Pseudo TV for Emby

[VicMoore 559]

@feerlessleadrThe EPG length can be set. Normally it's 7 days.

I am very interested in this problem. When you first create the EPG, check to see if it is 7 days long.

 

vic

Edited April 18 by VicMoore

[feerlessleadr 155]

1 hour ago, VicMoore said:

@feerlessleadrThe EPG length can be set. Normally it's 7 days.

I am very interested in this problem. When you first create the EPG, check to see if it is 7 days long.

 

vic

Thanks - I did have this set to 7 days, which is why I first thought it was a bug. The more I think about it though, I'm pretty sure this has to do with upgrading the plugin multiple times without generating new EPG, because I had been running the plugin for 2+ weeks without touching it, and I never had a problem with it being blank. 

I'm assuming the 7 days is a rolling 7 days every time emby refreshes my EPG automatically, and not static (i.e. where every 7 days you would need to go into the plugin and re-generate)? 

[VicMoore 559]

T added more error messages and corrected a number of simple bugs.  The new code is below.  The bugs were mostly cosmetic in nature.

Vic

PseudoTV.zip PseudoTV.dll

[VicMoore 559]

@feerlessleadrFor the moment, the EPG is rebuilt from scratch each time an EPG upload is initiated.  I did this to simplify debugging.  Luke programmed the TV platform to support both complete rebuilds and adding new channel data to the end of the current EPG.  I will enable this feature soon.

Vic

[VicMoore 559]

Today I added a "quick-start"  style menu on the "Select Media" pages.  This lets you continue using the pulldown menu technique employed in "Quick Start" to build channels. Give it a try. You will like it.

Vic

 

 

PseudoTV.dll

Edited April 20 by VicMoore

[VicMoore 559]

The next thing I am adding is a way to jump directly to channels to avoid cycling through the channels. this should help those with a high number of channels.

Vic

[VicMoore 559]

I added a pulldown list so you can go directly to a channel. Give it a try.

 

Vic

 

PseudoTV.dll

Edited April 20 by VicMoore

[feerlessleadr 155]

Thanks for this - I'm going to play around with this a little tonight. So far no issues or bugs on the previous versions, other than the random 'freeze', which a page refresh fixes. 

Any idea on how you are making out on adding the ability to add both movies & TV to a channel from an existing collection?

[VicMoore 559]

@feerlessleadr As I understand your request, you want to add movie and tv content to a channel in the "Quick Start" menu.  You can do this now on the "Channel Setup" memu.

Vic.

[feerlessleadr 155]

1 minute ago, VicMoore said:

@feerlessleadr As I understand your request, you want to add movie and tv content to a channel in the "Quick Start" menu.  You can do this now on the "Channel Setup" memu.

Vic.

Thanks, the reason I wanted to do it in the quick start menu is that I don't think I'm able to set the overall EPG order as "premiere" date using that setup for both movies and TV shows. Is that correct?

[VicMoore 559]

@feerlessleadrYou can now with the new "quick start" pulldown lists I just added to the "add Movie", add "series" and "Add Music video"  menus.  

Vic

 

Edited April 21 by VicMoore

[feerlessleadr 155]

9 minutes ago, VicMoore said:

@feerlessleadrYou can now with the new "quick start" pulldown lists I just added to the "add Movie", add "series" and "Add Music video"  menus.  

Vic

 

Oh excellent, I'll play with that tonight and will report back. Thanks!

[feerlessleadr 155]

@VicMooreFirst, thanks again for working onthis plugin, and apologies in advance for the wall of text.

I had a chance to play with it a bit, and I think I found a bug (or user error maybe), which I think is causing the issue with what I'm trying to accomplish. First on what I think is a bug, and what is ultimately causing my play order to get messed up:

When I just add 3 TV Shows to a test channel (I select 'Add TV Series', not using the 'Quick Start Yellow button at the top), I see the drop down you mention, but when I select Play Order as Premiere date, then select the 3 TV shows and hit 'Add Selected Items to channel'. I then hit 'Test the rules', and the TV show episodes are not in premiere date order, they are just in episodic order (so all 3 shows have e1 play, then e2 across all 3, etc.). 

I have a feeling that the below section is what is messing things up, as it is not respecting the premiere date order. Specifically the blue section.

I then tried the same steps as above, but when I selected the drop down to select the play order as Premiere date, I first hit apply. This then reordered all of my TV shows on this screen into premiere date order, but all of them were selected by default. I delesected all of my shows, then reselected the 3 I was looking for, and then followed the same steps above, but the outcome was the same. 

When I add the movies into the mix, the same thing happens, except the Movies alternate with the TV show episodes (which again I think is because of the above EPG builder screenshot). 

I then tried to create a channel using the yellow 'Quick Start' button and added the 3 TV shows to my channel, and selected the play order as premiere date. I then hit update EPG, went back into the tuner and selected the channel and hit 'Test the Rules', but the results are the same as above. 

This leads me to believe that the EPG builder is overriding the play order when building the EPG. 

Just to be 100% crystal clear on what I'm trying to accomplish, I'm looking to create a channel that plays all Stargate Movies and TV shows in premiere date order, taking into account the premiere date of BOTH movies & tv show episodes. So for Stargate, my channel would have the EPG show the below on a loop:

• Stargate the Movie
• Stargate SG1 S01 - S07
• Stargate SG1 S08 / Stargate Atlantis S01 (the seasons aired back to back in the same year)
• Stargate SG1 S09 / Stargate Atlantis S02
• Stargate SG1 S10 / Stargate Atlantis S03
• Stargate Atlantis S04
• Stargate Ark of Truth (SG1 Movie)
• Stargate Continuum (SG1 Movie)
• Stargate Atlantis S05
• Stargate universe S01 - S02

Right now, I'm not able to accomplish this with any of the options as they are currently laid out. To summarize:

When I create a channel with movies & tv shows:

• using the Add Movie & Add TV Show (or using the smart playlist buttons), the movie & tv show episodes are not shown in premiere date order (and the TV shows are instead grouped together by episode).
• using the Add Movie & Add TV Show buttons, but then also attempt to use the Play Order Drop Down, I get the same result as above
• using the yellow 'Quick Start' button, I'm only able to add either Movies or TV shows to my channel, and even when selecting to order the channel by premiere date in the quick start menu, when I update the EPG, and then view the channel, the episodes are still grouped together across the 3 shows as above. 

If I'm doing something wrong (which is definitely possible), please let me know. Thanks! 

[VicMoore 559]

@feerlessleadrThanks so much for the detailed explanation. I now understand the problem better and I will engineer a fix.  This is a very interesting challenge.  I will get back to you later today or tomorrow.  

Vic

[feerlessleadr 155]

Thank you!

[VicMoore 559]

@feerlessleadrI have considered your proposed playlist ordering for movies and Series episodes in great detail.  I have enjoyed every minute. The current PseudoTv architecture picks episodes from TV series either in sequence or randomly. In addition, Movies and TV series are interleaved to make up a channel listing.  Zero or more movies would start a playlist followed by zero or more TV Series from which one or more episodes from each Series would be added to the playlist. These episodes would be chosen either serially in play order or randomly. In your concept, each series would serially add all of its episodes to the playlist before moving on and they would be added in the original airing order. At the moment I cant do this. But I would like to explore how it might be done. I appreciate you bringing this request to my attention.  Hopefully, soon I can find an easy way to do it.

Vic

[VicMoore 559]

@feerlessleadrI am experimenting with adding to the Smart Playlist to do what you want.  If I add include episodes for tv series it might work.

Vic

[feerlessleadr 155]

@VicMooreawesome thanks.

I'm not an expert in this by any means, but even just adding the ability to just have a collection or manually created playlist be a channel, and have the order of the channel be the order of the collection/playlist would work for my use case as well. 

Again, I realize it's easy for me to say without having any understanding of how this all works, but just a thought as well in case it helps!

[feerlessleadr 155]

On 4/18/2024 at 2:03 PM, VicMoore said:

@feerlessleadrThe EPG length can be set. Normally it's 7 days.

I am very interested in this problem. When you first create the EPG, check to see if it is 7 days long.

 

vic

@VicMooreJust wanted to update you on the EPG update. I just encountered this issue again. When I updated the channels last week, the 2 channels I have setup had 7 days of EPG data generated. Today, I went into my guide and noticed that the EPG for both channels were blank (since more than 7 days passed from when I originally updated the EPG for these channels). 

When I went into PTV and just hit 'Update EPG', the channels were then populated again for the next 7 days. 

What I was expecting is that once a channel is created, the EPG is automatically refreshed periodically so that the EPG doesn't run out after the initial 7 days is up. 

[mickle026 401]

It'll probably need to be set as a scheduled task, I dont believe that Pseudo TV currently uses this feature.

[VicMoore 559]

@feerlessleadrI plan to add that feature soon.  I have been off creating a new Smart Playlist for creating channels, collections and playlists.  I will post the code very soon.

Vic

[feerlessleadr 155]

Appreciate this!