Starting in-progress recordings from the start

[ncted]

Sorry if this has been covered before, but a search resulted in nothing useful.

Which OTT live streaming services, if any, support starting playback of a recording that is still in-progress from the beginning of the show? My wife and I watch several shows this way, and I am pretty sure she will find it unusable to not be able to do this like we do on our Dish Hopper.

Thanks,
Ted

 

[Zookster]

I did this all the time with PS Vue and now with YouTube TV. I can't remember the function on PS Vue, but on YouTube TV, I'm always given the prompt to start from the "Beginning" or "Live" (or "Last Watch" to resume viewing after starting on a different device). The only hitch I've ever encountered on YouTube TV involves trying to watch a recording of a long block of sports programming (4+ hours). It won't let me go all the way back to the start if it's still in progress, only 2 to 3 hours, which is, I believe, the length of the recording buffer. This sometimes happens when I try to watch a tennis tournament that started in the middle of the night. If the matches are broken up in different programming blocks in the guide, it's fine. But if it's a 5 to 7 hour single programming block on the same channel, then I have an issue. The trade off is, I can set a single recording that will catch every second of coverage of the entire tournament (or MLB or college basketball season for my teams) regardless of channel. And I don't have to worry about managing my recording storage space by constantly deleting stuff.

 

[ncted]

So, sounds like PS Vue and YTTV do this, which is contrary to some reddit posts I found, but they were older, so perhaps it didn't work that way to begin with. Do any of the other services allow this? Hulu, Sling, Philo, etc.?

 

[Zookster]

So, sounds like PS Vue and YTTV do this, which is contrary to some reddit posts I found, but they were older, so perhaps it didn't work that way to begin with. Do any of the other services allow this? Hulu, Sling, Philo, etc.?

PS Vue did it from the first time I signed up within a couple months of going nationwide in 2016 (using a PS4). YTTV has always done it from the time I signed up the day the Roku app was launched (early Feb. 2017). Like you, it might have been a deal-breaker for me if it didn't work like that. However, user experiences on different devices may vary. I actually have a problem with this function on YTTV on the Chrome browser, so I use Firefox instead on my computer.

Though I don't have personal experiences with the other services, I've never heard a complaint that they didn't work like that. There seem to be bigger issues with some other services, like on Hulu, you can't fast-forward without paying $10/mo. extra. Sling won't let you record any ABC/Disney/ESPN channels.

 

[Ronnie-]

As stated, yttv and vue do. Can’t say that I have tried with live, but I still have it a few more days. I’ll set something to record and check.

 

[Ronnie-]

It appears that Hulu live also has the capability.

Set a show on American heroes to record. There is the option to “start over”. Or go live when watching from the dvr screen. Or just in the channel itself.

 

[Ronnie-]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ncted]

Sweet. Thanks for the positive feedback. On the topic of DVRs, are there any other gotchas beyond the ones Zookster mentioned which would be noticeable to someone used to a traditional DVR?

 

[Zookster]

Sweet. Thanks for the positive feedback. On the topic of DVRs, are there any other gotchas beyond the ones Zookster mentioned which would be noticeable to someone used to a traditional DVR?

The fastforwarding and rewinding are different, at least on the services and devices I've used. You don't see the speeded image whizzing past and then instantly return to normal viewing when you hit play. It's more like on Amazon Prime and Netflix, again on the services/devices I've used, where you see thumbnails at the bottom and there's a slight delay before the image resumes in normal playback. I don't see it as a "gotcha," as I think it's actually faster to get through commercials that way, arrowing through the thumbnails to get to the end of the commercial break. It's definitely a lot faster finding a specific scene in a movie or show that way. On a computer, I can locate a specific scene in any one-hour show in a matter of seconds by hovering the cursor over the progress bar to scan the thumbnails that pop up.

 

[ncted]

The fastforwarding and rewinding are different, at least on the services and devices I've used. You don't see the speeded image whizzing past and then instantly return to normal viewing when you hit play. It's more like on Amazon Prime and Netflix, again on the services/devices I've used, where you see thumbnails at the bottom and there's a slight delay before the image resumes in normal playback. I don't see it as a "gotcha," as I think it's actually faster to get through commercials that way, arrowing through the thumbnails to get to the end of the commercial break. It's definitely a lot faster finding a specific scene in a movie or show that way. On a computer, I can locate a specific scene in any one-hour show in a matter of seconds by hovering the cursor over the progress bar to scan the thumbnails that pop up.

If it is like the thumbnails on Netflix, that is really good. Amazon is not quite as good, but still usable.