You can manage the items in the sidebar. Use the Settings section to manage the nav to remove items you don't want her to get to.
Is there a way to completely get rid of the sidebar on a client? Also, is there a way to completely get rid of the option of recording shows? Or the “On Now” option? I tried to set up Channels for my elderly mother, but she kept navigating away from the Channels Collection I made for her and she just didn’t know how to navigate back. I think it would be great if you had like a “basic” (ie elderly) mode.
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Settings > General > Manage Navigation
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Yep, as @racameron mentioned, you can turn things off in the side bar.
If you're on the tvOS/iOS app, you can turn on Kids Only Mode, which will force the app to only show kids content. If you name her channel collection to "Kids", it will pick that collection and only show it. It will not show the collection picker. Kids mode also turns off recording and management ability.
You can also turn on Kiosk mode from the Channels DVR Server Client settings tab, and hide the settings option in the nav.
These features will be coming to Android TV and Fire TV soon, they are available in the beta.
Using this combination, I think you can achieve what you're looking for.
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I second the request to be able to remove the side bar totally. While one can use the server side settings to limit the client to only show the "On now" and "about" menu's it would be great if one could remove the side bar all together. Basically the interface would only provide access to the "on now" section.
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I am once again trying to make channels work for my elderly mother, but the inability to further simplify the interface has left me with no choice but to get her another TiVo box. Getting rid of the sidebar entirely doesn’t seem like it should be that hard to do, so I don’t understand why the team hasn’t looked into it.
That is one of the reasons I prefer the Android Interface ... In the Guide they make better use of the real-estate. That collection side bar on AppleTV takes up too much real-estate. In Android the collection sidebar is not there.
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So the issue is that she gets stuck on the About page and can't get back?
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Removing the navigation entirely is not something that can or will happen. But we’ll be looking to create a way to disable recording features soon, as we did with disabling delete features.
The problem is that she gets stuck in the navigation bar and doesn’t know how to get out. I’ve already limited the navigation options to one option (on now), but it’s still a choice between that and About. I just wish the left hand navigation pane could be completely disabled for a given client. I tried disabling everything, but the navigation bar was still there and the only option was About, so that wasn’t even functional.
Disabling recording features has been added to the latest TestFlight beta for iOS/tvOS. The latest pre-release dvr server has the setting as a server side setting as well.
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Thank you. I’ll download this 11/27 version and disable that feature for her client.
Update: I updated the pre-release server to the 11/27 version and I already activated the client-specific feature. Thank you.
Why couldn’t the navigation be removable on a per client basis at the server level? What my 86-year-old mother needs is the Channels app to always show her one of the channels in her collection and nothing more. You already have most of the features necessary for this. For example, I have a collection of her channels that she can browse by going up and down on the buttons at the edge on the Apple TV trackpad. But the fact that pressing a wrong button can send her someplace else in the app is disconcerting to her.
Thank you. But that’s still way too complicated for my elderly mother. The whole idea of a guide is confusing, and she inevitably ends up navigating to a future show and trying to watch it as if it were live.
What you are not considering is how the app is actually engineered, which is understandable as we develop the app and you do not. Applications have a view hierarchy and certain assumptions are made. One assumption in Channels is that there is a navigation area and a content area. This is core to the app and not something that we can just change. It's something that would affect the entire way the app is engineered. So without going into engineering details, I would like you to just trust us.
If this is an issue for her, then yes, it sounds like you'll need to find another software solution for her watching TV. But this is just not something we'll be doing.
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I got you. you would like to setup a simple Interface which would startup on the guide or livetv with no sidebar at all. The only Sofware I know that is that simple is The HDHomeRun.
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Sounds like Channels and a streaming box setup is not the best fit for some one like her. And
My elderly grandparents would never be able to figure Channels out, even if they dumbed it down like you want. Forget any sort of streaming box.
They have Comcast X1 thing with voice remote. They been able to press the Voice button on the remote and tell the box what channel or show etc. That works for them. They also manage the X1 interface and simple channel up down or number buttons on the Xfinity remote fine.
TLDR. Modern DVR software and streaming boxes solutions like Channels, are more for younger more tech savyish people.
Edit. As Edwin_Perez mentioned, the only other option for "simple" is the HDHR app.
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Thank you so much for this explanation. I really appreciate it. I’m one of your biggest fans and this interaction is precisely one of the reasons why.
