Toggle between tuners in infiniTV?

It has been answered before, and the asnwer is "no" unless you hit "record"

I think it has been speculated that Tivo has a patent on that capability.

That's the dual or quad buffer feature on Tivo's.

I doubt that's it, the Moto 34xx/64xx junk that Comcast rents can do it with a remote button press. It is odd that you can't do it in WMC.

only what you watch, unless you are actually recording several channels

It's kind of a double edge sword. If WMC were to allow buffering of all tuners, then you would end up putting a lot of extra wear and tear on your HD, generate excesss heat, etc. etc.

As noted the easy workaround is just hit record and bounce around and pause as you wish.

DirecTV's DVRs can do it too by hitting down on the remote (twice activates it then once toggles between tuners). Not sure how it works on their new five tuner DVRs.

And once you hit record, the buffered portion is lost. Your recording will start at the point you hit record

The Tivo Elite buffers all 4 tuners constantly. The HD still works just fine.

Yah I feel this is a big thing missing from wmc. The ability to go back and forth would be great. Recording them works but not at all liked dual buffering. I don't want buffering on all tuners. Just two. Oh well.

Give it some time. I had a moxi and it buffered 3 tuners all the time and the HD's only last 15 months.

Tivo has been on the market for over a decade. They have more info on the reliability than you do.

Moxi was on the market for 2 years and called it quits.

Oh please. If you really think that has anything to do with why writing to a hard drive 24/7 is not a good thing then you don't understand hard drives. All hard drives have a limited life. It's not a matter of IF it's going to fail, it's a matter of when. If you put it in something that is writing to it 24/7 you are dramatically reducing it's life. Doesn't matter if it's a Tivo, Moxi, server, PC or whatever. I had drives fail in all of my Tivo's too.

Yes, all hard drives fail. All hard drives do not fail after 2 years writing 24x7. They all have a MTTF. If they all failed in less than 2 years then everything with a hard drive would be a bucket of fail.

I hit the stop button when I am done watching TV. No recording at all then.

If you want to fast switch between your current channel and the previous channel you were on, you can hit the Enter key on the MS Windows Remote (down under the number pad, on the lower right hand side, by the clear key). No buffering, though.

In an HTPC I would expect it to last a reasonably long time as it's not abusing the drive (5+ years), barring any outlier defects (some drives just fail prematurely).

Every drive I had in (2 Tivo Series 1's, 1 Tivo Series 2, 1 Moxi) died within 2 years. These were all quality drives and fortunately all had been covered under warranty. Still it's a hassle and I'd rather not have 24/7 buffering/suggestions going on and not have to deal with replacing drives.

As far as exactly how long they last it's a guessing game but no, not everything with a hard drive will fail in 2 years. In a Tivo or Moxi with constant buffering/suggestions going on you are guaranteed to have a drive failure well below the average life span of a drive. Depending on how full the drive is, it ends up constantly writing to the same sectors over and over. This eventually leads to lots of bad sectors that require reboot scans and removal of bad blocks. Eventually it leads to complete drive failure.

I would only do it once a month.