Switching Tuners

Live TV button switches between tuners.

 

You can do what you want but it takes a little bit of setup. You can setup the last button to toggle between two tuners. While watching live tv, hit the info button and scroll down to the tuner section and select the other tuner you want and select it. Now the last button will toggle between two tuners.

 

Ha I've only had the Roamio for a week and forgot about 6 tuners.

HD was an easy toggle.

 

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But as a warning, if you are ever using channel up/down, if you go onto a channel occupied by one of the other tuners, it will switch tuners.. Then if you channel up again, you will change channels on THAT tuner, thus losing your buffer..

So, as always, RECORD if you really want to make sure you don't lose your program.. (But I use the multi-buffer thing for late night CNN and other stuff..)

As a specific example..
tuner 1 is on channel 2
tuner 2 is on channel 3

If you're currently on tuner 1, and hit channel up, you will switch to tuner 2. You hit channel up again, and now tuner 2 will go to channel 4... thus losing the buffer you already have..

 

Nice little lesson, there; I wasn't aware of that particular danger.

And it doesn't just apply to using Channel Up/Down; the same behavior occurs if you use the Guide to pick another program: if it's already tuned, you'll be switched to that tuner rather than changing the channel on the current tuner.

At least this is the case on the host DVR; Minis are always stuck on the single tuner allocated to them by the host DVR. Right?

 

No, actually the Mini will switch tuners too if one of the host DVR's free tuners is already sitting on a channel you switch to on the Mini.

 

Thanks. I'm away from my Minis and couldn't test.

 

I have been using this trick for a little while now on my mini. I use slingplayer on my phone to change the Roamio's tuners to the channels I want and then when on the mini, when I hit one of those channels, the buffer is there.

The only caveat is it won't switch to the current "in use" tuner on the Roamio. So when I switch the Roamio to the channels I want, I need to remember to switch the Roamio to another tuner, before I move back to the mini.

 

Would it be better to switch the Roamio to playback of a recording?

 

Never tried it that way. I'm usually only swapping between 2 shows when on my mini anyway, so moving the Roamio to another tuner is usually fine for me.

 

If I get that interested in a program (which is very unusual since I have so many recordings to watch I rarely watch live TV,) I hit the record button because when I get the inevitable phone call that lasts past the buffer, or whatever interruption, I can still go back watch the program later. Plus, half the time when I'm trying to switch from tuner to tuner I screw it up and lose the buffer. Plus, it only takes a second to delete it and I have 6TB of space so I'm not worried about that.

 

To swap between two tuners you can use the Enter/Last key. The important thing is to make sure those are your last two tuners accessed. Use the info or right button to select the first tuner you want to swap between, and then use it again to select the 2nd tuner. After that the Enter button will swap you only between those two tuners without cycling through all of your tuners.

 

Actually, hit the 'Info' button. You should get a window at the bottom and you can arrow down to one icon that has a bunch of circles overlapping. Highlighting that, you'll see all the tuners that are active - including any Mini's taking a tuner space. Arrow over and you can actually select any one of the 6 active tuners, hit select and it'll change to that tuner.

It also indicates if that tuner is recording by having the circle red or grey (red is recording).