[REQUEST] Addon with EPG for Virtual TV Channels of Local Videos for Channel Surfing
#31
This is something I'm very interested in. This is the one thing I miss after switching from cable to purely torrents / online video: channel surfing!

And EPG is an absolute must though and something I wish was accessible to skinners. Something along the lines of a mini video library browser where I can browse my library without interrupting my viewing. Sure, some skins allow viewing of the video in the background while browsing but it's just not the same as when I'm flicking through the channels on cable.
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#32
A concept like this never ran through my mind until I read this thread. I am looking forward to see what develops here.
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#33
I would LOVE this!

sometimes the problem when having so many shows and movies is you can never decide on what to watch. I miss having the decision partially made for me once in a while.

Like we love watching Seinfeld, because we have seen every episode many times - so nobody is bothered by an interruption. Like if the phone rings or someone starts talking, we don't feel the need to pause it. But when we go to put it on, we have to choose an episode. We really couldn't care less which one is chosen, but still are forced to choose one.

This is a great, great idea. Would love to be able to just put it on a 'sitcom' channel, or 'nature' channel, or whatever, and just watch shows at random.

Would be nice to have the ability to skip to the next show easily. Kind of like party-mode for music.
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#34
This is an idea I've had for a while, but I as I can't code, I don't know how it would be done... It might already exist, but I can't figure out the right thing to google!


First off I'm beginning to have a quite large video library, as I'm sure a lot of people have, but though I enjoy KNOWING I have all these videos, I hardly ever watch any of them.
On the other hand, I watch A LOT of TV, so I began to wonder why I don't use my library instead of cable, because ironically often times I end up watching something on TV that's already in my library!

So the idea: a Virtual TV Station of some sort - which would essentially just be a playlist set to play specific shows at a specific time of day in a specific order.

The easiest way of setting this up (and illustrating it) is with a simple EPG-like grid:
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Just drag-and-drop shows to the grid. The most important part of this, is that episodes will be played in order every day at the same time. This could of course be extended to more days and not just the same 24 hours in a loop. To adhere to the schedule, random movie trailers could be played in between shows.

My TV is always on in the background, so if XBMC could do this, my HTPC could probably replace my cable subscription!


I don't think the basic idea of this would be all that tough to code, but to make it perfect (like [Random Movie] being in a specific genre, how to handle a skip to next episode etc.) would probably take som work.
This is actually something that could start me learning how to program, but I just don't have the time - so I'm puttning it out there. The playlist could also easily be generated by a standalone application for XBMC to play... Any thoughts? Smile
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#35
IIRC there was a discussion about a similar idea which would introduce several channels (e.g. genre based like SciFi, Action ...) which would contain mixed playlists of movies and tv shows and would continuously play a video so you could switch to a channel and a movie would be running etc. Maybe I can dig up the old thread...

EDIT: Think I found it: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=58787
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#36
jason102, any update? Wink
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#37
Making a couple more changes before I release. I'm trying to finish up this initial version by tomorrow and release it tomorrow sometime.
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#38
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=90738
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[REQUEST] Addon with EPG for Virtual TV Channels of Local Videos for Channel Surfing1