Love Channels but still frustrated

#1

I am an avid user and fan of Channels DVR and all of its amazing capability. With it I have created an absolutely amazing experience for my "users". It is so simple that my wife (zero patience for technol) and even her mother (no technical acumen whatsoever) when visiting are able to access an incredible amount of content when and where they like (and most importantly without my assistance).

Except for one thing; finding the content I know is on but have no fricken idea what channel.

The situation: Football season, favorite team playing.
The desired setting: Multiple TVs playing the game throughout the house

If the game is on Network TV (Best Case): Easy-peasy. Team is showing on top shelf because the channel is in my favorites, easy to pick for any user. All TVs play in (almost) perfect synchronization (well the one that runs through my pre-pro is just slightly delayed).

However, my team sucks. so they are rarely on network tv. Mostly on ESPN+. Great, no problem. I have the absolutely fantastic EPlusTV so should no problem. Wrong.

If the game is on ESPN+ or any other obscure cable channel: With two hundred some-odd games on there is just no good way to find it. Doesn't show on my "sports" collection because it hasn't started (I think). I also tried up next and the sports section with no luck pre-game. Scrolling till my eyes bleed on ALL channels guide works, but have to do it for all of the TVs, ugh.

I have a DVR rule set to record the games so I know that once it starts, it will pop-up on my top shelf. Which is great for most things, but because there is no "Watch Live" option, there is no easy way to get all the TVs in Sync.

The game is about to start, my wife and family see me scrambling around trying to get things setup. She casually walks up to the TV, moves the cursor over to the Apple TV app. The game is the first thing on the top shelf because I have told it my teams and sports. She selects it and the game starts playing.

The TVs aren't in sync. Different commercials play at different times. But it works, simply. All of my efforts to create the best ever TV experience are for not. I hide in shame. My team lost (again) to boot.

Please tell me that at least somewhere on your roadmap there is a favorite show feature, or at least having the On Later/Up next feature the shows (or events) I want to see. My bodged up version using the DVR works pretty good, but is far from perfect. A full on favorite show feature to effortlessly surface shows you want to watch irrespective of channel would be greatly appreciated.

Or maybe I am just holding it wrong. :grin:

#2

Until they come up with better features you can pretty easily find the channel number since you are recording the game. Using the scheduled recording tab. In Apple clients you can set a sidebar tab for scheduled recordings or check under settings > scheduled recordings. If you are using android Iā€™m not sure if sidebar tab is available yet so you may need to use the settings.

I realize this is just a bandaid for what you would like but I think it could be helpful in the meantime.

#3

I created Channel Collections for different, but compatible reasons. Here's mine for "Football On Now":

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Which results in this:

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Or this one for "Live Sports":

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Which results in this:

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Now you could go further with either of these ideas and use "Keywords" for your sucky team. This should help get it into an even tighter window of available stations, perhaps even down to just one. Experiment around and see if you can find a combination that works best for your use case!

P.S.
My sucky team actually won today!

2 Likes
#4

Thanks both of you for the suggestions.

I did spend quite a bit of time testing different ways to get channel collections to work for this type of thing. As I recall, the issue with using keywords is that the automatic channels are really "on now" kind of logic. Which makes sense for its general use (and I use collections extensively in my setup), but for this use case future events that match the criteria don't show.

Perhaps if there was similar criteria for the "on later" it would work.

#5

Sounds like a good feature request. You should post

Example: Feature Request: Implement a toggle switch that allows Automatic Channels collections to include "on later" out to "X" hours in Collections.