Is this how it is suppose to work (on-demand issue) ?

Hello, @stevenb2! That does sound like the Network pulled it from On Demand which is why it asked if you wanted to purchase it. I would be happy to look further into this and see what I can find out about the dates of the movie being offered in On Demand. Please send me a PM with your first and last name along with your service address, https://comca.st/36QCK0L. 

So after  ComcastRayana 

asked for contact details I get this PM from ComcastMorgan:

Hi @stevenb2! I love being able to watch content On Demand content, especially for movie nights with the family! You are asking a really great question and we’d love to help clarifying things for you. When you are watching something on Live TV, you have the options to pause and rewind if you need to like you would with On Demand content. If you missed some parts, you have the option to restart the content you are watching live and it will bring you to the On Demand version of it as long as that is available. Certain programs are only available via rent/buy options since the network of that content decides what they will provide for free or not. The pricing for something can also change at any time, so it is possible for something to be available for free one day/minute, and not the next. If the content you were watching is not available for free On Demand anymore, then that would be why it asked you to buy the movie verses play for free when you went to restart it the second time. Please let us know if this helps to clear things up for you!

ComcastKatieMS:

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response to my question.

I am familiar with the rewind live TV option (buffer) and use it often, I like to back up in a live show so I can FF past the commercials.

Although it causes occasional frustration when someone else in the house changes the channel and loses the buffer.  Esp since their response it usually "well you should have used the DVR to record it".

Argh

Also you have to be very careful not to hit page down if you are at the start (IE oldest, or if you will, the front) of the buffer because if you try to go too far back the system will throw you to the end of the buffer (IE live TV) at least if you use the secret 15 sec back button.

However,  your response just sort goes around in a circle back to what ComcastRayana originally said.

That is, that the movie in question may have been available on-demand at the time I was watching it but then was removed shortly thereafter so when I tried to resume the movie it was not longer available.

What happened with ComcastRayana anyways?

She said she was gonna check the on-demand schedule to see if this was really the case here.

Was she silenced for getting too close to the truth?

So then the question becomes, was this just random chance? The movie just happened to be removed from on-demand right after the live broadcast I was watching?

Or is it a sly, slightly underhanded marketing technique being used by someone (FX?) to encourage people to pay extra for movies.

Let you start watching it on-demand, then remove it quickly.

Does not seem too likely, since how many people would end up in the situation I was in?

(IE not able to finish watching a movie that I paused for later viewing because it was removed from on-demand)

and anyways I was able to get around the problem by just recording the next live broadcast.

So it seems a little hit or miss for some company to do on purpose,

unless

they can tell exactly who does end up in this situation and make the movie unavailable on-demand by individual account.

How much does the computer tell them?

Are all on-demand shows available to everyone or can on-demand selections be tailored by account?

To quote Joseph Heller:

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”

😁

I want to make sure I fully understand. Are you stating that on the same TV box when you change the channel is loses the rewind feature on previous channels? If so, that is expected since it allows you to rewind on the new channel and doesn’t save for each channel watched. If that’s the case, I would recommend the DVR feature.

As far as the movie is concerned, yes it’s possible it was free then later on even the next day it was no longer on there. That actually happened to me once, I was watching one of my favorite movies and didn’t finish it went back the next day to watch the rest and it was gone. Movies are on certain channel for a limited time, so it sounds like it ended after you watched it which can happen. These are not removed after just watching but during select times, for instance I can look at certain movies and when selecting on say Starz it will show me that it’s ending on X date. The only way around that is if you were to rent the movie and then it will be good for the selected time from when it was rented. Does that make sense?

Ya, on the rewind feature,  the buffer is specific to the channel you are on, at the time you are on it,

so if you change channel, the buffer goes away.  If you return to the original channel you can not back up,  it starts a new buffer.  I understand that it is how it works,  hence the DVR option.

What I really miss is the older option to switch tuners.  On our prior DVR, you could swtch between tuners and watch two shows at once.  The buffer remained intact on each channel/tuner since you were not changing channels, but tuners. Really handy for those of us with super short attention spans.

With the newer DVR it now has 4 (6?)  tuners instead of 2,  so you can record multiple shows at the same time, but the ability to switch tuners has gone away,  As far as I know.

On the ON-DEMAND issue, yes, I understand what you are saying,  just my luck that the movie was removed from on-demand while I was waiting to get back to finish watching it.  

Ya, sure,  I believe you.  Yep, sure......😁

(still wondering about ComcastRayana)....

🤔

I definitely understand where you are coming from, I like to switch between channels too, I just really like with our DVR and being able to record multiple shows so when I switch between channels I just start recording it for a bit so I don't miss a beat! 

Something you may look into as well as is our fantastic Smart Resume! I enjoy this when I am on my lunch break watching House Hunters International from HGTV, I record the show and then just FFW through the commercials and it automatically resumes when the show comes back on. It's amazing, it's one of my favorite things we offer. Now it's not for all channels, but channels like NBC, Fox, HGTV just to name a few. 

I have been there too, sometimes we are just a bit unlucky! 

ComcastRayana may be off right now. Part of what makes our team so special is we are here 24/7 and when one person is off, someone else picks up like nothing happened. 

Ok, so it happened again and I did some looking around which leads me to believe that I still do not understand what is going on here, but it may be related to the restart feature that was mentioned earlier in a PM from ComcastMorgan that I copied into this thread.

So I think he was on the right track to explain this but was still missing some of the nuances.

The restart option write up suggests that it works with movies that are in on-demand,

instead what seems to be happening near as I can tell is that the restart feature makes a movie appear to be in on-demand when it is not.

Sorry to be beating a dead horse here but as I mentioned I am just trying to understand the way this stuff works.

Yesterday I was watching the spiderman cartoon movie (spider man into the spider verse) and it had the restart feature enabled.

When you use the restart option it appears to take you to an on-demand version of the movie, but when you look at the entrie for the movie (info)

it does not show an expiration date for the on-demand entry.

In fact the movie only shows in on-demand while it is being broadcast live, once the broadcast ends the on-demand entry goes away.

ComcastKatieMS said in her reply:

“If you missed some parts, you have the option to restart the content you are watching live and it will bring you to the On Demand version of it as long as that is available. “

Again this suggests that the restart option is dependent on the movie being in on-demand.

But it appear that the restart option puts in movie in on-demand temporarily instead.

Kind of a chicken and egg situation

In yesterdays situation I did a restart on the movie so I was watching it behind time relative to the live broadcast, that was working fine and I was able to continue watching the movie after the live broadcast ended,

but then I hit the exit button on the remote one too many times and exited the on-demand version of the movie back to live TV. A that point I was not able to resume watching the movie,   it was not in on-demand and I could not resume the movie at the point I was watching  (and the other people watching the movie with me were fairly irritated that I messed up watching the rest of this movie).

Again my only option is to record the next broadcast of the movie and finish watching it later.

I suspect this is a feature of the restart option, not a feature of on-demand.

So ComcastMorgan was pointing me in the right direction, but I did not understand what he was trying to tell me.

I think the restart option is a good thing to have but as users we need to really understand how it works to prevent unfortunate situations like last night that involved thrown popcorn at the operator of the remote for messing up.

Does this make sense? It is kinda hard to explain all this in in writing especially since it is 7 AM and I am still on my first cup of coffee

I am on my first cup of chai tea this morning, so I understand! 

If you are restarting the movie when it's in progress, depending on your box, and if you've changed the channel there is a certain timeframe it will rewind if it's live TV. That I would need to get you pulled up in a private message to look further into that specifically.

For instance if your box only goes back 15 minutes, then restarting it may only go back that 15 minutes unless it is on On Demand and you can pull it up that way. This is all dependent on the box and the capabilities of that box. 

My recommendation is still to record the program if you are unable to watch it from start to finish in one sitting, if you change the channel, exit a program, anything like that it can change the amount of time it can reminded since it resets. You can even set up the recording while watching it in the middle of the program to pick up later. Any time you interrupt the program being watched it can affect the rewind timeframe you have.