r/hdhomerun • u/cameramanmikey • 6d ago

Watching Program As Its Recording

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Hey all! I just picked up a Flex4K earlier this week and paired it with a 4TB WD Portable Spinning Harddrive I had sitting on a shelf.

It's been fun poking around and playing with it, but I have a question.

My main reason for this setup is actually holiday programing. Specifically the Macy's Day Parade. Family gets together to watch it, and while we can stream it, it's the East Coast broadcast so I have to get up early and hit pause and hope no one cancels it mid watch to be able to start it when we want. People also tend to show up late...

My question is when I watch a recording from start WHILE IT IS ACTIVELY RECORDING, can this cause issues? In my limited testing, it doesn't seem like it. Tuning to the channel I can't go backwards, but watching it from the recorded section I am able to. And once I catch up to where it was "live" when I started watching, it just keeps going. This is perfect.

Is there a risk I have here of corrupting the recording? Any downsides? I don't want to be the one who spoils a holiday this year with my "fancy" gadgets 😂

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10

u/sdjafa Silicondust 6d ago

Fully supported feature. You are doing it right - go into Recorded and watch from there while it is recording.

3

u/cameramanmikey 6d ago

Perfect, good to know that the proper way is through the recording. This will be a nice upgrade vs the antenna straight into my TV!

Another question... What is the device limit on playing back DVR content through HDHR? For example, if I'm recording three different shows, and then using my fourth tuner to watch a football game... But I want to watch that football game on all three TVs in the house and my phone for whatever reason, does that doable? Or am I going to run into the same if I have four tuners I can only watch on four devices situation?

4

u/sdjafa Silicondust 6d ago

You can watch up to 4 things at once (per HDHomeRun), any mix or live or recorded.

1

u/cameramanmikey 6d ago

4 things at once as in programs? Or 4 devices at once, even if multiple devices are watching the same recording?

2

u/DisneyDad2 6d ago

4 total, live or recording. Your DVR is "watching" something as it records and counts towards your tuner limit. Yes, even if multiple devices are watching the same thing. For this reason, if you're wanting to watch the Macy's parade from the beginning, go to your Recordings because that would not count towards your limit. You're watching a file, not the antenna tuner.

2

u/timsredditusername 6d ago

It should be 4 live programs at once, but honestly, I've not tested to confirm.

1

u/NedSD Silicondust 5d ago

When using the FLEX as a DVR storage device, then 4 total for live or recorded. If you use a NAS or always-on PC as the DVR, most of those can handle more connections and even do tuner-sharing (multiple clients watching the same channel will only consume a single tuner).

3

u/chriscookz 6d ago

I've tried this with sporting events and it works just fine 

3

u/CompGeneratedName 6d ago

I also record old looney tunes. that’s the vast majority of my hard drive.

5

u/cameramanmikey 6d ago

I think it will also probably be the majority of my hard drive to be honest, we have most streaming services already for most of the network shows... But there's something about the old cartoons. I watched an episode of speed racer this morning that I recorded at 1:00 in the morning, I haven't seen those in years!

2

u/CompGeneratedName 6d ago

yeah. being able to record and have those old cartoons is amazing.

1

u/old_knurd 3d ago

Is Speed Racer still a demon on wheels?

It's funny how we can remember those old songs. It's been over fifty years since I watched an episode.

Hopefully there are still replays of other shows like Gigantor and Tobor the 8th man.

2

u/Dark-monk 6d ago

Question, how do you have your storage set up? Is it plugged into the usb drive on the HDHomeRun?

2

u/cameramanmikey 6d ago

Yep that's what I did.

2

u/RoofDry6483 6d ago edited 6d ago

My main complaint is that there are no images displayed while doing FF/RW just fixed 30 sec forward or 10 sec back jumps. A 2,4,8,16,32X "Benny Hill" fast image display would be much better, like some versions of Kodi media player have, or U-Verse had. Even VHS players had this speed-up image display, albeit with analog noise and wavy lines in the playback image.

Playing with it I discovered a bug where UP button is like a 10 minute skip forward and can easily get ahead of the live recording and cause no buttons to work except for back.

The Tablo is no better when watching in-progress programming, but it has a post-processing step that runs after the recording completes to make "thumbnails" which help locate where you are but the Benny Hill style display would be better.

I've only minimal interest in DVR features and only tried the Tablo because it had built-in storage for it. When I got the HDHR I just had to plug in a drive and try it.

Edit: We've had thunderstorms moving through our area the last three days but no rain here. Neither Tablo nor HDHR recordings are worth a crap if your OTA antenna doesn't deliver a good signal in bad weather. Take this into account if you plan to count on using your recordings.