Apologies if this is a repeat request but I’ve not seen it posted before. Channels is nearly perfect for how we consume TV. We use Fire Sticks which have the benefit of a simple UI and the drawback of a simple UI. Favorites isn’t very useful in practice as it’s a static list of some/most of the channels we watch so although it’s faster than manually scrolling through 500 channels in sequential order, it’s not very useful if we are trying to switch between 2 or 3 different live shows, such as watching a couple different sporting events and pinging between them, avoiding long commercial breaks, etc. My idea is to make the Quick Guide support “dynamic favorites”, ie, a list of “x” number of previous channels, so with a couple button presses
you can toggle between a short list of the last channels watched. Even just a single register of the previous channel would be great. Is this feasible? I would also not be surprised to find out that it’s already supported and I am just not aware. We love us some Channels!
If you have the Quick Guide set to display favorites, and you entered live TV through the guide on a channel that is not in your favorites, the non-favorite channel is listed at the beginning of the Quick Guide list. I know this is not quite what you are asking for, but it does address some of it.
Addendum: As a follow-up, if you have the Quick Guide set to display Favorites, the first position of the channel listing in the Quick Guide will be given to the last non-favorite channel tuned. If you are currently watching a non-favorite channel, it will be listed first. If you switched away from that non-favorite channel to a favorite one, the first entry will remain the previous non-favorite channel (until a new one is selected).
For example, my Quick Guide is set to favorites. If I start watching MSNBC (not a favorite), it will become the first channel listed in the QG. If I change the channel to CNBC (also not a favorite), the first entry changes from MSNBC to CNBC. If I then switch to CNN (a favorite), then the QG will start open with CNN highlighted, but CNBC will still be listed as the first channel in the QG.
Thanks for this response. I guess I have noticed this before but I'm not sure I understood the behavior completely. This is pretty close to what I imagine; if, say, the last 4 or 5 channels viewed appeared at the beginning of the Quick Guide I think that might do the trick. Is this a reasonable use case?
Definitely a reasonable case. The concept of the 4 or so most recent channels being listed has been requested more than once.
The UX issue with the most recents appearing at the beginning of the QG is what to do when either:
- One of the 4 recent channels is a favorite? Does it appear twice in the QG? Remain in its normal place in the sequence/order of favorites? Only appear at the beginning, and not in its normal place?
- What if you have the QG set to display all channels? The same questions from above apply in that case. (Also, I believe that since the QG in this situation already contains all channels, the most recent will not appear at the beginning. I believe that situation is reserved just for a non-favorite channel when the QG is set to favorites.)
But your request is quite understandable, and something I could see myself using, too.
I would think that the (4 or so) recent channels would be independent of whether they are already in the QG, and regardless of what channels the QG is set to display. It reminds me a bit of my trusty old HP-15C, where RPN stores values sequentially in registers and it becomes second nature to access and use those values during data entry and computation. I'd channel surf until I found the programs I wanted to include and make sure they were the most recently-viewed so I could toggle between them.
Another option would be akin to DirecTV, where there is a separate menu in the drop-down/QG that displays the 4 most recently tuned channels.