I’ve been craving this so much! This is why we use random a lot. Back in the day, you would watch things you never would have because the choices were few. You actually picked up culture from that. I would love to be able to share this feature with my son and his friends. I’d bring back Saturday morning cartoons sooooooo fast!
@adamstewiegreen said:
@astrofisher said:
Yeah, no live streaming. Running PseudoTV 2.4.4. This should be the link:
GitHub - Steveb1968/script.pseudotv: Channel surfing for your video libraryI’ll try this out too, see how it goes…
This is the one I very positive past experiences with, not at all the experience you described. I’ve had the experience you previously described with PTVL but assumed it was because I was running on substandard hardware (Raspberry Pi 3) rather than an Intel Core2 + nVidia ION2
Regarding channel quality content, the default channels may simply not be suitable for your library content. Given what a massive variable that is between users, it’s unlikely that there’s a way to produce a suitable default channel configuration that serves everyone well (so it probably serves nobody well instead 
), but with a bit of tweaking I’m sure you can come up with something suitable for your own needs.
@astrofisher thanks for the link to the old script, I’ll be firing that up soon to test again. Looking forward!
@deepseth said:
This is the one I very positive past experiences with, not at all the experience you described. I’ve had the experience you previously described with PTVL but assumed it was because I was running on substandard hardware (Raspberry Pi 3) rather than an Intel Core2 + nVidia ION2
Regarding channel quality content, the default channels may simply not be suitable for your library content. Given what a massive variable that is between users, it’s unlikely that there’s a way to produce a suitable default channel configuration that serves everyone well (so it probably serves nobody well instead
I loaded this one up a little while ago and - yeah - it works much, much better than the live version. I’m using it on an Amazon Fire TV and it’s fairly responsive. A few hiccups here and there but not bad. But even though I still have it loaded on Kodi, I don’t expect it to be there in the long run. There are a number of issues that only plex can fix - such as, On Deck and Continue Watching need to be disabled - which for me are deal breakers. On Deck is already such a pain in the ass, this would only exacerbate the problem.
Once a year or so…I wander back to this thread and then try to give it a thumbs-up, only to realize that I already had.
PsuedoTV would seem to be a natural extension of the upcoming Live-TV capabilities. Live OTA channels…coupled with PseudoTV channels of local content (and DVR’d recordings). That would be ideal for me.
One issue I could see with running a pseudo tv setup is that the episodes don’t end on the dot due to commercials. As such, I feel like the implementation would need to include some (or all) of the following options for user configuration preferences:
- Play back-to-back videos: This will cause the time offset mentioned above. Should still be an option.
- Play an “Upcoming shows” short: a simple window that shows whatever show or movie will be played next. Could include a 15-second clip of the show as a Picture-In-Picture.
- Play (appropriate) trailers: between episodes, trailers for other shows and movies could be streamed. Plex already has this capability as a Plex Pass feature. Would require Plex to fix their trailers selection process though.
- Play “Plex Roll”: Selection of a custom video or videos to play until the next show starts.
- Show static image: Selection of a default or custom image for the channel.
- Show “Media Guide”: Would allow users to view what’s upcoming on all channels without having to switch to a media guide.
With all this, I agree with the consensus of allowing to limit to watched or unwatched content, but would make it an option for PMS owners. I would also set the default option to “watched content only”. In this example, the choices would be:
- Watched Content Only
- Watched and Unwatched Content
- Unwatched Content Only
Edit: While thinking about what a “Pseudo TV” should have, a couple thoughts crossed into my mind:
- Recurring schedules: some people won’t care what episode is played and when. Others will want it to follow conventional TV, where each week the next episode is aired. Some will want it to follow a certain weekly block. The ability to select by week/day of week/holiday/month/etc should be considered.
- Holiday specials: most tv shows have certain “holiday specials”, depending on the year that they aired. The ability to tag episodes as holiday specials and align to a “holiday week” would be helpful.
- Drag and drop scheduling: The ability to arrange the pseudo tv schedule via a droppable GUI would be awesome, as IndecisiveDevice mentioned (below). This should include the ability to drag a series, season, individual episode, movie, movie collection, etc.
- Behind-the-scenes: the ability to show a season or movie, and then air behind-the-scenes and other extras as part of the “schedule”. This would require Plex to implement extras for TV Shows though (such as how movies have).
2 Likes
It would be a great extension to the Plex experience. In fact, researching an implementation of this “live TV” method is what led me to discover Plex in the first place. I often begrudge the fact that I have so much freedom of choice with my content. And by that I mean I will spend more time browsing and debating tv show choices than actually playing anything. Sometimes I don’t know what I want to watch at a given moment just that I want to watch something. I have a lot of off-the-air, obscure content on my server along with retro commercials and TV spots and I would love to have the ability for it to populate in a schedule or theme up by content type or genre. I have used collections and playlists and beyond hitting “shuffle” there’s nothing that comes close to this out of the box with plex. Just give me an empty TV guide interface that I can slot manually or with conditions and I’d be a happy couch potato.
@“4K Fanatic” said:
One issue I could see with running a pseudo tv setup is that the episodes don’t end on the dot due to commercials.
I’ve thought quite a bit about this. My thought would be that it just picked up what was “supposed to be on” in a timeslot and start airing that when you tuned in. It would then continue forward playing the next thing on the list until you shut it off with no regard for time schedule, rather queuing up what was next. Perhaps some movie trailers in between to break things up?
Next time you tuned in, it would do the same thing… reference what is supposed to be in that time slot and play, continuing forward through the list until stopped.
It’s a rudimentary solution, and perhaps the easiest to program. I don’t think many of us are going to be looking at our watches and complaining that it’s not sticking to schedule that much. I think we’d all tune into something like this to have Plex throw things at us. If we’re that picky, we can just play the things we want on demand.
EDIT: Maybe you could designate a “filler” show that would play between episodes to catch the schedule back up, like The Three Stooges, or whatever your preference? Then, it would make a best attempt to stick to the timeframe if it started to get too far off.
To have Plex running channels with my own content in order to avoid actively choosing specific content would be great.
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I thought about this after rereading the thread and I have decided that I see no value in this for me.
It also seems quite complex to implement and like implementing it could impact several parts of Plex’s existing functionality, maybe adversely maybe not, but it would have the impact of making the Plex system more complex and in this case for me that would mean adding unneeded bloat to an already bloated program system.
I would like to have this feature as well, but it would likely require the gridview to be enabled in all of the clients first, which IMO is more important than implementing PseudoTV right now. Once gridview is done however, I’d really like to see this feature. Right now I have an HDHomerun providing TV for us through Plex, but it would be nice if you could integrate PseudoTV with your physical tuner. It would be cool to add more cartoon “channels” to our real channel lineup to give the kids more options to watch tv. I have a feeling this would be somewhat difficult to implement however. Anyways, I’m a +1 on this idea.
I would definitely like to see this…or at least a more simlified version of it. Just the ability to create content channels, with file/genre/year/etc. matching, that appear under Discover is fine.
The integrated guide though, would be ideal.
Please put this feature into plex. It would be amazing. Completely remove the desire for TV. Other than live sports.
Absoluely +infinity. You should hire lunatix to create a port, he is awesome
I really like using the live TV Guide / DVR with my HDHomeRUN & Plex. I was wondering would it ever be possible to add a channel that is pointed at a directory of TV shows that played in random order. Ideally the episodes would play continually so you could channel surf between episodes in progress. Thanks!
I have been wanting this for ages, came here to post as a suggestion but glad other people already want it.
Psuedo TV for XBMC is a pretty good implementation with great customisability but was extremely buggy.
This would also be a very good business move for Plex as specified in the brief many people are looking to “cut the cord” from TV and this gives them a smooth transition. In my opinion Plex do not offer enough Premium content and gives away too much for free.
If this doesn’t gain much traction I would look at developing my own in React.
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This is definitely a really neat feature. The Playlists are already there. I know some of the older folks using my Plex server would really appreciate this, and tbh it would be great for just throwing something on in the background!
+1, would love to see this feature
I vote for this! I know I’d setup a channel with all my wife’s favorite movies… and I know she’d love to sit down click her channel and see a movie she wants to see instead tedious browsing
+1, Yes please!
Would love to see this feature added!
