re: Changing channels

Post by fishsticks » Fri Jun 27, 2014 12:19 am

Caesium wrote:I'd say exactly the reverse. Argus is my primary method of watching live TV.

With all due respect, just because you don't see any need for a particular use-case doesn't mean the need doesn't exist ;)
I'll stick with my opinion and post. "Changing channels" is a valid need and the functionality does exist- changing channels faster would offer a user experience improvement of subjective quantity but as there are more fundamental/basic improvements needed on altogether missing functionality it is low priority.

The speed of change is not even the same for all to begin with- I've seen reports of anything between 1-6 seconds. What is the aim, how much faster? The only topic on live TV which I find interesting as it would be new functionality is doing it without a buffer recording- which incidentally is related part of the switch time.

I thought you used MP as front-end? I tried MP without Argus initially and it worked very well for live TC, both on single-seat as well as in distribution. MP recording being primitive, I introduced Argus into the mix for the recording benefits- it doesn't really offer anything new/different for live TV experience.

Caesium
Posts: 328
Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:40 pm

Re: Changing channels

Post by Caesium » Fri Jun 27, 2014 5:30 am

fishsticks wrote: I thought you used MP as front-end? I tried MP without Argus initially and it worked very well for live TC, both on single-seat as well as in distribution. MP recording being primitive, I introduced Argus into the mix for the recording benefits- it doesn't really offer anything new/different for live TV experience.
Yeah I do use MP as frontend, with Argus behind it - ever since the first day I used MP's TV Server I didn't like it - I found it slow and clunky and handling the several-hundred channels on Astra 28.2 just seemed beyond it, it was very sluggish.

Cutting out TV Server altogether and using Argus with MP seemed the logical way to go. Of course I use PVR functions as well, so I have a fairly seamless live TV and recorded experience, they all use the same tuners and same software. My general use is watching live TV most of the evening and then switching to recordings later on if there was something on two channels at once that we wanted to watch.

Quite often what we watch isn't even preplanned, its just a case of scanning whats on tonight and "oh that looks remotely interesting, lets check that out *flick over to that channel, wait for it to start in the next few mins*"

rudig
Posts: 254
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:21 pm

Re: Changing channels

Post by rudig » Fri Jun 27, 2014 7:51 am

I only brought it up to improve user experience and extend user base.
Psersonally argus is cast enough for me, I rarely use live tv.
But my experience is not the overall experience.

Zapping is ussually next or previous channel, so creating a smart guessing mechanism should be easy.

But let's add this item with lowest prio

logifuse
Posts: 234
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:17 am

Re: Changing channels

Post by logifuse » Sat Jun 28, 2014 4:42 am

Some points:

- Make sure you're using UNC rather than RTSP if you can.

- In MP, the default Zap Delay is 2 seconds. This is hopeless. I always change this to 0 & have no problem with 2 digit channel numbers. I don't understand why you would want a delay before the channel change is initialized.

- Changing to another channel on the same MUX (this is DVB-T) is far quicker than changing to a channel on another MUX. e.g. here (Australia) ABC1, ABC2, ABC3 & ABC News 24 are on the same MUX. Changing between them is quicker than changing to SBS1, or 9 Digital, etc. This is effectively because the other channels on the MUX are already tuned to - essentially what the OP is asking for.

- I've run the Live TV buffer on a RAM drive on my server before. It does make a little difference, but I don't think it's enough to justify the extra RAM (if it's ECC server RAM) & the RAM drive software. It's also a hassle as you need to limit the buffer size to fit the size of the RAM drive.

- As for using Argus for live TV, my ATI video card gives me the best picture quality for my setup. The issue is that we have bit-starved MPEG2 here for both SD & HD free to air. You need excellent deinterlacing to watch sport in SD (yes, most sport is only in SD here!), so for me, that means Argus/MP. Additionally, it means that you don't need antenna points at every screen (the distribution is over Ethernet), so you can have your antenna to your server & then the rest is LAN.

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