Beta: New and Improved On Later

[maddox]

This is a long time coming. We first did a pass at On Later years ago. We weren't happy with it but eventually just put it out on the web admin. It sat for a while, then we tried to improve it again. We weren't happy with it. Well this year we took another stab at it and we think it's ready for prime time.

Previously, your favorite channels helped inform On Later to show you content that would suit you. This wasn't great as most people's favorites are set on their client. This also isn't a great way to surface things you like. Now, you can tell On Later exactly what you like.

Tuning Settings

With the new On Later tuning settings, you can mark your:

• Preferred channels
• Preferred Sport Leagues
• Preferred sports
• Preferred Movie Genres
• Preferred TV Show Genres

On Later uses this info to surface things you might like.

Sections

Additionally, On Later lets you browse by TV Shows, Movies, Sports, and Kids.

Browse all of the Comedies available to record or see, at a glance, all the MLB Baseball games that are set to air in the future.

Client

On Later is finally in the app! As usual, it's in the tvOS/iOS version first, but it will come to Android soon.

All the same browsing you see in the web admin is here in the app now. Tuning settings will eventually make it to the app so you can tune it right there without using the web admin.

Known Issues

• no android - this will come
• no tuning settings in the app - this will come
• performance - browsing can take a little while to load, we'll be working on speeding it up
• better surfacing of things - we'll continue to work on making results better

Play with this and use this thread to let us know how it does helping you find things to record!

[chDVRuser]

Getting error trying to view Live TV>On Later
Channels DVR 2021.08.05.2025
This only happens on my DVR with Pluto docker for Channels source, my other two using TVE and HDHR work fine.
After resfreshing the page the same error appears again.

A Javascript error has occurred!

Please refresh the browser after reporting this issue on Channels Community or to [email protected].

e.collection is null
k/<@components/OnLater.js:105
map@components/OnLater.js:86
c@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:153
oh@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:175
di@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:263
a@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:246
Qj@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:246
Kj@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:239
c@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:123
b@scheduler/cjs/scheduler.production.min.js:19
If@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:122
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gg@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:230
a@react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js:163
setRows@components/OnLater.js:52
[email protected]:70
call@regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:63
innerFn@regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:293
_invoke@regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:118
u@http://192.168.1.3:8189/bundle.js:417
u@http://192.168.1.3:8189/bundle.js:417

[Fofer]

I just dove in to this new feature using the latest Channels DVR pre-release running on an iMac, and the TestFlight on an AppleTV 4K. I knew about On Later in the web admin, but I've only used it once or twice. With it now on the TV screen with a couch-friendly interface, holy wow, this is yet another game-changer. I just went through and queued up like 100 interesting recordings, lol! I doubt I would have known about any of this upcoming content, now I'm looking forward to watching it all (and organizing some into collections/virtual channels too.)

This is more awesome work from the Channels developer team. So impressive, thanks!

[Fofer]

What do these badges mean?

[maddox]

A fix is coming up in the next build. Do you mean that the ONLY source in that DVR is Pluto?

[maddox]

@Fofer

What do these badges mean?

It means they're noteworthy. They're usually Series Premieres or Season Premieres. Or Season Finales.

[chDVRuser]

Yes, only Pluto m3u source.

[philippehebert]

Can you tune it to not include sports?

[maddox]

Where do you mean? Sport events shouldn't be intermingled with the other show content, except for ones you specifically have set to record.

[chDVRuser]

Thanks, working now in 2021.08.05.2222

[philippehebert]

Yes the sports are in a separate section but I don't watch them so I would prefer to somehow not include sports in the suggestions.

[mnwxman132]

I’ve started to play with this and as a discovery mechanism I really like it. Here’s a thought. I’ve already noticed a lot of new content using the on tonight and on this week interfaces, using the defaults with no fine tuning. I

In many ways there is an advantage to leaving the on later parsing ALL the channels.

In the web interface I’ve played with the fine tune, and it occurred to me that it would be really cool to be able to initially show all the available channels, and instead of having people add favorite channels for fine tuning, how about being able to exclude channels instead.

I bet most people would be able to fine tune the on later channels by eliminating certain channels as opposed to adding them, because we’d like to parse most of them to discover things that we are normally filtering out when we use the excellent channels collection interface.

Then the database of channels used is mostly All of them, except certain ones. In my case I would filter out CSPAN and the non english speaking channels.

This allows a much greater starting point for fine tuning, then adding favorite channels all over again, which many people are using the channels collections lists to do that in their menu interfaces.

In other words for use as a discovery mechanism, I’d like to use most of my channels, and create and exclude list Instead of favorite list. Does that make sense?

Keep up the great work!

[maddox]

@mnwxman132

In many ways there is an advantage to leaving the on later parsing ALL the channels.

Choosing preferred channels does not limit results to just those channels. It just surfaces things on the lists. Everything you do to "tune" it, boosts results, nothing is ever excluded.

The goal of On Later is to surface things you might like, without hiding or missing anything.

[AeroR1]

@maddox any thought of adding a setting to ignore specific channels? Let’s say I don’t want any shows to appear from the golf channel or a foreign language channel.

[maddox]

As I addressed above, we're looking more at boosting things to the front than excluding them at all.

If you want to ignore content from certain channels, you can hide them and their airings won't be in the index at all. I do this for foreign language and shopping channels.

[mnwxman132]

Id like a way to hide the on later for specific channels like cspan, shopping channels, foreign language channels, etc, but not exclude them from use by eliminating them entirely.

The first thing I noticed was a ton of foreign language programs showing up in the on later menus on the clients.
However, once and a while I do watch Univision and don’t want to eliminate it from the rest of the system.

[AeroR1]

We posted at the same time, just saw it, thanks.

@mnwxman132

Id like a way to hide the on later for specific channels like cspan, shopping channels, foreign language channels, etc, but not exclude them from use by eliminating them entirely.

The first thing I noticed was a ton of foreign language programs showing up in the on later menus on the clients.
However, once and a while I do watch Univision and don’t want to eliminate it from the rest of the system.

Yes, I agree. Hiding it to stop it from on later won’t work for me either.

[chDVRuser]

I'm either not understanding how it's supposed to work,
or it's not working like it's supposed to.

To test things I selected the following Genres for Movies on two DVR's, one with HDHR Prime source, the other with Pluto source.
Action
Adventure
Thriller

Viewing Live TV>On Later>[Movies]
DVR with HDHR Prime source

DVR with Pluto source (don't see my preferred Genres)

[maddox]

Those genres are not showing up because the movies in your index from your Pluto EPG don't have any action or adventure movies. Or they're not tagged with it. The movies view shows every genre. It only pulls your preferred genres to the top for easier browsing. If you remove those preferred genres, you'll see that it still doesn't show Action or Adventure movies.

Pluto isn't going to work well because it doesn't have the necessary metadata that On Later uses. It also doesn't utilize the same broad set of genres that Gracenote does.

This is a limitation of the EPG in custom channels.