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Random Movie view on homescreen (Roku, Android TV, others?)


Jdiesel

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Jdiesel

My apologies if there is already a feature request for this, I searched but couldn't find anything.

 

My experience is with the Roku and Android TV apps but it may apply to other apps as well. With the "Up Next" and "Recently Added" rows on the homescreen one almost never needs to dig down deeper to find something to watch. A view I think is missing is a random unwatched movie view which would allow more spontaneous selections when you can't decide what to watch. I am an indecisive person and when given a choice of a 1000 movies I will never decide on one, but give me a choice of 20 movies and I will find something quick.

 

I realize this would be a personal preference having this view so if it could be made an option like how the "Show Premieres Row" currently works in the Android TV app everyone would be satisfied.

 

Yes I am aware of the filtering options but the point is to take as much user intervention out of the process and help one pick a movie they might have not otherwise chosen.

Edited by Jdiesel
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I think this is a good idea.  It could just be another optional home page row called something like "Might We Suggest...".

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Jdiesel

Yeah I agree. ET has the "Because you watched" views that achieve the same thing already. I guess you could call it something similar for consistency.

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Yeah I agree. ET has the "Because you watched" views that achieve the same thing already. I guess you could call it something similar for consistency.

 

Well, that is actually a little different than what you suggested here and that exists in all of the apps (inside the Movie views).

 

You asked for a truly random selection and that row is based on your watching patterns.

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Jdiesel

Sorry, to clarify I only meant that in ET the "Because you watched" cards on the homescreen gave you a way of selecting other movies from the homescreen. I realize this is already in the Roku and Android TV apps inside the movie view. My preference would be for a completely random list of movies on the homescreen.

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Just fyi, the blue neon app has had this ability for awhile. Use the "I feel lucky! (looks like dice)" button on the homescreen "options and quickviews" row. Up pops a screen of random unwatched movies, shows, episodes, videos, albums, tracks, etc... It is something the official apps should include in some way as it is an immediately unbiased way to discover new content quickly without having to "dig" for it.

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  • 1 month later...
JoshuaAJones

Love this...

A pair of dice on the movie homescreen to play an unwatched, truly random movie would save me and the family a lot of time picking out a movie and would make it a lot of fun.

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  • 3 months later...
funwithmedia

Just fyi, the blue neon app has had this ability for awhile. Use the "I feel lucky! (looks like dice)" button on the homescreen "options and quickviews" row. Up pops a screen of random unwatched movies, shows, episodes, videos, albums, tracks, etc... It is something the official apps should include in some way as it is an immediately unbiased way to discover new content quickly without having to "dig" for it.

I would really like to see this as well, particularly being able to generate a short list (ideally we could customize the length of the resulting list) of random content from the current library (and maybe have the customizable option of it pulling content from multiple libraries). When I have friends over it can be hard to pick something to watch, so being able to see a short-list of a random selection of movies would be super-useful. And for that scenario it actually would be helpful to be able to configure it to include items that are marked as Watched (because Watched would only apply to me so I'd want it include as a possibility for watching something with friends).

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funwithmedia

I just had another thought: On the Suggestions screen it displays Latest Movies, which seems to be a selection of recently added movies (I'm not sure if it is random -- they might just be a sequential list of the recently added movies). What if ET added a 2nd row called something like "Random Picks" which could be the same length (in terms of number of items in the row), but be a random selection of the whole library? And maybe have a setting to determine whether this pulled from all titles (including Watched), or just Unwatched.

 

It seems like Suggestions is the logical place to provide this sort of functionality.

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darkassassin07

I definitely support this one.

I was thinking the other day it would be nice to have a 'random' sort by option that gives you a new randomized sort order every time you open the library and/or change the sort order.

 

That would make it alot easier to explore a huge movie/tv library.

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There is a sortBy option that gives you random. &SortBy=random .. then use this as a view, similar to how latest works, and click it and so many random elements from each library present themselves. Excludeitemtypes=Virtual so you don't get missing and upcoming cluttering the way, and perhaps use &filters=isUnPlayed, and only display so many, maybe 100, just like latest view will. This is exactly how blue neon does it with those 3 used and generate truly random unbiased guesses at what to watch. I chose this instead of suggested, because suggestions dont expose you to new content, they use what you've watched and like to make smart suggestions. Random throws all sorts of genres and things at you until one sticks. you just refresh the random view. Using dice as the icon and the words "I feel lucky!" just makes it easier to know what its going to do. Pull the slot machine handle and see what comes up on the wheels. Chance is all that influences it.

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darkassassin07

This is what im talking about:  An option right here to randomize the library. This screenshot is android, but you would want it on most if not all platforms

5b284d1f7051a_Screenshot_20180618172109.

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Thats what I am saying, its as trivial as adding it, as the API already has this method. It is a minor trivial change to add.

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/blob/4cd8f75b0d05a830c81c1755fa4eb80f131b6c85/MediaBrowser.Model/Querying/ItemSortBy.cs#L45-L47

Edited by speechles
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Jdiesel

Any updates on this?

 

I'd love to have a view showing 25 random movies on my homescreen :) 

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Jdiesel

I've been playing around with the sort by query to see if I can get the desired list.

 

For movies I was thinking:

http://localhost:8096/emby/Users/{UserID}/Items?Limit=20&Recursive=true&IncludeItemTypes=Movie&IsPlayed=false&Excludeitemtypes=Virtual&SortBy=random

Follow up question, is there a way that I can authenticate the above request by including a sessions api key in the above request?

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Jdiesel

Thanks.

 

I have some success with using:

http://localhost:8096/emby/Users/<UserId>/Items?Limit=20&Recursive=true&IncludeItemTypes=Movie&IsPlayed=false&SortOrder=Random&api_key=<api>

Only think I noticed is that everytime I run the query I get the same results which leads me to believe that either the query is be cached or that the SortOrder random param is not truly random. Either way it will be nice playing around with this to generate some different views

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http://localhost:8096/emby/Users/<UserId>/Items?recursive=true&IncludeItemTypes=Movie&filters=isUnPlayed&ExcludeLocationTypes=Virtual&SortOrder=Random&limit=20&api_key=<api>
Edited by speechles
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Jdiesel
http://localhost:8096/emby/Users/<UserId>/Items?recursive=true&IncludeItemTypes=Movie&filters=isUnPlayed&ExcludeLocationTypes=Virtual&SortOrder=Random&limit=20&api_key=<api>

 

I get the same list with this. Does the ordering of the param has any influence on the output?

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No the params can be in any order, but the ones changed more frequently i tend to place at the end, the ones rarely changed near the front. I always use recursive=true to get a subset and not the entire folder directory structure too. If it produces identical results on each call it is definitely a cache of some sort mucking up. You need to place a nonce somewhere in the url you call so the browser thinks its always unique and doesn't try to use the cache copy. Force a refresh and it should always produce a random result different every time.

 

Also.. you had a typo and I just rolled with it.. it is sort-by random and sort-order doesn't matter since ascending or descending random is random..

 

http://localhost:8096/emby/Users/<UserId>/Items?recursive=true&IncludeItemTypes=Movie&filters=isUnPlayed&ExcludeLocationTypes=Virtual&SortBy=Random&limit=20&api_key=<api>
Edited by speechles
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Jdiesel

Thanks I'll muck around some more. Based on what I could gather from some of the views in the webclient the following query should have all the information needed to display a visual view of the random list. 

/Users/e3bcfb92fbd54ae3a794294f9cb57a2a/Items?recursive=true&IncludeItemTypes=Movie&filters=isUnPlayed&ExcludeLocationTypes=Virtual&SortOrder=Random&limit=20&Fields=PrimaryImageAspectRatio%2CMediaSourceCount%2CBasicSyncInfo&ParentId=f137a2dd21bbc1b99aa5c0f6bf02a805&ImageTypeLimit=1&EnableImageTypes=Primary%2CBackdrop%2CBanner%2CThumb&EnableTotalRecordCount=false
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