[mythtv-users] Why does going to live TV take so long?

[Richard Dale]

Another way to "speed up" channel changes for live TV for those of us with
multiple tuners is for idle tuners to be tuned into a channel always
recording in their own live TV ringbuffer.

We might need to do some intelligent thinking of which channels to choose
for the idle tuners.
Eg. 
1.  Tune into an upcoming channel to be recorded
2.  Tune into the next sequential channel (good for channel surfers)
3.  Round robin the use of the idle tuners to benefit those who are actively
monitoring 2-3 channels (eg. Let's say you're watching some breaking news -
like a major world event (think twin towers) - and want to keep flicking
between 3 channels - let's call them ABC, DEF and XYZ.  Tuner1: Channel ABC,
Tuner 2 Channel DEF, Tuner 3 Channel XYZ).   The idle tuners work on a ring
buffer of their own.  Eg.  Flicking from ABC to DEF to XYZ the first time
might take a few seconds for each one, but subsequent flicking between them
would be almost instant because we have three ring buffers running and
recording.

A further beneficial side effect of pre-tuning idle tuners would be that you
could record (or watch) a show that had already started.  

Eg.  Let's say you always watch the nightly news on a particular channel but
don't want to specifically record it (because news becomes rapidly outdated
anyway).  If we had the ability to set an idle tuner rule to tune Channel X
and time Y then you could rewind to the start of the news.

Cheers,
Richard.