EPG - enhancements / overhaul

[Gustovier 4]

Dear awesome Devs,

 

 

First thank you for all your hard work you do here.

 

So on to the EPG. I'm almost positive you guys are aware of this but the EPG needs a little love. I know there's a lot of data to deal with, channel logos, summary info ,etc. and this makes it difficult. We need to get the EPG to a point where the EPG loads almost instantly and you can continue to scroll through your channels without reaching a point where you the user has to activate a "load more channels" button (at least it's this way in android TV client)

. It should just scroll through seamlessly. Again I know this is hard and might require a complete rewrite of how the EPG is coded but it should be on the list of things to dedicate resources too.

 

Now with that said, is there anything I or even the community can do to help out? Do you think the solution is more in the server or the clients? I'm assuming a lot of both depending on the solution.

[jasonmcroy 316]

I agree with the "load more buttons" needing to be done away with. I am not sure if that is there to make the guide load faster for those with more than 50 channels. It is the same way on the Web app as it is on the Android TV app. I have like 75 channels and the need to load more channels just for the extra 25, then go back to the first 50 is not the best way imho. 

 

Other than that I like the current way the guide is set up and responds. It loads for me pretty instantly on my Shield TV box. On the web app it takes a few seconds but not really a big deal to me.

[Gustovier 4]

For some reason it doesn't load all that quickly for me on my shield TV. Maybe cause I'm used to how the guide performs in other DVR applications. In those apps it's pretty much instanious.

[ebr 16169]

In the ATV app specifically, it just isn't possible to have more than about 50 channels at a time with a full 12 hours of guide data.  The environment simply cannot handle that many views simultaneously so we must break it up.

 

However, if you filter at all, you will get all channels for a shorter time window (3 hours).

[Gustovier 4]

In the ATV app specifically, it just isn't possible to have more than about 50 channels at a time with a full 12 hours of guide data. The environment simply cannot handle that many views simultaneously so we must break it up.

 

However, if you filter at all, you will get all channels for a shorter time window (3 hours).

Hey Ebr! Thanks for replying.

 

I know you aren't going into deep tech details , but this is why I think some overhaul needs to happen. Which might require a few things outside of the EPG being refactored. Technically this has to be possible. I just don't know what the consequences are to other features without studying the implementation. It's done in other ATV implementations (googles own live channels app and kodi for ex). Now I know it's not fair to do comparisons like this but as I mentioned this lets me know it's technically possible. Just might not work with current overall design.

[ebr 16169]

Almost anything is technically possible given enough time, resources and compromises in other areas.

 

Notice the Live Channels guide only gives you 3 hours of data...?

 

We could potentially implement the same limitation and then people would be asking why they can't scroll farther to the right instead of down .  It is all about trade-offs.

 

As I said, if you filter at all, you will get this same all channels for three hours presentation.  Plus, we strive to continually improve everything in Emby so I'm sure this will be no different. 

[Ceth 3]

Does the guide load all of the data into memory, including information that is not displayed on the grid (e.g. Episode descriptions)?  If so, can it be reworked so that only the information necessary for the grid is loaded?  When the program is selected, then it could download the additional information as needed and then dump it when not needed.  Or it could be configured to download the information necessary to populate what is visible plus a small cushion, and then update the grid in real time as the user scrolls up/down/left/right.  That way, it never has to have the entire grid (or even 50 channels) loaded into memory at any given time.

 

If none of that is possible, a setting that restricts the number of hours to display in the guide could be added.  For example, you could set it to only display 4 hours of programming instead of 12 which would triple the number of channels per page.