the present invention is directed towards reducing hard disk drive activity by sharing the buffering activity between a provisional load sharing buffer and a time shift buffer . the hdd may be included in a digital host communications terminal . initially , the plsb buffers initial streaming programs to accommodate for channel changes . additionally , the streaming program is buffered in a standard definition quality regardless of the format of a connected television . once a predetermined time has passed determined by the size of the plsb without a channel change , the tsb begins buffering the streaming program . the tsb can then switch between buffering a high definition quality to a standard definition quality of a streaming high definition program depending on other factors to further decrease the hdd activity . additionally , the tsb can be disabled to prevent buffering of the streaming program .