PseudoTV

Basically the ability to emulate the TV watching experience.

eg, Watch TV channels created with your own media (and potentially with online media).

Running a home media server is pretty awesome: beautiful cover art, playlists, and all your media right at your finger tips. One thing media centers fall short on, however, is recreating that feeling of aimlessly channel surfing just to scratch that TV watching itch.

Why Do I Want To Do This?

More and more people are “cutting the cord” and breaking away from the traditional cable-centered TV watching experience. There’s a host of good reasons to do so: TV shows without commercials, media on demand the way you want it, and saving a chunk of change (the average cable bill in the US is $90). One thing that many people find missing from the post-cable experience, however, is the simplicity of turning on the television and just having something on.

Would it be nice if you could take your vast trove of media and some streaming sources and combine them into a pseudo-sort-of TV channel system where instead of poring over your media list and carefully picking something out you could just turn on your television and get the same what’s-on-now experience cable provides but, you know, without the cable bill and annoying commercials?

Thanks to the aptly named PseudoTV Live add-on for the popular XBMC media center platform you can.

       - howtogeek.com (http://www.howtogeek.com/195099/how-to-recreate-the-channel-surfing-experience-on-xbmc/)

PseudoTV Live for XBMC is currently getting a lot of attention from their community. With the recent addition of playlists in PLEX, I was hoping we might be able to see a plugin or integrated feature for our beloved PLEX.

See the original thread for PseudoTV Live for XBMC for details - Click Here

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Image: http://i.imgur.com/om0v58X.png718×405

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+1

This would actually be pretty awesome. With built-in playlist support in the majority of the Plex clients now this is one step closer to being a possibility.

+1

Your +1 means nothing, you must Like the first post.

Would be a great addition to PLEX

Yes, this would add to the HTPC experience.

+1

Just so I understand this.  You want to have some shows that just play automatically, regardless of a client connected to the server or not, and have the client pick up the stream at some point in the middle?

That seems a couple steps backward IMO...

I want to watch the whole damned show, not have one end cut off it.  When I queue up a show, I know I'm getting everything that has been ripped.  Not relying on the server administrator to set up some sort of times and channels...  As I am a server administrator I sure don't want to have to set this up, guiding my users through their viewing based on my likes/dislikes....

This really does seem to defeat the whole purpose...  If this is the intent, I resoundingly -1 it...

This would be a f

Just so I understand this.  You want to have some shows that just play automatically, regardless of a client connected to the server or not, and have the client pick up the stream at some point in the middle?

That seems a couple steps backward IMO...

I want to watch the whole damned show, not have one end cut off it.  When I queue up a show, I know I'm getting everything that has been ripped.  Not relying on the server administrator to set up some sort of times and channels...  As I am a server administrator I sure don't want to have to set this up, guiding my users through their viewing based on my likes/dislikes....

This really does seem to defeat the whole purpose...  If this is the intent, I resoundingly -1 it...

This would be an added feature, it wouldn't take away the functionality in Plex. It'd be for those who wanted it. 

Just so I understand this.  You want to have some shows that just play automatically, regardless of a client connected to the server or not, and have the client pick up the stream at some point in the middle?

That seems a couple steps backward IMO...

I want to watch the whole damned show, not have one end cut off it.  When I queue up a show, I know I'm getting everything that has been ripped.  Not relying on the server administrator to set up some sort of times and channels...  As I am a server administrator I sure don't want to have to set this up, guiding my users through their viewing based on my likes/dislikes....

This really does seem to defeat the whole purpose...  If this is the intent, I resoundingly -1 it...

I personally would agree that Psuedo TV viewing experience isn't something I want. But I know that many people (including some of my family members) still prefers and would be more comfortable with the old fashioned channel surfing experience. It's not all bad, this old fashioned way though. It doesn't require to you choose what to watch and not only that, you can stumble upon something that you might not necessarily have chosen if you had given the choice. It's like curated TV without the commercials which isn't half bad.

For those wondering, when nobody is 'watching' the channel its not ACTUALLY playing. It just basically has a playlist 24 hours a day, and then when you press play at say 11:31am, it goes 11 hours and 31 minutes into the playlist, to that video and that point in the video. 'As if' it were a TV channel that was always playing.

Its still one of THE things that xbmc can say as a feature against plex that cant be hacked around, adding this i couldnt really name any reason to use xbmc versus plex thats not solvable

Set this up back when I used XBMC. Would love to see it implemented on Plex! You can go pretty deep into PseudoTV with scheduling and creating real/fake channels which I'm not to fussed about for any potential Plex feature.

I've set up a couple of playlists that do the job here to an extent but it's that spontaneous viewing element that I enjoyed about PseudoTV. Cutting into shows and movies halfway never really bothered me either (especially if you're half watching TV half on a laptop) - say you flick through some channels late at night and land on the last half of Die Hard... I'd happily stay on that channel and watch those 45 or so minutes but I wouldn't want to watch the whole thing from the start sometimes.

I don't know how much traction this has or will get and I can't speak for the group, but I would be willing to pay for this feature. In all honesty, depending on the integration, features and "toys" that it may have, I would pay a decent amount for this. I am an old XBMC user and was running PseudoTV for quite some time before needing the simplicity, transcoding and central management features of Plex and it's the biggest thing that I miss.

 I like the idea of creating fake channels that all i would have to do is tune into "Cartoon Network" and see the media i have from that station. For my brother in law he could create a few english channels that mimic the BBC.. 

One interesting thing would to be able to copy live channels that are already out there. I would also like to have the rewind function so if i do jump into the middle of an episode i could rewind it to the beginning.. 

I could see this being a big plus for people with kids. If i had some munchkins i would set up tv channels with content i felt was appropriate the they could watch anytime they wanted to. It would allow me to monitor their viewing habits without having to hover over them 24/7

Side question.. Could this be done via a plugin or an external app that streamed on demand? 

This would be great with kids! Just set them up a cartoon channel and away they go... 

My thoughts mirror Mike6.5's though. I don't want to be starting a show half way through, that's not why I use Plex at all, how does pseudoTV handle this? I've never used it, although am wanting to get it setup and have a play. 

I'd really like this idea if it would repeat an episode if it isn't watched... then whenever I do decide to sit down and just choose a channel, all my media is still in order for me.

bump :D

I think this would be a great idea. As much as I enjoy following a series in the proper order, sometimes I just want something on in the background. In those instances, I would prefer to just be able to turn something on (similar to flipping on the TV back in the day) without having to actually choose a movie or show/episode--as people said, sometimes that takes longer than the amount of time I actually have to watch something haha.

I'd be familiar with the shows, so it wouldn't matter that I might not view them in order. Plus, I would only set it up for shows where order didn't really matter. I wouldn't put something like Breaking Bad on here, even though I've seen it.

I would set up a channel for sitcoms, another for procedural dramas (and, to be fair, save for the occasional two-parter, order wouldn't matter here anyway), and another for the likes of Futurama and Archer. Plus, maybe a movie channel or two--again, where I'd only include things I've seen before, and nothing overly involved (Memento midway through just isn't a full experience). Though, as I'm listing these, maybe I would want to create a channel with both movies and TV (sitcoms + comedies, procedurals + light dramas, futurama + cult classics). Like someone said, we could build these to mimic what we like about channels that are already out there.

In any case, it should be designed for us to be able to set it up how we'd like. While my rule of thumb would be to never add something to a channel that you haven't seen, part of the configuration should be a checkbox for "include unwatched content" (that would be unchecked by default). And, of course, each channel should be configurable individually.

A few quick thoughts for channel configuration (would be worded better, with proper explanations):

• Channel name
• Channel icon (maybe...depending on how it's presented on the Plex client)
• [Add Content] -- select the shows/movies you want included in the channel
• Include unwatched content
• Shuffle content -- choose whether or not it should finish all episodes of a TV show prior to moving to the next 
• Shuffle TV episodes -- choose whether episodes of a TV show are played in order or not
• Always restart content when "tuning in"

And, a few thoughts on options during playback:

• Restart content
• Switch to TV Show or Movie Collection -- if you get caught up in a show (or movie) and want to watch the next episode (or movie in the series)

This is by no means an urgent request. There are simpler things--and more serious things--I'd like to see implemented first, but I would very much appreciate this.

+1

Still hoping for exactly that feature, as posted last year (https://forums.plex.tv/topic/108072-live-playlistslive-channels/).

bump so this gets more votes in the new forum system