Live Pause of DCT6800 STB HDTV stream with VLC?

[calinb]

I’m new to VideoLAN. I read the docs, FAQs, and wiki but I could use additional guidance from experienced users. I’m trying to find the best way to use VLC to play, with live pause capability, a firewire HDTV transport stream from my cable STB. I found a simple method that works, but now I’m interested in refinements to provide the best ReplayTV/Tivo PVR-like convenience and function possible.

I posted to the AVSforum too because there’s a lot of expertise with recording 1394 HDTV streams in that forum (but not necessarily experience with VLC):
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... did=443390

My simple setup is to use DCTrecord.exe to write a ring queue of .ts files to my WinXP hard drive and play them with VLC. I know VLC can write the stream to disk too, but I haven’t been able to get that working yet so I’m using DCTrecord to write to disk. VLC can read the file that’s simultaneously being written. Hence, PVR-like functionality is realized. Now I’m looking for the best method to create a looping ring queue for infinite record/playback with live pause capability. Alternatively, maybe the server features of VLC/VLS could be useful here too. Is it possible to stream the 1394 source with VLC or VLS and receive it with VLC in a manner that permits live pause? In some ways, it’s nice to have the ring queue available though, because programs can be optionally written from the ring queue to permanent files if desired.

It’s not necessary to actually stream anything across my network (though that might be a nice additional feature). I’m mainly interested in performing simultaneous recording and playback on the same host.

Any ideas?

Thanks!