# Does YTTV’s Mosaic feature compare to dual live buffers?



## itzme (Jan 17, 2008)

I’m still looking for a streaming service that‘ll let me watch more than one football game at once, staring a bit delayed, but being able to pause one and switch to the other, never missing any action, yet skipping all the commercial. My Directv satellite lets me do that with dual life buffers (double play). But I’d love to switch to a streaming service.

I’ve read YTTV is offering something called mosaic. Will that do the same thing Using YTTV on my Apple TV? Better? Worse? How would it work with the ATV remote?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Mosaic mode, when released, promises to be four live games (presumably with audio for one of them). Doing any kind of "trick play" seems like a very long shot. It is nothing like DLB.

I wouldn't expect to see DLB support on a streaming service.


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## itzme (Jan 17, 2008)

Oh well  If a streaming service ever offered something like DLB I'd be there in a minute. The 4 live games is "bait" to watch commercials, something I just don't do.


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## B. Shoe (Apr 3, 2008)

itzme said:


> Oh well  If a streaming service ever offered something like DLB I'd be there in a minute. The 4 live games is "bait" to watch commercials, something I just don't do.


I look at it as an ability to not have to worry about pausing one game, flipping to another, and vice versa for 4-6 hours. The ESPN app offers a mosaic (they call it multiplay) where you can display 2, 3, or 4 streams at once. The NFL Sunday Ticket streaming app also does this. Easy to add and drop in games as you see fit. If there's a game that you want to focus on for just a minute, just double click on that game window and it goes full screen (this happens on both examples listed.) Hopefully, when released, YTTV will offer this same type of mosaic operation within its program.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Trick play and the ability to go full screen are handy features.


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## itzme (Jan 17, 2008)

So true! And Dual Live Buffers are amazing, too! With college ball especially there's usually 2 good games airing around the same time. I start watching one about 20-30 mins after their live start. From there I can use Doubleplay to watch every minute of each game and avoid all the commercials. When streaming starts letting me do buffer two streams I'll be leaving DTV satellite.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

I find no benefit in watching two games "at once". If I want to follow two games, I record them both and jump to the other if the first turns out to be a dud.


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## itzme (Jan 17, 2008)

harsh said:


> I find no benefit in watching two games "at once". If I want to follow two games, I record them both and jump to the other if the first turns out to be a dud.


if I run into the dud issue, I just select yet a different game to jump to. There are 5 tuners all firing on Saturdays. The idea is to be able to see easily see every minute and skip every commercial of at least 2 games.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

itzme said:


> if I run into the dud issue, I just select yet a different game to jump to. There are 5 tuners all firing on Saturdays. The idea is to be able to see easily see every minute and skip every commercial of at least 2 games.


You can see every minute and skip the commercials of five games if you record them all (or at least four of them while watching the fifth on delay).


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## sd72667 (Aug 25, 2008)

B. Shoe said:


> I look at it as an ability to not have to worry about pausing one game, flipping to another, and vice versa for 4-6 hours. The ESPN app offers a mosaic (they call it multiplay) where you can display 2, 3, or 4 streams at once. The NFL Sunday Ticket streaming app also does this. Easy to add and drop in games as you see fit. If there's a game that you want to focus on for just a minute, just double click on that game window and it goes full screen (this happens on both examples listed.) Hopefully, when released, YTTV will offer this same type of mosaic operation within its program.


Is the ESPN+ multiview only on Apple TV and Xbox? I can't find any info about it.


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## wmb (Dec 18, 2008)

harsh said:


> You can see every minute and skip the commercials of five games if you record them all (or at least four of them while watching the fifth on delay).


On YTTV, there is no limits on the number of things you can record simultaneously - not limited to 5.

You can jump between the games, resume the game where you left off, and skip ahead to the next play.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

wmb said:


> On YTTV, there is no limits on the number of things you can record simultaneously - not limited to 5.


itzme was speaking of DLB on a DIRECTV DVR rather than YTTV. I was responding to that post.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

sd72667 said:


> Is the ESPN+ multiview only on Apple TV and Xbox? I can't find any info about it.


Yes, it is available on Apple TV. It works great, but you are limited to ESPN content. The NFL Sunday Ticket app works well on the Apple TV as well. You can choose which 4 games you want to watch at once, as long as they are not on your local CBS or Fox channel.
I’m not sure about Xbox.

I really wish D* would have given us a multi-game view on their DVR’s.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

itzme said:


> I’ve read YTTV is offering something called mosaic. Will that do the same thing Using YTTV on my Apple TV? Better? Worse? How would it work with the ATV remote?





harsh said:


> Mosaic mode, when released, promises to be four live games (presumably with audio for one of them). Doing any kind of "trick play" seems like a very long shot. It is nothing like DLB.
> 
> I wouldn't expect to see DLB support on a streaming service.


I don't know any specifics about YTTV's planned Mosaic feature but I do know that it's established normal behavior in YTTV for it to automatically pause the currently playing program when you switch to a different program (recorded or live) or completely exit the app, if the currently playing program is in your Library (i.e. if it's currently recording or has completed recording to cloud DVR). So when you go back to that program, either via the Library UI or via the Live TV UI (assuming the program is still recording), it will resume playing where you left off. (I'm not sure but I think it may even temporarily pause-on-exit a live TV program that's _not_ in your Library if you were watching the live program long enough and YTTV assumes you may want to return to it later.)

YTTV makes it easy to record entire sports leagues to your Library, so you'd probably want to do that for the entirety of NFL and NCAA football games airing across all channels you receive. You just set that once when you first start using YTTV and then there's no more thinking about setting up individual games, or worrying about if they run long or whatever. If you did that, I'm pretty sure that each currently recording game would effectively have its own live buffer allowing you to pick right back up where you left off as you switch between them and then rewind and FF within the recording as you please, zipping through commercials, etc. YTTV even has a feature that lets you quickly catch up to live by watching a recap of all the key plays that have happened in the game so far. 

So at least part of the functionality you want is already there. The main thing that remains to be implemented is the ability to watch up to four different games on screen at once, which I assume is what Mosaic will add. Whether Mosaic would always only show the live point of each of the four games on screen or would instead show them at whatever point in the buffer you paused/rewound them to, I don't know. Seems like the former option might be easier and what most folks would actually want. And then clicking on any of the four games would take it full-screen (exiting Mosaic) and then allow you to do trick play on that specific game recording.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> I don't know any specifics about YTTV's planned Mosaic feature but I do know that it's established normal behavior in YTTV for it to automatically pause the currently playing program when you switch to a different program (recorded or live) or completely exit the app, if the currently playing program is in your Library (i.e. if it's currently recording or has completed recording to cloud DVR).


The difference here being that the Mosaic "program" is a composite of four arbitrary streams. That's a lot to keep track of.


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## the2130 (Dec 18, 2014)

wmb said:


> On YTTV, there is no limits on the number of things you can record simultaneously - not limited to 5.
> 
> You can jump between the games, resume the game where you left off, and skip ahead to the next play.
> 
> ...


Is it a 30-second skip?


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## itzme (Jan 17, 2008)

I do wish we could configure the 10 sec skip to be 30.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

itzme said:


> I do wish we could configure the 10 sec skip to be 30.


While the NFL skip interval could stand to be longer, the NCAA interval probably can't. Be careful what you ask for.


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## itzme (Jan 17, 2008)

harsh said:


> While the NFL skip interval could stand to be longer, the NCAA interval probably can't. Be careful what you ask for.


But I've been using the 30 sec skip (and the satellite skip back) with NFL for over 20 years now. I'm great at it. I have it down to an art, but I'll admit there's an occassional "oh this play won't be good" muumbled when the NFL is in hurry-up or on a Saturday SEC game.


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