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Live TV Guide Popup


TedA

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Installed MB3 over the weekend and loving it so far.

 

I chose MB3 over plex specifically for the better Live TV support.

 

One thing that was driving me nuts is that I had to close one video stream before I could go check out the guide to find something else to watch.

 

So tonight I put together a POC of a guide popup (similar to what you get with Comcast).

 

Like I said, I just put this together today so it isn't pretty yet:

 

54eef8eee8add_TVGuideButton.jpg

 

54eef900a74b6_TVGuidePopup.jpg

 

Clicking on one of the channels in the guide calls MediaController.play(channelId) to switch the current viewer to the new channel.

 

The button is built in the same manner as the quality button next to it (Added to the HTML string in site.js). The button will only be visible if item.Type === 'TvChannel'.

 

Plans:

-Make it prettier

-Time & Channel labels fixed in position for visibility during scroll

-Scroll to current channel when popup is initiated, rather than starting at first channel

 

So I guess my questions are:

1. Would people be interested in this functionality?

2. Would it be preferred that I package this up as an add-on? Or just send a pull request when things are polished? Currently the only modified files are mediaplayer-video.js, site.js and added a new string to the localization .json files. Will probably modify one .css file as well before I'm done.

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it's nice, although given the small amount of space i personally would limit it to programs that are currently playing. look at the remote control chapter popup and the way it slides horizontally. then you could have a visual gallery of now playing programs that you can swipe through. similar also to how sling tv presents it's live tv channels.

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SikSlayer

it's nice, although given the small amount of space i personally would limit it to programs that are currently playing. look at the remote control chapter popup and the way it slides horizontally. then you could have a visual gallery of now playing programs that you can swipe through. similar also to how sling tv presents it's live tv channels.

 

I think a mini guide with just 2-3 channels, like what is shown in the image, is fine. It addresses the concern of having too much on screen, but is more useful than just having whats currently airing. Because whats currently on may just about to end, and a mini guide would deal with that.

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it has to be mobile friendly though in order to become a core feature. so that is why i'm thinking horizontal visual gallery of channels. from there you can always click one to see programs from other time slots on the same channel.

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it has to be mobile friendly though in order to become a core feature. so that is why i'm thinking horizontal visual gallery of channels. from there you can always click one to see programs from other time slots on the same channel.

 

Interesting, I hadn't thought about the mobile requirement. What I started on was based on what I'm used to coming from Comcast, but of course that was designed to go on a 40"+ TV.

 

My main concern with the horizontal tiles is that it becomes useless at *:29 and *:59, which is when someone is most likely to be looking for the next thing to watch. Maybe if it was paired with a list of times above the list of shows, so you could select a timeslot to be viewing...

 

Looking at Sling's interface on image search they categorize by channel rather than time slot:

Sling_Food_Network_mini_guide.jpg

 

That probably works for them because they have so few channels. Just with my Mohu Leaf I get ~40 channels, many of which I have no desire to watch. Someone running a cablecard would be getting even more.

 

So what do you think about doing something similar to Sling but going Time Slot > Show on channel, vs what they are doing (channel > Show in time slot)?

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  • 2 weeks later...
jhevener

@@TedA This will be sweet. Looking forward to your pop-up menu. I love the one in WMC, all I do is hit the down arrow while a show is playing and a sweet little two-line vertical and horizontal scrolling listing pops up and away I go, off to another show.

 

Great idea and I like the way you are contributing your coding skills. All I know how to do is VB and Autoit.

 

@@Luke Woudn't a 2 line scrollable pop-up listing be large enough for a mobile user to manipulate. One possibility would be to embed a directional star for touch manipulation.

Edited by jhevener
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