Guide - Only display episode title for virtual channels

Playground Virtual Channels
#1

I've been playing around with the Virtual Channels feature. First off let me comment what a great feature this is. Also thank you for taking a look and fixing the various issues I have come across with this feature.

After getting my issues fixed, I finally got the Virtual Channels working the way I wanted. Basically, I am creating a separate channel for each of the TV shows I have in my TV show collection. This works great.

I have come across one unexpected thing though. When viewing the virtual channels via a guide, each episode is listed first with the show title and then on a second line with the episode title. If I look at the guide in the web interface it looks as follows:

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This looks good. However, when looking at the guide on one of my clients, the room for the guide is a lot less so it only displays the first line. This makes it look like this:

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It is only displaying the show title and not the episode title. At first, I thought this might be some type of bug, but then when looking at the guide for normal non-virtual channels from other sources (OTV, TVE), I realized this is normal. Normally a channel doesn't just show one show so it makes sense that it would display what show is currently on. However, with virtual channels since a big use case is for exactly what I am doing, which is dedicating a channel per show, it would make a lot more sense to show the episode title on the first line (or the only line) instead of showing the show title. We obviously know what show is on that virtual channel based on the virtual channel name/graphic, so there is no need to show the show title in the guide.

For virtual channels, is there currently a way to get the guide to just show the episode title instead of the show title? If not, can an option be added to virtual channels to default to episode title instead of show title? Ideally, we would be able to set this setting per virtual channel since some channels may show multiple shows (for example my BBC Earth channel in above screenshots). If you would like for me to post this over in feature request please let me know.

#2

On TV interfaces, there is a section above the guide that gives you more details on the currently focused item.

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I guess you're saying the experience of browsing future virtual airings on phone/tablet is not as nice, because you have to tap into each episode to get details?

Maybe on tablet devices we can use the two-line layout like the web UI does, since there's is more space available and no details up top.

#3

Also, it’s important to remember that people create virtual channels in many different ways, not just one show per channel.

So while it might suit your scenario, it doesn’t cover them all.

#4

Thanks @tmm1. Although the two-line layout would be nice on tablets/phones, my primary use case is on TV interfaces like Nvidia Shield and Apple TV. TV devices are hampered by limited screen real estate though which is why I was suggesting to allow us to display either show title or episode title. I didn't think of highlighting the episode to get more info (duh) so that is good to know that I do have a way of figuring out what episode it is. That does help a lot, but it would also be nice to just see the episode title directly in the guide. That just lets you see it a lot quicker with a quick glance. I am an old timer that just likes to use the guide to quickly see what is on (I never use What's On).

Yeap @maddox totally get it. I myself plan to create "movie" channels of a certain genre/movie series, e.g. the Star Wars channel, the James Bond channel, etc. where episode title doesn't make sense. That is why I suggested that the setting should be on a per virtual channel basis since having an "episode title" on certain virtual channels wouldn't make sense.