Hi,

I was watching the swimming live from Rome via the BBC red button service this week and I needed to walk away from my viewing to attend to something else, so I hit pause, only to find I was unable to pause the live stream, I tried record instead, still not happening. Any way I can pause or rewind live sporting action? I think this is a BBC problem, as I can pause/rewind/record the ITV HD service which is accessed via a red button, so why not the BBC streams?

Unfortunately, it is not possible at the moment.
You can't record them either, except for the multiscreen page.
I would like to record the Friday Formula 1 practice - but you never know which screen it will be on anyway

I'm fairly sure it is the way the BBC red button app is programmed, and is not an HDR issue.

Another thing that needs to be fixed, as above, I would like to record the F1 practices but cant.

Why cant the BBC show then on BBC3 at the same time because that channel isnt being used anyway.

The clue is in the "i" of BBCi

It stands for "interactive" and you aren't meant to be able to "pause/rewind/record" them at all. That's it. Not the HDR's fault.

The reason that you can with ITV HD is because it's an "abortion" (sorry, I couldn't think of another suitable word to describe it!) of a pseudo implementation of an extra "channel" stream that is switchable via the red button. Totally different from standard red button services as implemented across FreeSat, Freeview or even Sky for that matter...

Why does it mean you arent meant to record it?

You can do it on freeview so if it was by design, surely they would have blocked recording on freeview?

On Freeview there is a subtle difference to the Freesat platform in that all the streams used by BBCi on Freeview each have a dedicated channel stream allocated to each (301, 302 etc etc) so in effect, you are actually recording a single channel stream for that particular item...

However, if you switch to News Multi-screen on a Freeview PVR (takes you to 305 actually) and then hit pause then wait a couple of mins..... now unpause and see if you can switch sound streams... you'll see what I mean... it gets messy from that point on...

I know which indicates the recording prevention wasnt by design.

The above is exactly how freesat should work so you can set a timer for the red button.

I e-mailed the BBCi team about this a few months ago. Specifically I asked why they do not make the BBCi streams "proper" channels (with EPG listings) to allow us to record them. This is the reply I received:-


Thank you for your email.

This is something that our technical development teams are definitely
looking at.

Unfortunately, we cannot achieve it in the short-term as there are a
number of technical, editorial and financial considerations to be taken
into account.

Thanks, which seems to prove my point that this was not by design, they just cant get a separate stream like on freeview.

Is it not possible to record these streams in non Freesat mode?

I think you can only access them in freesat mode.