# Time Shift for Live TV Channels | Vodlix **Source:** https://vodlix.com/features/time-shift **Summary:** Let viewers pause and rewind live channels or restart the current programme, then jump back to the live edge, with the window set per channel to match your rights. **Publisher:** Vodlix --- Pause a live channel, rewind it, or start the programme again from the beginning, then jump back to the edge with one control. - **Feature Plan:** 2 - live-tv ## Live Should Not Mean Now or Never A viewer who missed the first twenty minutes, or who has to answer the door, should not have to choose between the channel and their evening. Time shift lets them move behind the live edge and come back to it. ### Every Other Screen in the House Can Wait People have been able to pause things for twenty years, and the habit is now so deep that nobody consciously notices it until it is missing. A viewer watching a live channel who reaches for a pause button and finds nothing does not think about broadcast architecture. They think your app is broken. That expectation has quietly become the baseline for whether linear television feels modern, and it is the single clearest difference between a live channel that people stay with and one they treat as a fallback. Time shift closes that gap by letting a viewer move backwards from the live edge and return to it, which sounds small and is most of what makes live feel usable. #### Pause and rewind The doorbell, the kettle, the phone call. A viewer stops the channel and picks it back up rather than missing the part that happened while they were away. #### Start again from the beginning Arriving twenty minutes into something is the most common way people meet a live channel. Restarting the programme turns a late arrival into a full viewing. #### One jump back to live Returning to the edge has to be a single obvious control, because anything with a result is worthless to a viewer who is unknowingly ten minutes behind everybody else. ### The Problem Nobody Anticipates Is Spoilers Time shifting works beautifully until somebody is eight minutes behind a football match and their phone tells them a goal has been scored. That is not a technical failure and it is the thing viewers actually complain about, which is why returning to live has to be prominent rather than tucked away. A viewer who has drifted behind should always be able to see that they have, and get back in one action. The same consideration applies to how far back you allow. A generous window is good for drama and actively unhelpful for anything competitive, and since the window is a property of the channel rather than of the platform, a news channel and a sports channel do not have to be given the same one. ### Where Time Shift Ends and Recording Begins These two get conflated constantly and they answer different questions. Time shift is about the last part of a channel, the minutes and hours just behind live, and it exists so somebody can pause or restart what is on. Recording is about keeping a programme after it has finished so it can be watched days later, which is a different storage question and a different rights question. Most operators want both, and it is worth knowing which one a viewer is actually asking for when they say they missed something. Recording and catch up are covered under [network DVR](/features/ndvr), the schedule that tells a viewer what they missed under [EPG](/features/epg), and the channel experience itself under [live TV](/features/live-tv). ### It Is Usually a Rights Question, Not a Technical One Whether you can offer time shift on a given channel is rarely limited by the platform and frequently limited by the agreement behind the channel. Some providers permit pausing but not restarting, some allow a window measured in minutes, and some prohibit any deviation from the live feed. Because the setting sits on the channel, you can honour those differences without giving up the feature everywhere, which is what actually happens on platforms that treat it as a single global switch. That per channel control sits alongside the stream and the guide feed under [live TV](/features/live-tv), and the enforcement that keeps a restricted channel restricted is described under [conditional access](/features/cas-user-control-manager). **Q: What is time shift?** It is the ability to move backwards from the live edge of a channel, so a viewer can pause, rewind, or start the current programme again, and then return to live. It is what makes a linear channel behave the way people now expect every screen to behave. **Q: How is this different from network DVR?** Time shift covers the minutes and hours just behind live, so somebody can pause or restart what is on now. Recording keeps a programme after it has aired so it can be watched days later. Most operators want both, and they answer different questions. **Q: Can a viewer get back to live easily?** Yes, and this matters more than it sounds. Somebody who has drifted eight minutes behind a match is one push notification away from having it spoiled, so returning to the edge has to be a single obvious control rather than something they have to find. **Q: How far back can viewers go?** That is set per channel rather than globally, which is deliberate. A generous window suits drama and works badly for sport, and rights agreements often specify different limits for different channels anyway. **Q: Can I offer time shift on some channels and not others?** Yes, because the setting belongs to the channel. That is usually necessary rather than optional, since providers frequently permit it on some feeds and prohibit it on others, and a single global switch forces you to apply the strictest rule everywhere. **Q: Does it work on television as well as mobile?** Yes, and the controls are built for each input rather than shared. Pausing with a remote and scrubbing with a thumb are different interactions, even though what happens to the stream underneath is identical. **Q: Does time shift affect advertising in a live channel?** It can, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering later. Advertising in live streams is configured separately from your catalogue, so how ads behave for a viewer who is behind the live edge is a decision you make rather than an accident. **Q: Do viewers need to do anything to enable it?** No. Where it is available on a channel it is simply there in the player controls, which is the point. A feature people have to discover or switch on is a feature most of your audience will never use.