New beta: Auto Play

Channels Apple TV
#1

This newest beta build adds Auto Play. With the Auto Play setting on, Channels will automatically play the next recording of the show that you started watching. It will show you a preview of which show is coming on next. On tvOS you can click Menu on your remote to cancel the auto playback when the card appears, or you can click it to immediately play the next episode.

With Auto Play off, Channels will still show you which episode is next, but it will not auto play it. You will have to click the preview to manually play that next episode.

This is available in both iOS and tvOS.

Please report back any oddities that you see while using this feature or during any other watch sessions.

7 Likes
New user - No Autoplay?
Questions about Commercial Skipping
Ambitious Feature Request
#2

Nice addition, this is a big for the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) :). Do you have plans to expand this to Android down the road?

#3

Perfect! This should keep the kid entertained!

#4

Great, now we'll NEVER stop watching 90 Day Fiancé.

1 Like
#5

I tested a couple episodes locally and it seems good. I will try remotely tomorrow.

Suggestion: Pop up the next episode preview if the app detects a commercial at the end for the remaining of the recording.

#6

This actually works if you have manually edited the commercials on the recordings. When you do this, we treat the commercial index as trusted.

We don't do this by default because the indexing just isn't up to our standards and we don't want the experience to be wacky.

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#7

How do you manually edit the commercials? Can it be done from tvOS or iOS? Or only from the web interface?

#8

It can be done in the iOS app or the dvr web UI

#9

Any plans to add auto play to android tv?

#10

Follow up on this as well, seeing if there was any movement for Android TV and this functionality as well. Thank you.

1 Like
#11

Sorry to be a Grinch at Christmas but I detest this feature. It's the first thing I turn off in Netflix and so on. Hopefully you can turn it off completely in all clients or possibly the server would be better.

#12

Auto Play is defaulted to off.

1 Like
#13

That's great, thank you for clarifying.

#14

Its all good, I understand. Your watching something and then get distracted, come back and next thing you know your several episodes ahead.

Really looking for something similar that Plex has when watching shows, where there is "skip to next episode feature" you can do manually when your watching an show. Where you don't need to go back to the menu to play the next episode in order.

Currently in Channels, the episode ends, Channels take you out to the list, then you navigate to the next episode in the list and play.

#15

Even with Auto Play off, there’s a card that shows asking if you want to watch the next episode. You can click to select it and jump to the next episode. You can use the back button on your remote to dismiss it. If you do nothing the episode ends as you described.

It gets a bit tricky because it only shows (like the Auto Play card that counts down) after a certain percent has been watched. If your show has long credits, it might not show.

If you seek ahead once your show seems done, the seeking will stop on the card and let you jump to the next episode.

1 Like
#16

Now available on Android in beta: BETA: Auto Play for Android

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