Multi-window viewing (PIP) or multi-channel buffering

[KevinB]

On my former cable box I had the ability to view/stream a channel while browsing the guide. There is another thread for this I think, so I voted on it there. But I could select a second channel and have both channels stream at the same time. It would place the images side by side, or one channel in the full view with a PIP inset of the other channel that you could swap back and forth.

Only the active window would be heard...but the fact that I liked was that both channels were streaming so you could go to either channel and not loose the buffer.

I had a similar device years ago that let me bring up 4 screens...all simultaneously buffering and you could toggle between each one and not lose content if you needed to rewind. This was great for sports--even just a 2-window concept, where you could watch/listen to one channel while you waited for the commercials or commentary to pass, etc.

I know I can just hit record but then have to go back and scan through what I may have wanted to see, etc.

Having at least 2 video windows simultaneous stream would be the same as watching live what you are recording, if even that was possible. Again this was used by me mostly in watching a game and waiting for something to happen I would watch a recording or another channel at the same time.

[spscrappers]

Second this! I’m reminded again as football season gets going and I want to monitor/toggle between multiple games simultaneously.

[Fofer]

I'm doing this now with live streams from Channels DVR and iProTV (on AppleTV.)

It works pretty well, all things considered!

Quadstream & Channels

Here’s another IPTV app you can use with Channels DVR M3U and you can watch up to 4 streams in multi-view mode. It works on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV and it can synch the M3U playlist/settings across devices as long you’re using the same iCloud account. It’s a lot easier than QuadStream. In the App Settings just Add Provider using Remote File m3u: M3U URL: http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels.m3u?codec=copy&format=ts EPG URL: http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/guide/xmltv?duration=604800

[spscrappers]

Thanks - wasn’t following that thread. I’ll check out the iProTV app.

As an aside: I’m not the OP, but I’d still prefer a native solution and feel like the Channels Devs could do something even better when they get the time for something like this.

[Fofer]

@spscrappers

As an aside: I’m not the OP, but I’d still prefer a native solution and feel like the Channels Devs could do something even better when they get the time for something like this.

Agreed, that'd be nice. This was an explanation shared last year, for what its worth. All understandable stuff, but it's clear that it's something the developers been thoughtful about:

Channels Podcast appearance/Channels DVR sports Requests

While multi-view isn’t on our roadmap, I’d like to once again remind everyone why. None of the devices we have can decode and play back more than one MPEG1 stream at a time. It’s all done on the CPU and they’re all mostly maxed out when doing this. Because of this, we can’t do multiview for these sources. I’d wager that most sports fans are using HDHomeRuns for sports to get that sweet sweet 60fps. Additionally, I doubt any of our servers can handle 4x transcodes to h.264 to power this. Other…

I still believe in the audacity of hope.

[KevinB]

Yeah, something inherit to the channels nomenclature.

My thinking here…if I can record multiple shows simultaneously wouldn’t there be a way to “peek” or eavesdrop on the recorded stream through the UI? Even if it where just two streams and the choice to display side by side and swap the audio via toggle.

I know there is more to it, but a man can dream about the ultimate media machine!

[racameron]

@KevinB

if I can record multiple shows simultaneously wouldn’t there be a way to “peek” or eavesdrop on the recorded stream through the UI

As stated in Jon's reasoning (quoted above), nearly no client device has the horsepower to decode 2 or more MPEG-2 streams simultaneously. (He said MPEG1, but I think he meant MPEG-2, which is what North American OTA broadcasts use.) Also, the recordings are the raw streams, so whether live or recorded, it wouldn't make a difference; almost no clients could handle 2 or more streams.

[Fofer]

Well, at least with 4K AppleTV and iProTV, we now have a 6 channels feeding multiview, these are streams fed directly from Channels DVR:

Quadstream & Channels

There’s a bug/hack where you can get more than 4 screens to work with iProTV [IMG_1479] [IMG_1484]

[Fofer]

The best way to handle this now is with the IPTVX app:

‎IPTVX

Still a bit clunky but still better than the other options out there, IMO

IPTVX, iProTV and Quadstream: Multiview via Channels

The former IPTVX IPTVX costs a few bucks but it's worth it IMO. And here's the recommended method to sync your channels list from Channels DVR to IPTVX app: Create a new playlist using "M3U playlist via URL" Playlist Name: Channels DVR (or whatever you'd like to call it) Playlist's URL: http://YOUR-CHANNELS-DVR-IP:8089/devices/ANY/channels.m3u?format=hls EPG’s URL: http://YOUR-CHANNELS-DVR- IP:8089/devices/ANY/guide/xmltv?duration=604800 (obviously replace with your Channels DVR IP addres…

[nschaffner]

I think IPTVX has a lot of potential, but I find the UI kind of cumbersome.

So far I've stuck with iProTV. I like being able to create custom channel lists. I also really like the ability to have one large stream on top with three smaller at the bottom and being able to quickly switch between them.

I know IPTVX actively updates so I'll definitely be checking it out again once football season starts.

[hancox]

Funny thing is, all of the apps in this space have upped their frequency of updates - even quadstream, which didn’t update for ages!

[nschaffner]

Oh, nice! I didn't realize quadstream was active again. I'll have to revisit that one too.

[bweezy21]

Sucks this isn't on the roadmap. I'm achieving this by running a mosaic via VLC on my server and piping that via rtsp (or whatever protocol you want) back to channels as a custom channel. An interface to set this up in channels itself would be awesome. (Could also do this in ffmpeg but VLC was quicker to get setup for me)

[CrossCech]

I use Tivimate on my Nvidia Shield which pulls my ChannelsDVR epg (from a docker on OpenMediaVault server) & streams for Multiview. I've had 8 streams going at once with no issues, but the sweet spot is 4 at once. Really wish this was a feature natively with ChannelsDVR. Has a dev taken a look at these apps that do multiview and tried reverse engineering it?

Is the above explanation saying that it's taxing the server CPU that's running ChannelsDVR? Isn't the load put on the client device & app?

I'm hoping this feature will be considered for a future update.