That would really be no different from a playlist right? Except for the visual presentation of having it sitting in the Live TV grid timeline where the start and end times would constantly have to be readjusted anytime someone paused it.
Very interesting thought here! I wonder if it isnât worth considering enhancing playlists in some way. Would it need to show in the EPG (aka the Live TV grid timeline) in order to be considered âvalidâ as a feature? Or if we had another entry point (that would allow us to take more of the âresume playlistâ approach would that work for most people?
Iâm not very tech savvy but I think the live tv grid would be the âselling pointâ of this for me anyways. Build playlists, be able to label them with a âchannelâ for the grid, then have the playlist cycle through. Preferably without actually playing in the background unless the channel was clicked into if it were possible. Also maybe a feature to âgo directâ to the file if you want to rewind/fast forward/pause/start from beginning that would take you out of the live tv aspect.
I think it might be best to use a playlist to generate a spoofed TV Guide that essentially has links that will start whatever is âplaying nowâ at the timestamp its at ânowâ. Then just continue the playlist per the guide. Maybe with content filler padding the schedule to hit hour/half hour starts. The best part would be customizing how you can choose what plays. Such as filtering down to watched content, the next unwatched episode in a series, etc. Having a channel dedicated to the next episode in every series youâre watching would be sweet. And could work per user theoretically.
I was testing Emby and upon finding out that they have a plugin that does exactly this bought a lifetime premiere license.
The plugin is called MyTV and direct plays (no transcoding like ErsazTV.) Itâs simple to use and the guy writing it seems very active and trying to improve it.
Food for thought for anyone unhappy by Plex recently.
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One (seemingly) simple adjustment to the playlists that could bridge the gap between current features and future features would be a âshuffle on deckâ option. I make a playlist of, say, 90s sitcoms, hit âshuffle on deckâ and it plays random shows from the playlist but in episode order.
This would behave similar to a TV channel, allow each userâs play history to dictate the shuffle, and probably be easier to implement.
My preference for this would be a constantly-running EPG grid that scrolls through the shows like a Live TV. If you (or anyone else on the server) fails to watch something for an hour, the guide will have advanced and those episodes will be unviewable (in the TV Guide, until they show up again). This could encourage a form of âTV Coolerâ chat the next day where a few friends might have âtunedâ to the same âchannelâ to watch the show, and chat about it afterwards. This can only work if the guide is aligned for every user and advances automatically.
A playlist-version of this (for those shows that should be viewed linearly) would require NO time advancement when a user is âofflineâ, and is more of a personal option who like to queue up a show (or series of shows) and want it to never repeat unless the entire list is played. I have a parent that watches a bunch of shows, and having to teach them to âMark a show as unwatchedâ then start from the beginning so Plex manages the watch order properly is a lot of trouble. They still somehow manage to watch ALL specials first, and somehow miss an episode here or there because they donât resume from âContinue Watchingâ.
Commercials: If this is my own content Iâm watching, and having them was part of the deal, they had better be minimal. Maybe a couple between episodes. Would NOT want to sit through 7 just to watch my own stuff.
I have Playlists set up for things like 50s Cartoons, 80s Sitcoms, and things like that, but I donât use them for this one very primary reason; I do not want these shows mucking up my Continue Watching section, and I donât want them marking episodes as watched if Iâm just running them in the background.
Primarily, I liked the idea of having a few fake channels on a fake guide with different shows running at different times. It doesnât actually have to be running in the background, but should be able to simulate âtuning inâ to a show in progress with maybe the ability to start it from scratch if I wanted.
The whole point of this for me is for it to be mindless. Tune in to a âstationâ showing some related shows roundabout the same time every day.
It should be fairly easy for you to implement this, you already have the LiveTv UI built with a nice looking TV Guide. What probably a bunch of people already do is run a PseudoTV or a dizqueTV server alongside the plexmediaserver using the same Plex LiveTv UI to run their channels. It currently runs just as you said âcalculate position but only transcode/process/stream if someone is actively watchingâ to conserve resources.
If this was handled by plexmediaserver and not a dedicated server, you could reach similar functionality, but since all of the media is stored in Plex and is not depended on the pseudotv server and its quirks, user could effortlessly skip back and even forth in time.
I see it as a good way to discover content i already own, curate an easily accessible channel for kids or create a channel that runs my favorite comfort show 24/7.
Once you have a bunch of content it gets more difficult to decide what to watch and i miss the feature of cableTV where you can just flip through channels and start watching mid show or skip to beginning. I regularly find myself doing this, looking what has aird on some channels in past days and jump to watch it.
As a MVP I would just
- provide the user basic features on creating channels based on existing playlists or collections (or with a dedicated list tool).
- give them a few sorting options like based on ari time, episode number, random (you can add more coplex options later).
- add a dedicated section to LiveTV for User channels, reuse the LiveTv guide UI.
- unwatched episodes watched in this section would not count as watched outside of the channel. So a little separation between the regular streaming and the Pseudo feature.
- when user jumps to the channel just start the episode in the livetv player on the section that should be paying according to tvguide/playlist/list.
- I would also give the user ability to jump backwards in time and also forwards and watch next planned episode (something you cannot do on a regulat tv channel)
Ads are not important for me, as I love plex because there are no ads. But I understand ads are something that motivate you as a platform owner, but understand that Plex provided ads would only be acceptable in the free tier. Some of Paid tier would probably want to run their own curated ads/fillers, but this seems like an edge case and not for MVP. Business model for this feature could be, that free users can create channels with limited options and you can run your ads in between episodes and shows but paid users are ad-free or run their own fillers and have more advanced tools for curating content, why not AI assisted curating for channels.
So development wise you probably already have most of it done, you would just have to repurpose and modify some features, at least for MVP. It would be a major functionality jump with minimal effort, complete no brainer.
Donât overcomplicate it, for most users basic is just fine. Look at DizqueTV on github.
ChannelsDVR, ersatzTV, and Tunarr all have examples on how to build out custom virtual channels. People do like to add filler commercials, I imagine to help align programs on the half hour. Personally I do not. Having that grid of channels where you can just drop in at any moment on the program is most appealing. ChannelsDVR has a âstart from beginningâ button option, and you can select any title within the grid, not just what is âplayingâ currently.
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Discovering ErsatzTV has been a game changer. I need to be more on top of these things. 
If Plex is looking to possibly offer an official solution, theyâd do well to take some elements from ErsatzTV, or just hire that guy to build it out.
