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PseudoTV Emby style!


schingeck
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schingeck

Don't know how many of you know what PseudoTV is on Kodi but basically it is a plugin that allows you to create an EPG full of your own custom TV channels using your entire media library into one big channel surfing experience on your library. Emby, I believe, would be amazing for this and really make it stand out if something like this was official supported as the only support for something like this is a little plugin on Kodi.

 

Features:

 

  1. Create custom TV channels using smart filters (e.g. 500 random movies that are from 2010 and newer and genre is Horror, 25 random tv episodes that are from Fox network).
  2. Allow creation of an unlimited number of channels using these filters and assign them channel numbers
  3. Automatically generate an EPG/TV Guide using all of these custom channels and randomly assign the scheduled program at a specific time
  4. Allow sorting of the channel shows (random, in order, asc, desc)
  5. Allow channels like FX to play both TV shows from FX but also incorporate movies at specific time periods like primetime movies
  6. Allow trailers to play in between shows as well as Channel Bumpers/intro videos
  7. Allow integration with Live TV using PVR
  8. Allow YouTube channels, USTVNOW, Playon perhaps?
  9. Ability to add a logo to your custom channels
  10. Background updating that would auto generate / update all the channels and shows after a specific period of time

And so on :)

Edited by schingeck
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Yes, it's a very nice idea. We could probably use a new developer or two to help out with something so large though.

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I built MB Plus (originally it was called MBTV) for this basic purpose but it morphed into more of an intelligent selection interface than exactly what Psuedo TV is.  It started out just like you described - where there was a grid guide of everything etc. but when users actually got it in their hands they didn't really like that interface.  Perhaps more people would now though.

 

I never really understood the desire to take your organized library and turn it into a huge broadcast set of channels that you didn't actually have direct control over as far as what you watched when.  For me, the whole reason I use a system like Emby is so that I am in complete control of what I watch when as opposed to things being randomly presented at set times.

 

Now, having intelligent suggestions and smart playlists is definitely a good thing and we do plan to expand those features going forward and, if something like this garnered enough interest then no reason why we couldn't do it as well.

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schingeck

The reason I enjoy it is definitely for background playing of my library, but also because I simply have watched so much stuff on my system it has gotten to the point where it's hard to figure out what I want next. So having something like that, esp. for movies is pretty neat because it gives me a bunch of suggestions of things I can watch (or haven't watched in a very long time) when I don't know exactly what the hell I wanna watch lol. I don't have to do anything but pick a channel and just let things play out. Also gives me more reason to get movies that are older that I never really think to watch but hey they come on, nothing else sparks my interest, it's nice to just enjoy it. Or, my tv is playing and something randomly pops on I haven't seen for a while it's nice to get distracted by it and decide to sit down and enjoy it. With going through my entire library and choosing I can be pretty indecisive lol.

 

Also for tv shows like comedies that don't have to be in order it's nice to have channels playing your favorite comedies or like Adult Swim for instance 24/7 and things are all shuffled up.

Edited by schingeck
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schingeck

I do know Javascript, PHP, jQuery, Polymer, Angular, etc. I'm a web developer and have looked at the Javascript API to do some sort of web client like this for the hell of it but wasn't quite sure how possible it was atm.

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Yeah, maybe it is something ingrained in us from 40 or 50 years of live TV broadcasts.

 

I've definitely caught myself sitting down to watch some movie that happened to be playing on Live TV when I actually owned that movie already - LOL.

 

It would be possible but it would need components on both the server and clients.  As Luke alluded to, it would be a pretty large task.

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Latchmor

I've definitely caught myself sitting down to watch some movie that happened to be playing on Live TV when I actually owned that movie already - LOL.

Yeah I do this a lot too, it's weird, even if it means staying awake into the early hours. Yet I'll flick through my library at other times and never decide what to watch!

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schingeck

I think at times it's the lack of control that can be exciting... plus the surprises that come with it. But overall, you're still in control because you control what is in your library ultimately :)

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  • 7 months later...
KarlDag

I'm super late to this conversion, but just got into emby (I'm a Plex user) and discovered pseudo TV yesterday. Why not simply do it through kodi and it's plug-ins using emby's kodi plugin? Or was it not available when this thread was started?

 

Sent from my LG-H812 using Tapatalk

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  • 2 weeks later...
Dizzy49

My family and I LOVE PseudoTV!!

 

I have over 2k movies, and 5k TV episodes.  That makes for a LOT of browsing, no matter how organized my collection is (I have serious OCD, so it's pretty organized).

 

I like it because most of the time I just want something to watch, and I'm not picky.  I just see what's on PseudoTV and what I'm in the mood for.

 

My kids (and wife) love it because I have tons of old stuff that they have never seen or heard of.  Old Gummie Bears, Ducktales, Stargate, etc.  Right now my daughter is binge watching old Looney Tunes while my son is binge watching Gargoyles.  They love to use PseudoTV to explore things.  I even have it set up to toss in "commercials" between episodes.  The commercials are trailers for upcoming movies.

 

Something like this would be awesome.  I was actually about to do a clean install of Kodi and Emby and see if PseudoTV would work with it.  My existing Kodi DB is a horrible mess since it doesn't clean itself up like Emby does.

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schingeck

The last time I tried using Pseudo with Emby it did in fact work, However, it was very laggy and buggy and the plugin itself is notorious for being full of bugs even without adding in 3rd party stuff like Emby or Plex. Also coupled with the fact it has to rely on Kodi. Personally I am surprised no one has ever created stand-alone software to do this kind of thing, I would think there's potential for a business with something like that. But Dizzy, I found the best experience for PseudoTV was simply to just add my media directories via SMB shares into Kodi rather than using the Emby app to do it. Then you can also set the directory to use local information (generated from Emby) instead of redownloading it for Kodi. Then for keeping track of watchlist, use Trakt.tv plugin or something to send the info to trakt.tv and have Emby server fetch it from Trakt.tv . But then again I haven't tried the new updates with Emby, so I'm not sure if the lag and the crashing is fixed.

 

To be honest though, Pseudo is great but the way to manage it and all the bugs just make it a headache you CONSTANTLY have to supervise and work hours on end just to setup right.

Edited by schingeck
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Man I would love this in some capacity in Emby.  Not even looking for something as complex as Pseudo but rather just the ability to create a channel and assign a playlist to it.

 

I just tried Pseudo TV Live on a fresh build and while it's nice, I can see what schingeck is referring to with having to constantly supervise it.  Can hear the wife now when it breaks while I'm traveling...

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LongMan

I am not sure if the comments about laggy performance are for PseudoTV Live or the original Pseudo TV addon. The original one does not have as many frills and IRC was fairly smooth when I used it before. However, it doesn't seems to work with the Emby backend while the new Pseudo TV Live does. I wish I add the skills to update it because, as mentioned above, it is a good recommendation tool.

 

In reality it could just be that it is looking for a video file to play and, in Emby for Kodi, the path does not contain a file name.

 

Cheers

 

 

edit. http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=90738&highlight=pseudo+tv

Edited by LongMan
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  • 2 years later...
yattaah

Did anyone by any chance try to implement this functionality?

I know the emby devs have more than enough to work on and this feature request is quite old - plus implementing this wouldn't be that easy - but it would be a really(!) great, unique feature and would create a lot of buzz (plus Emby would get a lot of new users). I would suggest it as premiere feature.

 

Users could create their own channels or create/edit chanels for other people (like our family) because it get's distributed over our own server. We could restrict channels from users (so kids can only watch the kids channels) or create special rules to make it our own. When i used PseudoTV I added the rule to just add watched items to my channels, which meant I wouldn't see any spoilers by accident and the more shows and movies I watched the richer my channels became (psychologically interesting because I was more motivated to watch shows to add more variation to my channels). Or you create channels to discover new content (recently added, unwatched, IMDB TOP250, etc.).

 

I really hope this can be a thing some day because it would add a whole new aspect to emby (best of both worlds, control and collect your own library + make channel surfin worth your time). =)

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In theory a tv plugin could be built based on existing media but it will inevitably require core assistance I'm sure.

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ddurdle

This could ideally be done by a plugin by the community.

 

I tried to find MB Plus but the reference doesn't exist.  Is there an updated name or other source?  I wouldn't mind examining it for ideas.

 

Discovery amongst your own media is a huge asset.   I collected so many HD-DVD and BluRays over time that I get frazzled when I do find the time to watch something, and I never end up doing so.  I have all my collection in Google Drive to remove the excuse of not having access anywhere I go to my media, but the deciding what to watch... so I don't watch anything.  I like the concept of discovery using logic that schedules your own content in a TV lineup form.

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  • 1 month later...

This could be done right now via some scripting completely outside of Emby.

In a nutshell it could be done via the current live tv/dvr portion of Emby.

 

You would run a stand alone app/web/IPTV server that supplies the streams or files.

These streams could be from files on your system, from HDHomeRun or any other IPTV source.

You would create an EPG listing that matches the playlist the IPTV server users.

 

Then you just import this into Emby as usual.

 

The team at NextPVR could probably do this pretty easy as they have many of the tools needed already.

https://restream4me.com/ is one of them that would have much of the guts needed.

 

This could be done many ways including some scripting and the use of ffmpeg or VLC to a modification of something like the tools NextPVR has with the use of the existing NextPVR plugin.

 

If you can stream media from any "internal" source then it's just a matter of creating an EPG XML file for the channel and having the "server" play back said media at the times indicated in the EPG.  Emby would then take care of everything else just like it does for HDHomeRun or IPTV sources for distribution to the Emby clients.

 

If you wanted a bit more of the "old tv" type feel with interruptions, instead of running advertisements you could run small news segments from a source such as Haystack TV using their categories (sports, science & technology, business & finance, entertainment news, political, world news, etc) or you could run trailers.

 

A lot of the wanted functionality can be done via Playlists (if only they could be shared). I've built some playlists with old TV shows ranging from I Love Lucy to Friends that can be shuffled.  You could setup playlists for Saturday or Sunday cartoons, prime time TV of yesterday, etc  If Emby could emulate a TV channel from a playlist then there would be lots of possibilities.

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jblaze12

New plex transfer here and I begged for this for years to deaf ears. I know it's weird to some but I too would appreciate this killer idea and set it to play while I'm doing housecleaning or busy work.

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New plex transfer here and I begged for this for years to deaf ears. I know it's weird to some but I too would appreciate this killer idea and set it to play while I'm doing housecleaning or busy work.

Just curious, but why not build a playlist with movies and/or shows in it just for this purpose?

You could then shuffle play it which would give you a similar experience without a fancy GUI.

 

You could build playlists for classic shows (I love lucy), for cartoons (for the kids), etc to suite the mood for this type of thing.

I've got a bunch of live concerts I put in a playlist that I use for just this sort of thing. Concerts are great for cleaning and other house work.

 

Granted it's not the same but with the way Emby works vs Plex you can do this easily in Emby with playlists.

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jblaze12

Just curious, but why not build a playlist with movies and/or shows in it just for this purpose?

You could then shuffle play it which would give you a similar experience without a fancy GUI.

 

You could build playlists for classic shows (I love lucy), for cartoons (for the kids), etc to suite the mood for this type of thing.

I've got a bunch of live concerts I put in a playlist that I use for just this sort of thing. Concerts are great for cleaning and other house work.

 

Granted it's not the same but with the way Emby works vs Plex you can do this easily in Emby with playlists.

 

I could give this a shot but it's the illusion of choice that can be satiating. Remnants of my past life clicking around "finding" something an always-on system (live tv).

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That's the beauty of a playlist.  Add a bunch of stuff that interest you then have it play shuffling the results so you don't need to spend time looking for something. 

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  • 1 year later...
PuffyToesToo

Just curious, but why not build a playlist with movies and/or shows in it just for this purpose?

You could then shuffle play it which would give you a similar experience without a fancy GUI.

 

You could build playlists for classic shows (I love lucy), for cartoons (for the kids), etc to suite the mood for this type of thing.

I've got a bunch of live concerts I put in a playlist that I use for just this sort of thing. Concerts are great for cleaning and other house work.

 

Granted it's not the same but with the way Emby works vs Plex you can do this easily in Emby with playlists.

 

Yes, I have been doing this for a while. I have various shows and then specific decade lists (For example, all 80s shows). It works well, but I like the idea of integrating some sort of epg so that 

 

1. I can see what's playing in the next while

2. Others can join me.

3. If my request for custom intros based on directory is implemented, I'd love to have a retro commercial thrown in between now and then for nostalgia.

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