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Channel Surfing?


Sammy

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Will Emby support channel surfing in LiveTV whereas you can press the channel up / down buttons to navigate to the next channel or enter the channel number directly?

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The Android TV/Fire TV app will allow you to use an on-screen numeric key pad to enter a channel number to jump to in the guide.  That app also has a quick program changer you can bring up during playback, or you can bring up the whole guide.  And there is a "Previous channel" button as well to quickly jump back and forth between two channels.

 

However, most of today's devices upon which these apps run do not have numeric or channel buttons on their remotes so blind surfing becomes more problematic to support.

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I'm still using ET on my HTPC with a Harmony 900 but I hear you.. Just ordered a Harmony Elite and Hub to incorporate into Alexa and VeraPlus. The Elite remote has no number buttons but I can still say, "Alexa, tune to channel 1002" from what I understand as I haven't even received the remote yet. At any rate it has the arrow up and arrow down keys as does a Roku Remote so true surfing up and down channels should be supported in LiveTV, IMHO. Bringing up the guide while in LiveTV Playback definitely would be a HUGE plus. From there you could select another channel to view. WMC and most all DVR's have this in some form or another.

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I've not had good functionality with Alexa and TV. Some channels use their call sign and not the name. It a bit hit and miss.

Thanks for your input. It is much appreciated.

 

Are you using Harmony Hub with Alexa? What is your source?

 

We have Spectrum through WMC with epg123 which is surprisingly in active development all these years on since WMC was proclaimed dead.

 

Alexa needs to properly communicate channel number to Harmony Hub. I'm wondering if it is related to whatever you use to tune the channel?

 

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

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pir8radio

The Android TV/Fire TV app will allow you to use an on-screen numeric key pad to enter a channel number to jump to in the guide.  That app also has a quick program changer you can bring up during playback, or you can bring up the whole guide.  And there is a "Previous channel" button as well to quickly jump back and forth between two channels.

 

However, most of today's devices upon which these apps run do not have numeric or channel buttons on their remotes so blind surfing becomes more problematic to support.

 

I'm trying this with a keyboard and it doesnt see numpad or numbers within the guide. 

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I'm trying this with a keyboard and it doesnt see numpad or numbers within the guide. 

 

No, since virtually no one will have a keyboard that has not been implemented.

 

As for up and down changing channels - I personally think there are a couple of issues with this:

 

1) It isn't obvious that those keys would change channels because, in most apps they produce on-screen displays or options.  So, it is very likely that a new user would hit one of them expecting the normal behavior and end up changing the channel instead.  Which then leads me to the next reason...

 

2) I think this functionality would be more frustrating than anything else until we can get channel changing down into the 1-2 second range - especially in the "accidental" case above where it could cost you up to 15 seconds of the program you were watching.

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pir8radio

No, since virtually no one will have a keyboard that has not been implemented.

 

 

emby theater will almost always have a keyboard, android TV will usually have a keyboard attached, my firetv has a bt keyboard too, web browser will almost always have a keyboard. Of course if its on a phone, then almost no one will have a keyboard attached. But that's just the few phone apps. If android tv had the ability to use the numpad on a keyboard then we could map our IR remotes to 1-0 keys and use it to change the channel (ive done this on android tv and emby ignores they number inputs like you said).   See this post here: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/50736-keyboard-shortcuts-android-tv/?p=485850  the FLIRC simulates a full keyboard to android, PC, Linux, any device that accepts a usb keyboard, then you can map IR remote buttons to specific keyboard keys, here is a video of it working   as for channel surfing you could use some obscure keyboard keys that we could at least map a remote button too.

Edited by pir8radio
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Android TV devices do not usually have keyboards...

 

For Emby Theater, this probably makes sense (my comment above was specifically in response to Android TV) but virtually no one will have a keyboard attached to their Shield or Fire TV.  I know some of you power users will but that will be a very small percentage.

 

Certainly you can understand how we wouldn't want to spend time designing, implementing, testing and supporting a feature that would be used by 1% of the user base?  At least, not until we've got all the features that the other 99% will use done.

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  • 2 weeks later...
BAlGaInTl

Android TV devices do not usually have keyboards...

 

For Emby Theater, this probably makes sense (my comment above was specifically in response to Android TV) but virtually no one will have a keyboard attached to their Shield or Fire TV.  I know some of you power users will but that will be a very small percentage.

 

Certainly you can understand how we wouldn't want to spend time designing, implementing, testing and supporting a feature that would be used by 1% of the user base?  At least, not until we've got all the features that the other 99% will use done.

 

I have a keyboard (and trackpad) attached to my Shield.

 

And now @@ebr has confirmed that I'm a Power User.  I always suspected, but now I have confirmation.

 

Worth the cost of my license right there!

 

:)

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