[Jonathan_S]

If you do a manual recording on a show you've been watching for 30 minutes, it will automatically include those 30 minutes in the recording.

edit: actually, you don't have to have been watching it, but the tivo needs to have been at least tuned to it (one of the tuners, anyhow). Hope that makes sense.

I think aadam101 was refereing to the workaround for capturing the buffer once a new show has started.

If you do a record by time and channel, for the channel that is buffered and set it to start 30 (or more) minutes in the past then the TiVo will grab the whole buffer.

If a new program had started (even if it only started a minute ago) and you just press record during liveTV the TiVo will dump whatever portion of the buffer belongs to the previous show that that channel.

 

[Jonathan_S]

I had something really bizarre related to the buffer just happen with my HR10-250.

I forgot the Dave Chappelle was going to be on Oprah today. Luckily, my wife watches Today and Oprah is on NBC...and I happened to realize that the show was already on about 30 minutes after it started. I rewound it back to essentially the beginning--probably the 4:01 mark. But then something came up, so I hit the record button and went off. When I just checked, it actually started the recording 30 minutes prior to when I pushed record, back into the game show that precedes Oprah. It essentially recorded an hour of buffer.

I've had a TiVo in some form or another for almost 6 years and had never seen anything like this...just thought it was cool.

An hour is pretty unusual. But 40 to 45 minutes is fairly common. Basically even though the TiVo only displays the last 30 minutes of buffer through liveTV, it doesn't discard 1 second of video every second. Instead it occasionally goes back and deletes some of the material that is older than 30 minutes. So there is usually a "hidden" buffer that the TiVo doesn't normally display but that it hasn't gotten around to deleting yet.

When you record from liveTV (assuming that it doesn't truncate the buffer because a new show just started) the TiVo will use that "hidden" buffer as well as what you can see.