Most video players can decode an "in progress" stream just fine. This obviously involves quite a few artifacts for the first 0.5–2 seconds or so, but seeing artifacts is generally preferable to seeing a totally blank screen.
I claim it's because DRM, since if it wasn't for DRM wanting control of the whole reception to display path to be protected, you could just stick an open computing device in between the streaming signal and the display device, and make your own technical choices.
You still can, AFAIK, for content that doesn't require HDCP.
It's because we have a trendy now-decades-long wave of product managers and designers who assume their job is to know better than the user.
Open source software is not immune.
cough systemd cough
Cable: no, you'd need a CableCard, and approved device (i.e. DVR), etc.
Do you mean Unix-like? I'm not sure what you mean by "open" in this instance, but Unix definitely was not very open, leading to nascent platforms and movements such as GNU and Free/Libre software.
I recall reading about TVs with multiple tuners to resolve adjacent channels when flipping, but I don't remember if they actually made it to market.
Yet does it use any of those extra decoders when not recording to proactively decode the previous and next channel, or something smart like that? No, of course not...
The incoming channel data stream is saved as-is. It will need a demultiplexer to separate out one channel from the multi-channel data stream, but it won't need to decode that stream, which is the intensive bit. Decoding happens when you play it back later.
Mental slip then. Thanks for the correction, very interesting.
Do you find yourself actually moving up and down the channels, and not through the guide to somewhere else entirely different than where you once where? My first move if I'm switching channels is to go to the guide, not to a channel one above or below my current channel.
I suppose it could run on the previous channel, but it certainly can't guess my next channel.
Toxic culture and relationships so the startup imploded, but there was some cool tech.
Today if you had such a scene they'd be like, "okay <presses remote, waits five very immersion-breaking seconds>".
But they still have these scenes in movies
The way these scenes work now is "picks up phone - check the news!", they grab the remote, and turn the volume up on one of the many already running and tuned in wall-mounted 24/7 on TVs ... :)
Yes, and if such a TV turns on instantly, that scene is not realistic.
(I think if the were going for realism today, they'd say "pull up reddit/Drudge/google news".)