How long to wait to play unprotected recording?

[Crash2009]

I read somewhere here that it is possible to start an unprotected recording on the HTPC, then, start watching the recording from one of the workstations on the local network.

I tried that last night and ended up with a corrupt recording. The recording became corrupt right about the time I started watching it from one of the workstations.

Is there a certain amount of time you have to wait from when you start the recording to when you start watching it from a different location?

[adam1991]

Are you sure you could watch it from another PC?

Or is it just from an extender?

[Crash2009]

Are you sure you could watch it from another PC?

Or is it just from an extender?

Yes I was watching it from another PC. I didn't think the extenders had anything to do with the equation, but now that you mention it, I guess I should fill you in on the entire picture.

There were 5 of us present at the scene of the crime. We were all messing with the same channel ESPN football Wolverines/Notre Dame last night. I was trying to spread the game around the whole building.

I was there, that's 1.
Echo1 was using a tuner to view live.
Echo2 was using a tuner to view live. I used Echo2 to navigate to the Tv Guide, hit the Record button, then went over to MSI-6657.
HTPC was using a tuner to view live.
MSI-6657 (the other PC) was playing the recording through it's own WMC, by navigating to the Recorded Tv folder of HTPC. MSI-6657 played the game (slightly delayed of course) up until it reached the point in the recording of where it joined the party. At that time WMC in the MSI-6657 threw an error at me which said something like, The Recording is Corrupt. I went back to the HTPC, stopped all recordings and tried to play the same file. WMC in HTPC concurred with WMC of MSI-6657 "The Recording is Corrupt" so I deleted the file and cancelled the experiment.

After the Corrupt Recording Error, I had to reboot everybody to get things calmed down.

[adam1991]

It doesn't surprise me that watching a recording in progress with another PC ended up corrupting the file.

Watching it with extenders would not have.

[Crash2009]

It doesn't surprise me that watching a recording in progress with another PC ended up corrupting the file.

Doesn't surprise me either. I just thought it might work if the in-progress file were a little bigger. And if so, how big should it be i.e. How long to wait before starting to watch on the 2nd PC. I'll try recording for 30 minutes before starting to watch from the 2nd PC.

I think I already have a hypothesis. The file will become corrupt at 30 minutes in.

[staknhalo]

Whenever I watch recordings from a separate PC (using WMP) it never gets corrupted - but I will have to restart the video to watch what recorded AFTER I started watching on the 2nd PC; otherwise, it just ends at wherever it recorded up to before I started playback on the 2nd PC

[Crash2009]

Gotcha, I have to wait for the recording to finish, prior to starting it on the 2nd PC. Well, it did work pretty good for a minute or 3.

Yea I know, share a tuner.

[foxwood]

Gotcha, I have to wait for the recording to finish, prior to starting it on the 2nd PC. Well, it did work pretty good for a minute or 3.

Yea I know, share a tuner.

Possible, if there's 10 minutes in the recording when you start playback, then the playback will stop after 10 minutes, even though the recording will keep going. When playback stops, you can start it again, and this time it should go for 20 minutes - you can skip past the 10 minutes you just watched, and watch the 2nd 10 minutes. You could do this again when playback ends at the 20 minute mark, but it's no way to watch a football game.

It's possible that you might get a better outcome with a player like VLC, which can play unprotected WTV files, but I've never tested that.

[blueiedgod]

Echo1 was using a tuner to view live.
Echo2 was using a tuner to view live. I used Echo2 to navigate to the Tv Guide, hit the Record button, then went over to MSI-6657.
HTPC was using a tuner to view live.
MSI-6657 (the other PC) was playing the recording through it's own WMC, by navigating to the Recorded Tv folder of HTPC. MSI-6657 played the game (slightly delayed of course) up until it reached the point in the recording of where it joined the party. At that time WMC in the MSI-6657 threw an error at me which said something like, The Recording is Corrupt. I went back to the HTPC, stopped all recordings and tried to play the same file. WMC in HTPC concurred with WMC of MSI-6657 "The Recording is Corrupt" so I deleted the file and cancelled the experiment.

If Echo 1, Echo 2, and HTPC were tuning the same channel only 1 tuner was in use. The magic of WMC dynamic tuner assigner with extenders.

Haven't tried viewing a program while it is being recorded from another machine, but can't see how it would corrupt the file, unless the hard drive could not keep up with the read/write requests and bungled the recording.

[Crash2009]

If Echo 1, Echo 2, and HTPC were tuning the same channel only 1 tuner was in use. The magic of WMC dynamic tuner assigner with extenders.

Sorry for the delay. You are absolutely correct. When HTPC, Echo1, and Echo2 are viewing the same channel, Ceton diagnostics reports that only one tuner is in use.

I made another recording this morning and watched it from MSI-6657. Unable to reproduce the Corrupt Recording error.

[slowbiscuit]

It doesn't surprise me that watching a recording in progress with another PC ended up corrupting the file.

Watching it with extenders would not have.

Totally disagree - the recording PC has a lock on writing to the file, the watching one is just reading it via normal network file sharing, which happens all the time for way more than just WMC applications. Not following how the reader can corrupt a file another is writing to.