Hi,
I think I have just figured out how to increase the pause buffer in MCE 2005 rollup 2.
Using regmon (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Regmon.html) I have discovered that a process called ehrecvr.exe attempts to reads some values that aren't in the registry by default before it writes to others which are there.
More specifically it attempts to read:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners\BackingFileDuration
and
Tuners\BackingFileCountLow and Tuners\BackingFileCountHigh

before it writes to corresponding keys below

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners\DVR

It seems that setting BackingFileDuration to 600 and BackFileCountHigh to 16 will make the pause buffer larger. I have paused for more than 30 minutes now. Don't know exactly how big it is yet, have to do some more testing.



The system must be rebooted after making these changes to the registry.
The ehrecvr.exe process reads these entries during the boot process.
It may be sufficient to restart ehrecvr.exe, I haven't tried that.

I've been looking for this info for a long time, I hope it works. I'm going to give it a try. Please post updates if you figure out any details about these registry keys. It would be nice to know how much pause buffer you get for the values set in the registry.

Thanks,
Jeff

Hi again,

It seems that it is the BackingFileDuration setting that is important. Setting this to 600 makes the DVR/BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds also 600, after a reboot.

This means that the files on the disk 600 kb instead of 300 kb which is the default on my machine.

This in turn means that the maximum pause time is 60 minutes. I.e. if you press pause the video will freeze for 60 minutes.

I assume that setting the value to e.g. 1200 would make the pause buffer 2 hours, but I haven't tested this.

The files for the pause buffer are located here on my PC:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Recorded TV\TempRec\TempSBE

I wonder if this has any bad side effects? If it is this easy to change, why haven't Microsoft included this in the settings menu or the TweakMCE tool?

Well it seems to work for me anyway.

There is a post from the last couple of days which shows exactly how to do this...

Cheers,
Andy

I had not noticed that. I assume you are referring to this thread:

http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=41&messageid=146955#bm147030

I have tried the solution from the german site they refer to earlier, and it doesn't work on my PC.

The reason is that they attempt to write directly to the values that are updated by the process I described in my first post. The result is that the change is overwritten after a reboot.

I added the nonexistent registry key entries you described, and BINGO.  1 Hours worth of buffer.

Actually the first time, when I tested how far back the buffer went back, it went more than 2 hours, but then I realized my wife records her soap and it included that in the buffer too.  Later on, I tested again, and got a full hour worth of buffer time.

Thanks,  now if my HD Tivo would do the same.

Jim

GREAT find, skybert. It seems you are somewhat confused on what the settings actually mean, so here's some more info on the topic for everyone... What the DVR/BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds does is set how long each buffer file is, in seconds. So when you set it to 600, that means each buffer file is 10 minutes. The default is 300, or 5 minutes.

The DVR/BackingStoreMinNumBackingFiles determines the MINIMUM number of files that will be kept for the buffer. The default value for this is 6 and IT WILL BE RESET TO 6 IF YOU TRY TO CHANGE IT. With the default file time of 5 minutes, you get a 30-minute buffer (5x6=30). But with your settings of 10 minutes per file (600 seconds) and a minimum of 6 files, we now have a 1-hour buffer. 10 minutes/file x 6 files = 1 hour.

The DVR/BackingStoreMaxNumBackingFiles is the MAXIMUM number of files that will be kept for the buffer. I don't think this matters much, but I have mine set at the default of 8 files. That way, with 10 minutes per file, I have a max buffer time of 80 minutes. You CAN change this value, but Im not sure what it will actually do.

And, like skybert said, for anyone who wants to try this, you can't edit these keys directly or they will get over-written with the default values. You have to make these in the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners" area alongside the RecInfoVersion:

BackingFileCountHigh
BackingFileCountLow
BackingFileDuration

-----------------------------

here are my values, to get a 1-hour minimum and 80-minute maximum buffer:
BackingFileCountHigh 8
BackingFileCountLow 6
BackingFileDuration 600

----------------------------

say you want a 1.5-hour minimum buffer:
BackingFileCountHigh 8
BackingFileCountLow 6
BackingFileDuration 900

...you get the idea...

----------------------------


By the way, this does eat up a lot of hard drive space. I just checked and ONE of these 10-minute files takes up 762MB. It's probably not always exactly that, depending on the show, but close. At that rate, a 1-hour buffer will eat 4.5 gigs...but I guess it doesn't matter because they are always being deleted as new ones are made.

anyways, thanks again skybert

Ok, here's a question about this from a MCE newbie (Have my machine ordered, but don't even have it here yet)

So, with the pause buffer set at 30 minutes, does that mean that I can only pause a show for 30 minutes?  Then what, it just quits recording?

I currently use ReplayTV, and we often leave a channel that is going to have 3 or 4 good movies in a row paused for 4-5 hours and watch the movies delayed 4-5 hours (Without setting them to record).  To do that would I have to have the pause buffer set at 5-6 hours?

Thanks for any input, this will be an invaluable post for me.  I would have been really mad the first time I ran into pause buffer problems if this is how it works.

JAKE

I'm new too, but I think it works more like tivo, where after it's been paused for 30 minutes, it starts playing the buffer. Then you will still have 30 minutes to fast forward.

Wow.  I'm glad I don't have Tivo!

I guess I'll have to set my buffer to 6+ hours.  I should have plenty of HDD space for this, 160gb dedicated to OS and TV.  We don't usually keep very many recorded shows.

I'd love to hear any other suggestions.

Thanks to both kendawg and skybert for this.  We paused and missed nearly the entire last quarter of the USC/Texas game tonight and my wife nearly killed me for replacing our Dish PVR with MCE.

I've made kendawg's registry fixes and so far the first temp file is 15 minutes (~1GB) and working on the second.  I set it for 1.5 hour buffer time and it's looking like it will work.

If there's any interest, I can make a GUI that will allow you to specify these settings and make the registry changes for you.  Just let me know.

isomies

I think a little gui to make changes for the pause buffer would be enjoyed and welcomed by the community!

Thats just how it works, when the buffer is full - it starts playing.

Regards Henrik

Here's maybe a dumb question.

What type of entries do I make in the registry?  String, Binary, DWORD, Mulit-String, Expandable String Value??

Thanks!

JAKE

It should be a DWORD.

You could also simply copy the following into a file a name it 1-hour.reg, then double click the file to get a 1 hour buffer:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners]
"BackingFileDuration"=dword:00000258