Wouldn’t it be easier to just stop using the beta version of the app? I don’t know about your environment but I just confirmed with my Apple TV, that the current version.does not display this enhanced beta feature.
If you don't like the "On Later" feature, why not just turn it off, under Settings > General > Manage Navigation? Is there something more to this that would drive you to revert back to an older version? Seems kind of extreme.
Geez. Don’t look at me. I’m a happy warrior with beta software.
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If I need to explain...
I'm not using it with a client device.
The new feature works fine with my HDHR tuner and TVE sources and I run the latest prerelease there.
My issues was my DVR with just a Pluto source that gets max 12hrs guide data where I use the web UI to discover and schedule recordings. I reinstalled it using 2021.08.05.0710 and am waiting for fixes relative to Pluto/m3u before I upgrade that DVR.
Everyone happy now?
The newest version of Pluto for Channels massages movie genres to include the top level popular genres we assume in Channels. This makes them show up better in On Later browsing.
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The even newer version (1.2.3) of Pluto for Channels massages series genres as well to include top level popular genres we assume in Channels. This makes them show up in the On Later TV Show browsing.
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We’ve got a dvr server fix we need to implement to make this actually work. Coming soon.
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Okay. It’s been an hour. Slackers.
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Grab the latest DVR pre-release, then have it re-download your Pluto XMLTV to get Pluto shows showing in On Later browsing.
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Thank You!
So much easier to find what's on Pluto now.
I noticed On Later>TV Shows now works, displaying Series.
Great! I'm still making some tweaks here and there.
OK, the latest DVR pre-release shows more genres of shows in the On Later > TV Shows section, and these general genres have better mappings from Pluto now. You'll want to upgrade both pieces of software.
This month marks the first time in my adult life that I don't have a cable/satellite subscription. But I have more content than ever to choose from. I currently have 558 channels where all but 136 (Locast/Philo) are free. I'm not a channel surfer so this new enhancement makes it a lot easier to find stuff to watch -- even for a crabby old boomer like me. But it makes me less crabby to know I am saving over $100 per month with no sacrifice. Great work guys!
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I don't understand the logic behind this "surface but never hide anything".
Maybe that's what some people want, but I find it useless. It means that, for example, when I scan the list of movies for things I might want to record, instead of seeing a short list of movies I see a list of 100+ movies -- most of which I will not record because either
- they are in a foreign language or
- they are on a channel that my antenna cannot adequately capture.
I have diligently marked all these channels in my Lineup as Hidden, and you, appropriately, indeed hide them when I am, eg, scanning the On Now page.
So I fail to see why you imagine that I would want to look at these under other circumstances like "what movies are showing next week?"
If you feel this is some sort of vitally important function for some users, can you at least hide it for the rest of us? Like maybe make each On Later "section" have three states not two, so eg
Action Movies has
state 0: just show a row of the top 8 (or whatever) action movies
state1: hit the + and see all the action movies from my (non-Hidden) channels [and the + turns to ++]
state2: hit the ++ and see all action movies on every channel
If you live in a metro like LA or NYC with hundreds of channels, many of them in foreign languages, many of them serving nearby communities and not really accessible by a normal antenna (and not worth making the effort for a better antenna) you are making a WORSE product for your users by forcing on it this tidal wave of irrelevant sludge!
Oh, one more thing, the mechanism by which one chooses and sorts the order of channels in On Later (via Web Interface) is absolutely horrendous. Again, maybe it works in some town with four channels, but it is useless in scaling to 50+ channels. This UI really has to be redesigned.
Any channel that you have set to Hidden on your Channels DVR Server will not have their airings indexed, which therefor won't show in On Later. If you have recently hid these channels, their airings are still in the index until the next indexing (in the morning of the following day). You can force this by using the Re-Download entire guide option in the Guide Database section of settings.
Thank you for your feedback.
Thanks for the feedback.
This persistence of cached state is a disease that's threatening the entire SW world! Apple handles SW caches TERRIBLY (a particularly awful case is anything to do with HomeKit automation) and the rest of the developer community is going along with this.
I know it's hard, but it's really not acceptable to maintain cached state after an invalidation event. It just makes the UI feel utterly incomprehensible to the user. "I changed these settings! Why does the program not change what it is showing me???"
What's so strange is that older frameworks like MacApp and PowerPlant made the linkages to force these sorts of updates the central feature of the framework, but this discipline and everything that came with it seems to have been forgotten in the macOS/NS era. Maybe it's a consequence of web design -- it was hard/impossible to do this properly for web pages, and that giving up then permeated everything else?
Anyway, like I said, thanks, and hopefully eventually the UI aspects of this are fixed.
It is not "cached". The guide is downloaded, indexed, and stored on the drive. Most people don't have channels they can't receive well enabled from the start, so this probably isn't a common problem. Maybe the guide could re-download and re-index every time user disables a channel, but that could make things slow and unresponsive. I certainly wouldn't like this. You should probably set your HDHR up correctly from the beginning with the channels you receive/want and then you don't have to worry about it for future guide indexing.
That's what a cache IS! A cache is retention of state (of ANY form) rather than regenerating values as required from ground truth.
There are many ways to balance UI responsivity concerns with cache updating. These include, for example,
- modifying the display of the data (change the background color or whatever)
- provide a temporary "update now" button the user might press after they have finished channel editing
- restarting a timer every time a new channel edit occurs, and letting that timer (say 15 seconds) expire before forcing a presentation update.
As for "You should probably set your HDHR up correctly from the beginning with the channels you receive/want", thanks for the advice. I'll get right to my time machine and make sure I do this correctly as of a year or so ago. There is nothing more helpful than advice that has practical consequences...
Actually, it does half of this. When a channel is added, the new guide data is usually downloaded right after it becomes known to the DVR. The discrepancy is when a channel is disabled/removed; in that situation the data remains in the database until it is updated the following morning. For most situations, this would only involve a 6–18 hour lag time; and if you are impatient, the system does expose the option to force update your guide immediately.
The difference is probably that if you're adding a channel, you want its guide and data immediately so you can make use of it right away. Conversely, if you're removing/disabling a channel, the guide data is generally hidden then and will be purged upon the next scheduled update, saving resources.
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