While I find the Discover view of the EPG to be useful, I sorely miss the calendar view as implemented in Windows Media Center, NextPVR, etc. Please add one soon!
I think the calendar view may be easy enough to integrate in to the Web Client however would prove difficult with all the different clients we have.
Adding a TV calendar view to the web client would satisfy my personal needs, since that’s where DVR recordings are scheduled. By calendar view, I mean a display of time on the horizontal axis, and several TV stations on the a scrollable vertical axis, e.g., the Schedule view in Microsoft Media Center. Program thumbnails would not be used in such a view.
To underscore the need for this or a similar feature, I’ll mention that I tried to schedule a recording of the Presidential Debate yesterday. In spite of updating the EPG, the debate didn’t show up in any of the available EPG views. I tried using the search feature but found nothing that matched (I didn’t have a precise title, and “presidential debate” didn’t return any hits). All I needed was a way to schedule a network channel to start recording at 6 PM PT, but I couldn’t find a way to do it!
It’s not going to happen because the grid view is patented. There have been quite a few threads about this already.
Sure, it sucks, but I believe Tivo bought up the company who had the patents. They’re the big guns of the DVR world. Microsoft obviously had money to pay them when they had Media Center but Plex is a small company.
The only way I could see this happening is the “accidental work around” meaning they build in support for a plugin, and then someone releases something for free (of course that person will get slammed with patent lawsuits…)
The only way to do it now is to go to tvguide or zap2it or something and browse the guide, then jump back over to Plex to add in your shows. Yeah, it kinda sucks but usually 90% of the time you care about a show, not a channel (of course live tv, and sports shifting stuff makes it difficult because I couldn’t tell you what’s on back to back on a channel)
I have no idea how one can patent a grid view, it’s been used to advertise programs in print form for decades…also Kodi’s and Emby’s implementation is Grid View…am I missing the meaning of a Grid View here sorry?
smacrae1970: no, you are not missing the point. The grid view as seen in MCE, Kodi, etc. is exactly what I’m talking about.
If anyone has a patent number or patent name I would be interested in looking it up at the USPTO.
ckyaker has a good point. A quick internet search using Google Scholar turned up quite a number of patents for electronic program guides using a grid view. The patents cover methods of displaying a grid view as well as methods of interacting with the grid view to schedule events. Most of the basic patents date to approximately 1997 and will expire next year. The more recent patents seem to be enhancement patents (e.g., serving different program guides to multiple televisions). I reviewed a few of the patents and identified easy work-arounds, but didn’t do any kind of comprehensive review. Here’s hoping that next year will bring a clear path to implementing a grid view in Plex.
In the mean time, perhaps a simpler interface would help. How about an easy way to specify a date and time using on-screen controls, to which Plex responds with a list of channels and their content, both in-progress and up next?
I support the request for a grid view, but as an easy alternative, how about just adding a date picker to the “Discover” page? Its not an awful way to look at upcoming TV, but it does frustrate me that you can’t look at “Discover” for a future date forcing you to go to “Shows” and looking through the endless list.
I don’t think TiVo have a patent for the grid. Otherwise every TV/DVR manufacturer and cable/satellite company on the planet would have to licence it form them and TiVo would be a very rich company instead of …well not very rich.
If a grid isn’t possible then at least some sort of channel line up. While I am loving the discover view for revealing many movies to me from channels you usually wouldn’t go near, sometimes you just want to see what is on a certain channel at some point in the future.
Like I know Channel X has Program Y on at a certain time and date, I just don’t know the name of Program Y. At the moment I wouldn’t be able to find this program. Whereas I could just look at Channel X at that time and find the show.
Just a bump here to keep the conversation alive…this is the only thing I’m still waiting for…
@marcbush86 said:
I don’t think TiVo have a patent for the grid. Otherwise every TV/DVR manufacturer and cable/satellite company on the planet would have to licence it form them and TiVo would be a very rich company instead of …well not very rich.If a grid isn’t possible then at least some sort of channel line up. While I am loving the discover view for revealing many movies to me from channels you usually wouldn’t go near, sometimes you just want to see what is on a certain channel at some point in the future.
Like I know Channel X has Program Y on at a certain time and date, I just don’t know the name of Program Y. At the moment I wouldn’t be able to find this program. Whereas I could just look at Channel X at that time and find the show.
TiVo owns over 5,000 patents, and companies do pay them licensing fees. Netflix had a long running battle with them over some of their patients namely placing shows in categories, and viewer history. Netflix finally won last year and got 5 of TiVo/Rovi’s patents overturned. Netflix nukes Rovi’s “we own TV guide” patents | Ars Technica
Amazon got sued by them in 2011 for things like. I didn’t see how that case turned out but if TiVo/Rovi won, I could see them getting sued for numbers 2,3,&5. I could definitely see number 5 because it basically states nobody can pull a tv guide that is customized to your area by any location information over the internet.
7,603,690: Interactive television program guide system with pay program package promotion
7,493,643: Program guide system with video-on-demand browsing
6,769,128: Electronic television program guide schedule system and method with data feed access
6,275,268: Electronic television program guide with remote product ordering
5,988,078: Method and apparatus for receiving customized television programming information by transmitting geographic location to a service provider through a wide-area network
The recording schedule has a Calendar view! We just need this for the schedule. I’m in the UK and I only have BBC1,2 ITV, C4, C5 and a few others so it should be quick. I’ve used MediaPortal2 before now and it had the concept of multiple (custom) channel lists so you can setup groups for your channels. Please implement this as I got a lifetime pass and I’m quite disappointed that this basic feature isn’t there out of the box?
Hallelujah! Grid View Update for DVR Program Guide
