Channel Surfing Mode

Feature Suggestions
1

I have lots of TV shows in Plex, which is great, but sometimes I don't know which show or episode (or I don't want to decide which show or episode) to watch. I end up flipping through the channels on the TV looking for something interesting. Sometimes I'll start watching a broadcast of a show I have in Plex, because "it's on." (Okay, my wife does this more than I do.) I didn't have to choose the season or episode. There's an episode playing, and I can decide to keep on flipping or stay and watch.

 

I wonder if a Channel Surfing mode would be an interesting way to serendipitously find shows to watch when you don't feel like watching the next show in order or selecting a specific episode.

 

Plex could choose episodes that met certain criteria--episodes you've already watched, seems like a good place to start. It would be nice if it showed a mix of comedies and dramas. It might be weighted toward shows you haven't watched recently.

 

Once you enter Channel Surfing mode, it starts playing an episode that matches the criteria. Maybe it doesn't start right at the beginning of the episode but somewhere in the first 10 minutes, both to simulate the experience of channel surfing and to remind you of what's in the episode, which you might not always remember from its opening. You could just stay on that episode and watch the rest of it, or you could hit a button and choose to watch that episode from its beginning (or have another option to pick a different specific or random episode of that show?).

 

Or you can keep channel surfing. Going "forward" continues to show an episode from different shows. It would be nice if you could go "back" in that queue too, to return to an episode you'd initially passed over. After showing an episode of all the TV shows in your library, it would loop and start playing a different episode from each show.

 

This could add some serendipity to TV-watching in Plex. This mode would let Plex choose a show for you, but you can still take control and you can still watch the entire episode. It might be a nice way to watch a bit of a show I haven't seen yet, to see if I might want to start in at the pilot, too. 

 

Not sure this is a very fully-formed idea, but I noticed myself doing this and thought Plex could probably do this too.

2

What you are requesting is very similar to the PseudoTV plugin of XBMC.  If you search for it, you will find a number of threads already referencing it.

3

Thanks agregjones. I'm not in the XBMC world, so I hadn't heard of that plugin. I'll check it out.

4

it may not be a fully-formed idea, but I think you've got something here.  Sometimes we do just want a random/shuffle button.  

5

With play ques added to the latest PHT build shuffle all is an option for TV/movies/music. The only thing missing in my opinion is the ability to filter for ‘previously watched’ which would definitely be nice

6

This sounds great! I had psuedoTV on my old xbmc build, and whilst i love plex, i miss this feature. However this sounds like a good compromise, the only issue would be loading times between the ‘channels’ it takes plex a good few seconds to start playing a file. Maybe pre buffering the next/prev channels, but then you run into cpu problems on lower end pcs.

7

you might want to check out

https://forums.plex.tv/topic/108072-live-playlistslive-channels/

...my title was probably not sexy enough to cause any attention :D  but I think we are on a similar level with this

8

early 2021 clean-up: duplicate (see Pseudo TV, shuffle)