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Live TV Channel Groups


mickeyfinn

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Spaceboy

Generally I agree with that, however if you now implement something that may turn out to be incompatible later on, the people you now made happy with a quick fix, will get a lot more upset later when you have to undo that quick fix. This is something that needs to be thought through and designed well from the beginning as it is one of the core functionalities and not a slap-dash bandaid solution even though that might make a part of the people happy for a few days...

 

Don't get me wrong, I'd love a quick solution tomorrow as the few hundred channels I have now is just a mess and irritating to get through looking for a specific channel or even group of channels. I just think it better if this would be something well designed...

well that could be true. But in this case it isn’t.

 

Supporting iptv channel groups as the first step clearly aligns to the longer term view that you and other people have laid out.

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I don't understand all the excitement.

It wouldn't have been necessary if some people would have carefully read what I've been saying.

 

The whole point of having TAGs instead of a fixed grouping, is that this allows multiple parallel ways to categorize (what most of you mean by "group") channels.

This includes:

  • Automatic generation of TAGs from M3U groups (IPTV)
  • Automatic generation of TAGs from channel genres (ATSC/DVB)
  • Automatic generation of TAGs from EPG item genres 
  • Automatic generation of TAGs depending on channel source type (IPTV, SAT, Cable, Terrestrial)
  • Automatic generation of other TAGs like 'Most Viewed', 'Having EPG', etc.
  • Manual creation and assignment of custom tags

The whole point of this is to have a single system that can serve multiple purposes.

 

For us, that means we have to develop this only once (instead of having a specific implementation for each purpose).

 

For users, it means that we should be able to make (almost) everybody happy instead of deciding for a fixed way that some might like but others won't.

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It wouldn't have been necessary if some people would have carefully read what I've been saying.

 

PS: Besides that, it is totally okay to challenge what I'm suggesting or ask questions about it, because that's the whole point of sharing those ideas with you :-)

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All you guys, however, have tunnel vision on this because you are focused only on .m3u sources.  We need to support more than that.

 

Yes - please understand that IPTV is only one part of the game and we'll be treating all kinds of tv reception as equal citizens!

 

 

However, I think we'd need to make one change to Softworkz proposal:

 

While this is currently how our filtering works - I think, in this case, we'd want to OR not AND the filters.  When looking at a guide, if I select both Sports and Movies I probably want to see all channels for sports and movies - not only channels that show sports movies (of which there are probably 0).

This is an interesting question on which I'd be interested in feedback. For some orientation about the kind of tags, we might have, please see my post #87.

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This is an interesting question on which I'd be interested in feedback. For some orientation about the kind of tags, we might have, please see my post #87.

 

If thinking purely about categories (which most of these guys are) then OR makes the most sense (my example above).  If thinking truly about "tags" as attributes of a channel, then AND could make sense (Movie channel with Drama movies).

 

Not an easy answer and we actually already have this issue with our current filtering.

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Dibbes

I don't understand all the excitement.

It wouldn't have been necessary if some people would have carefully read what I've been saying.

 

The whole point of having TAGs instead of a fixed grouping, is that this allows multiple parallel ways to categorize (what most of you mean by "group") channels.

This includes:

  • Automatic generation of TAGs from M3U groups (IPTV)
  • Automatic generation of TAGs from channel genres (ATSC/DVB)
  • Automatic generation of TAGs from EPG item genres 
  • Automatic generation of TAGs depending on channel source type (IPTV, SAT, Cable, Terrestrial)
  • Automatic generation of other TAGs like 'Most Viewed', 'Having EPG', etc.
  • Manual creation and assignment of custom tags

The whole point of this is to have a single system that can serve multiple purposes.

 

For us, that means we have to develop this only once (instead of having a specific implementation for each purpose).

 

For users, it means that we should be able to make (almost) everybody happy instead of deciding for a fixed way that some might like but others won't.

 

I'm having trouble visualizing this. (I'm a visual kind of person, I need to be able to see in my mind what you're talking about). What would this look like on a screen?

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If thinking purely about categories (which most of these guys are) then OR makes the most sense (my example above).  If thinking truly about "tags" as attributes of a channel, then AND could make sense (Movie channel with Drama movies).

 

Not an easy answer and we actually already have this issue with our current filtering.

 

Sticking to your example, I'm wondering whether people might want to see "ALL Movie channels and ALL Sports channels" at once?

 

That's what I'd be interested in for feedback.

 

PS: If we would have AND conditions for the selected tags, we could do the following (neat little) thing:

  • User selects a TAG

    .

  • The list of selectable TAGs would automatically get reduced to only those TAGs that exist among the filtered (= still visible items)

    .

  • This would allow a convenient user experience and avoid selecting tags that would result in an empty result
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Dibbes

 

Sticking to your example, I'm wondering whether people might want to see "ALL Movie channels and ALL Sports channels" at once?

 

That's what I'd be interested in for feedback.

 

PS: If we would have AND conditions for the selected tags, we could do the following (neat little) thing:

  • User selects a TAG

    .

  • The list of selectable TAGs would automatically get reduced to only those TAGs that exist among the filtered (= still visible items)

    .

  • This would allow a convenient user experience and avoid selecting tags that would result in an empty result

 

 

Yes, they would. Maybe not movies and sports, but Dutch News and Spanish News. Another user Spanish Movies and Polish News, but none of the Dutch. A third, Spanish, Peruvian and UK Sports channels, but none of the Dutch nor the Polish or the other UK channels...

Edited by Dibbes
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_jackflack

So basically this thread is debating on how to stylize or implement the same system that we already use for movies? yes, its an over simplification, but it is what it completely sounds like it to me.

 

How to apply multiple tags to a IPTV channel like BBC1? Is it Sports, Movies, News, Live, Weather? Or The Avengers (2012)? IMDB lists it as Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi.

 

If IMDB had a TV Guide api would this even be a relevant conversation? Or would we just use their definitions for everything and add or remove tags like it is currently?

 

Actually a serious question.

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Yes, they would. Maybe not movies and sports, but Dutch News and Spanish News. Another user Spanish Movies and Polish News, but none of the Dutch. A third, Spanish, Peruvian and UK Sports channels, but none of the Dutch nor the Polish or the other UK channels...

 

Hm, that sounds more like a static user preference than an ad-hoc filtering while browsing the guide.

 

Could that be a solution perhaps?

  • User can define a basic channel selection via options

    (those TAGs would be ORed)

    .

  • When using TAGs while viewing the guide, these conditions will be combined with AND logic
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This is all going way over my head, but couldn't BBC1 (or similar) just have a 'General' tag ?

 

That's the art of good software design: when you see it, you intuitively understand how to use it, even when the logic behind is quite complex (not so much in this case, though..)

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Spaceboy

This sounds like a massive over complication of what has already been done to the best design I have seen. WMC. It sounds like you want to reinvent the wheel for the sake of it. Pushing out delivery dates at the same time

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pir8radio

 

All you guys, however, have tunnel vision on this because you are focused only on .m3u sources.  We need to support more than that.

 

I think the tag and filtering option makes sense.  It is more flexible for those that want it or can operate as a simple grouping mechanism if that's all you want.

 

 

I don't know many people that would need to group 60 catv channels or 5-20 Antenna channels  (lol ok maybe 200 catv ch but still)...   ;)     BUT i do get your guys point..  Some kind of tagging for those guys, and abide by the group tags for m3u's,  SOLD!  I'm IN!   :)

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pir8radio

This sounds like a massive over complication of what has already been done to the best design I have seen. WMC. It sounds like you want to reinvent the wheel for the sake of it. Pushing out delivery dates at the same time

 

i did like WMC groups....

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pir8radio

 

Hm, that sounds more like a static user preference than an ad-hoc filtering while browsing the guide.

 

Could that be a solution perhaps?

  • User can define a basic channel selection via options

    (those TAGs would be ORed)

    .

  • When using TAGs while viewing the guide, these conditions will be combined with AND logic

 

 

 

As im sure you are well aware, you wont make everyone happy....     Your goal is to make as many happy leaving the sad minority voters behind...   :(      BUT   I would try to make it as similar to a commercial CATV or DIRECTV, TVio box as you can...    everyone is used to that today... if they need more then they can do some side third party thing like we have to do today.. 

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This [...] of what has already been done to the best design I have seen. WMC.

You might be glad to hear that I share that opinion in general.

 

It sounds like you want to reinvent the wheel for the sake of it. Pushing out delivery dates at the same time

 

I'm afraid, but this is something that we will not discuss with users, other than saying that your assumption is incorrect.

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I don't know many people that would need to group 60 catv channels or 5-20 Antenna channels  (lol ok maybe 200 catv ch but still)...   ;)     BUT i do get your guys point..  Some kind of tagging for those guys, and abide by the group tags for m3u's,  SOLD!  I'm IN!   :)

 

With a satellite receiver, you can easily get to have 1000 channels...

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pir8radio
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pir8radio

With a satellite receiver, you can easily get to have 1000 channels...

 

so what satellite receiver ties directly to emby without using third party software (where you could edit groups).  :)   A little curious, I was looking for this early on.

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Your goal is to make as many happy leaving the sad minority voters behind...   :(   

 

What is that sad minority that you think we would leave behind??

 

 I would try to make it as similar to a commercial CATV or DIRECTV, TVio box as you can...    everyone is used to that today...

 

That would be one of the bullets points I had posted above:

 

  • Automatic generation of TAGs from channel genres (ATSC/DVB)
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Spaceboy

You might be glad to hear that I share that opinion in general.

 

 

I'm afraid, but this is something that we will not discuss with users, other than saying that your assumption is incorrect.

[emoji3] ok I will be happy to be proved wrong then!
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