New Guide Categories List

Hi,

With the new fantastic grid guide I was wondering if it’s possible to have an option to hide the category list on the left hand side of the grid guide?
It would look great if once hid, the grid guide could fill the the gab of the category list to the left.

At the moment with the category options it makes the grid guide looked to squashed to the bottom right of the screen.

thanks again for the grid guide.

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Having the new grid guide is awesome, especially for those who like to be able to plan their nightly viewing.

I do agree that it is bit jarring to see the the filter take up so much space. It would be great if it could be moved off screen to the left, so that a swipe to left would bring it up, but normal viewing would fill screen with the guide.

Interesting idea, but unfortunately quite tricky to implement. I will do some experiments for future versions, but the current layout is here to stay for now.

One of the reasons there’s a lot of padding on the left is because many televisions have overscan and cut off things on the edges of the screen.

Great work guys! Speaking of the categories list, a couple of things:

  • For some reason the Movies, Sports, Drama, News, and Kids categories are all coming up blank for me. Very well could be that there’s nothing on right now that fit any of those categories, but seems hard to believe.

  • It’d be great to able to show/hide categories that I’m not interested in. Perhaps clicking on them could toggle them off and users could re-enable them in Settings somewhere?

Thank you for setting expectations for current status. No problem.

For future implementation, if possible: either left side side swipe or filter at mid top (below airing description) would work for me.

For now, I’m just glad I’m not one of those with the overscan problem.:grinning:

I agree that the category list on the far left side appears to scrunch the guide a bit into the lower right corner. I like the idea of having the list easily accessible, but maybe a swiping gesture to revel the categories or something along those lines. Or maybe as you stated, its a bit difficult to implement and not worth the time. Either way, really liking the guide! Great work guys!

I agree. I use the favorites list to filter only the channels I want to see. It would be great to just have that list as an option.

Would it be possible to have the “On Now” list in the user-defined order again? I was able to define the order in previous versions, but that seems lost now.

Favorites are still sortable. When you’re filtered to Favorites, they will be sorted in the way you set them previously.

First Great work on the Guide and the On Now Filter. Would it be possible to give the grid category list (guide page) a Hierarchy so that the “HD Channels” is a selectable item? This way the subcategories would only show the HD content if so desired.

Both tabs have a “Favorites” option you can use to filter.

I agree that the filters to the left of the grid don’t look quite right to me. How about using the same look for the filter as the “On Now” tab for the Guide tab? Perhaps eating up a little bit of vertical space up top wouldn’t be as noticeable as the space taken up to the left of the guide. Also, it’d provide some consistency throughout the app which is always nice to have.

How about making “Favorites” first on both lists and selected by default?

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I agree with ts01 that having the filter work differently on the ‘On Now’ vs ‘Guide’ tab is an inconsistency and a bit disorienting. The ‘On Now’ filter seems very natural where the ‘Guide’ filter to the left of the screen is not as intuitive and doesn’t look as nice from a screen usage perspective. That said, I recognize that navigation from the channel grid to the top of the screen could require too many key presses so I’m not sure about a better solution. Possibly ‘Top’, ‘Bottom’, ‘Filter’ options off to the left or right of the grid to allow quick navigation options. Filter could then take you to the top of the screen and the ‘On Now’ style filter. Navigating to the top would present the filter option as well.

That said good work on all of these new features. Having both the ‘On Now’ and ‘Guide’ is awesome.

Is there a way to have only Favorites show up in the other categories? (Favorites>Sports). I want the SD channels to be displayed in All Channels, but not in the type categories (news, sports, etc.). Otherwise need to scroll thru all the SD channels first.

I agree. The filters list constantly fails the “wife” test. She doesn’t understand/care what it is. Same goes for my parents. She accidentally moves to the filter list and gets an unexpected behaviour when scrolling up and down. She expects to move up and down the guide but instead moves up and down the filter list. She just gives up and goes to the On Now tab. The only way I kept her using Channels pre guide tab was by telling her it would eventually get a proper guide. Now it’s got one and she won’t use it. I don’t know how often the filters feature is used by others but personally I never use it yet it’s always on screen which seems wrong.

I hope I don’t sound too harsh because Channels really is one of the best, most well designed apps on the ATV. I love it!

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@robflate - we have been using Channels since it’s release and my wife and I prefer ON NOW. We have always like it over the Grid Guide “text” format. However, I do use it sometimes to see what is on later. And when the DVR is release I expect to use it more to schedule recordings coming up in the future. But for everyday live tv use the ON NOW is what we prefer.

I’d 2nd the change to have it along the top like on the “On Now” tab. It’ll bring some consistency across the two different navigation pages and minimise accidental swiping onto the left filter column.
Or even still, have an option to hide the filter columns in the settings tab for both pages, and have the ability in there to set what it should perminantly be displaying before hiding it. i.e. Set the On Now and TV Guide to favourites only, then select to hide the columns on both pages, so the the “guide” page and “on now” page will only show favourites at all times with no filter columns. It’ll give people the ability to change their set up to how they like it. Keep the columns, hide them, we choose :slight_smile:
As for the wife test, it’d be quicker to file for divorce.

I suspect one of the issues is that it’s often hard to tell that the filters on the left currently have focus. We’ve made an improvement in the latest beta that should make it much more obvious when you have the left bar selected.