Holiday Surprise: PIP Beta

Great news: Works fantastically
Bad news: You guys realize everyone is going to want picture in guide now, using this wizardry. :slight_smile:

Seriously, though - it really does just work.

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Does anyone use this in conjunction with using homepods as the Apple TV default audio source? Just curious as I’m experiencing some audio issues when using PIP. Bleeping sounds occur as soon as I activate PIP.

Some observations on ATV 4K on 14.4 Beta

The PiP swaps work reasonably well with Apple TV app. if you press play or click the trackpad the video resumes on the primary video.

With the one third party app I tried which is Infuse, its less reliable. Sometimes the infuse PiP option disappears altogether and sometimes the Channels PiP goes black.

The match rate and range setting seems to be based on the primary video which is also enforced on the PiP. Once PiP is released on the Public version, it would be a workaround to use both the beta and the public version to use Channels for the Primary and Pip video :wink:

Yes, same here. Audio worked fine the first time or two and then afterwards nothing but beeping. I haven’t had a chance to try on a setup without the homepods but I expect that the issue.

Also, could be related to running 14.4 beta too.

This feature seems to work really well. I was even able to watch PIP with both channels apps (beta for pip and stable for the full screen). It worked well other than the volume which wasn't easy to switch back and forth. I know this wasn't built for this purpose though and may be out of your guys' control. It was nice to see that the apple tv could handle 2 channels live streams though.

Maybe it'll be possible to have 2 channels PIP in the same app? Not sure what TVOS allows you to do there though. Thanks Guys!

Wow! What a nice surprise. Testing PIP here on tvOS, iPadOS and iOS and it's working beautifully! Thank you, Channels devs! Amazing work, very much appreciated.

FWIW I have frequently used QuadStream on my AppleTVs, to play 4 live streams provided by Channels DVR. Granted my Channels DVR is an iMac, and the live channels are provided via TVE, so no transcoding, but it does work quite well. Others have reported similar success with other setups here.

I’m not sure this is a bug or by design. When you’re in full screen and you go into PIP mode the PIP window is laying on top of the bottom menu (left) instead of above the menu (right). You can duplicate this by placing the PIP window at the bottom in iOS/iPadOS app and go to full screen and then back to PIP.

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It doesn't seem shortcuts supports PiP mode yet. it would be neat to have a shortcut that automatically opens a preselected channel in PiP mode.

PIP doesn’t work like that. It will only take what’s currently showing full screen and put it in a PIP window.

yes so if there was an action that was available in shortcuts which would PiP the currently playing main window, it could be added at the end of one of the shortcuts that is set to start a channel stream

Thank you for the start up feature. Its wonderful. I hope It can be implemented on android devices. I don't have to wait for the app to startup in the morning to scroll my local news channel. I now can make my coffee earlier. :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile:

Great job just got a chance to try it out.

Since it is possible now to "view" the guide and watch the stream live at the same time. Could it be built into the app natively to have the picture burned into the guide? Not PIP but just a section on the top right where the picture stays and doesn't overlap.

THank you for this feature. It works well, sometimes sound is dropped from my Sonos One SL, but I assume it's tvOS 14 fault.
It would be nice to have true pip that allows to watch two things at the same time, but I understand it's tvOS limitation.

It does work great, but due to me using a third party remote (Logitech Harmony 700), I can’t access the “TV” button and thus can’t shut down/control the Picture in Picture window.

Any chance of making PIP automatically turn on when watching video and pulling up guide or recordings and then going back full screen when selecting something? This would fulfill my needs of having something playing while browsing a full guide.

Now that PIP is here I am having a “mind blown” moment. I’d always imagined it would be good for watching two things at once (usually, sports.) I didn’t realize that it would also transform the “channel surfing” experience. In the Guide and On Now. Especially with the addition of all of the great Pluto TV channels. This new feature makes the overall UX more intuitive and welcoming to new users who only just recently cut the cord.

Ideally there could be a configurable preference, to have this live PIP window open automatically (or not) when entering these screens. That would make everyone happy :slight_smile:

Fantastic work on this, Channels team. A very much appreciated holiday surprise. Thank you!

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@maddox Told you :slight_smile:

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Is this only available on the iOS beta or for Android TV as well? Doesn’t appear to be working for my Channels app running on TV OS 9 after installing the beta :frowning:

Apple clients only.

Android PIP is natively supported: send a "P" keypress while watching to put the video into a floating screen. (Note: the new version of Android TV shipped on the new Chromecasts does not support PIP, even though the settings are present for it.)

Thanks for the confirmation! I’m using Channels on a Sony Bravia running Android 9. I confirmed in the app settings that Channels has the proper permissions to leverage PIP but I’m not seeing a “P” button as you mentioned to start it up. Apologies for the Android questions in the iOS thread, but I didn’t see an answer to this in the Android section.