[Adam B.]

I have a lot of Television shows and Movies on my hard drive. But often times I'll find myself watching "real TV" because I don't want to commit to a specific show or series.

It would be nice to have a virtual cable network built into XBMC.

I envision a script that will go through your Television and Movie library and randomly select an episode to be playing at a specific time slot and channel. You would use a virtual program guide to see what's playing on each channel and select each show to watch it.

It could organize the shows by network, and provide an east cost/west coast option, to provide some variety.

Movie networks (like HBO, etc) could be used for showing random movies. If you have a music video collection, a virtual MTV could be available.

It's a bit hard to describe what I envision. But just imagine turning on your cable box and having the channels filled with shows that are on your hard drive.

XBMC Channel Surfer Concept

• Description
  • An Electronic Program Guide for XBMC that uses your existing TV Shows and Movies to create virtual channels.
    
• Use Cases
  • You are unsure of what TV show or movie you want to watch. You don't want to go through the effort to pick a specific episode of a specific show, and would rather just watch "what's on". Instead of leaving XBMC to watch TV on your Cable or Satellite, you can launch XBMC Channel Surfer.
    
• How does it work
  
  1. The Script runs and queries your TV and Movie Database
     
  2. A virtual channel is created for network available in your TV database (ABC, NBC, USA, Discovery, Etc.)
     
     1. A random sampling of TV Shows are selected for each network.
        
     2. Any Network with more than 4(?) shows associated with it will generate a second channel. (So if you have 9 TV series that air on SciFi, 3 SciFi channels will be created)
        
     3. Each TV Show is given a time slot to start at the end of the previous random show.
        
     4. Networks that only have 1 or 2 shows associated can go into a "Generic" channel.
        
  3. X Number of "Movie" channels are created.
     • These could be a random sampling based genres, date released, studio, MPAA Rating, etc.
  4. Program Guide is displayed giving a list of all channels and episodes with air times.
     
  5. Selecting an episode with create a playlist with the selected episode and all following episodes included.
     
  6. Going back to the guide and selecting an episode from a different channel with clear the playlist and refill it with selected and following episodes.
     
• Progress
  • Currently Doing Research
    • UI Design Ideas
      
    • Reuse Existing EPG Code/Designs
      
    • Generic EPG
      
    • EPG with Network Art, Episode Info and "Currently Playing" window (Is this possible in XBMC?).
      

I'd appreciate any comments or feedback on trying to solve the "Thousands of Episodes, but nothing to watch" problem.

[psike]

So if you see something you like on the EPG when you select the channel the episode airing will start at the beginning or in the middle somehow like real TV?

What will be nice is if this EPG will show only the episodes you haven't watched yet, and probably in order. Then you get TV with no re-runs (someone need to invent this thing for real ).

[Adam B.]

So if you see something you like on the EPG when you select the channel the episode airing will start at the beginning or in the middle somehow like real TV?

What will be nice is if this EPG will show only the episodes you haven't watched yet, and probably in order. Then you get TV with no re-runs (someone need to invent this thing for real ).

Good ideas and questions.

I'm sure both of those scenarios are possible. I've been pondering the first question myself. I think it would be easier to just start at the beginning.

I could probably build an option for the second idea...

[MDPauley]

Good idea, should be interesting...

[psike]

Good ideas and questions.

I'm sure both of those scenarios are possible. I've been pondering the first question myself. I think it would be easier to just start at the beginning.

I could probably build an option for the second idea...

Who wants to see a movie in the middle anyway...

Here another idea:
How about instead of channels by their network you could let the user to make his own custom channels. Everyone got their own idea for their dream channel.

For me Discovery, NBC channel is pointless it's not something I would like to see. But a channel for all my vampires movies will be nice , you get the idea.
Basically it's a new way for watching your smart playlists.

[godane]

I have this idea that it maybe a good idea to make some sort of plugin to make tv channels based on video files on your hard drive. I know this idea sounds crazy but it maybe a good idea in a few years when you have 50TB hard drive. There are just going to be days when you just want to surf your video files.

I think this would be go idea for a plugin for xbmc. Think just doing local video files for now will be good. Channels could be created based on meta tags and playlist. The hard part will be making 13 channels/playlist look like there being play at once.

This is just a fun idea to play with i think. Maybe useful to some people that have alot of video files.

[Sranshaft]

That's actually a pretty neat idea. I don't know how feasible it is or how to even begin to start to work that up but it's a great idea and something I would love to see.

This is actually one of the biggest things I miss since moving away from cable tv - the actual 'surfing' aspect. It just adds that 'integrated' feeling to watching tv as opposed to clicking on a file and playing it.

At the moment, things are akin to putting in a DVD and pressing play. It's not organic, if watching tv can ever be described as organic.

Would love to see something like this and one would have to create the tv guide as well.

[moontan77]

same idea here

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=58787

dont know if that person is still working on it or not though

[kortina]

+1 for this feature

I really like this idea as I have over 800 music videos. To be able to have a "Music Video" channel would be awesome. This could somewhat link into the PVR/EPG stuff too, so that the "local" channel would appear to be just another channel available.


Maybe the channel logic could be some simple XML, giving some nice options

eg:

<MusicVideoChan>
<Location=smb://server/MusicVideo>
</MusicVideoChan>

<ToonsChan>
<Location=smb://server/tv>
<Filter=Simpsons&Family Guy&American Dad&SpongeBob>
</ToonsChan>


<DocumentariesChan>

<Drama Movies>

<Action Movies>

<ReRunTV>
Write some logic here to loop through all stuff you have recorded in the last x days
</ReRunTV>

i think you get the idea.

Having these smart play lists appear as channels would also give the ability to publish the data into an EPG with now/next data too.

It would assume that the following options would also be a good idea:
pause
skip forward, skip back

[godane]

I think the virtual tv surfing program can be done just by adding numbers to playlists. The only problem maybe is that we need to group the playlist/channels so that there all start at one time. (There is also a idea to added local network like channels. This maybe good for way to "broadcast" a network of playlist on school campuses. )

I don't think think we need separate timers for each playlist/channel. We just need know the time it starts and where you are currently in the file. We could also update the start time with each file. May make it easier to change programing.

[godane]

@Adam B

I was thinking of the same thing that you are.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=422384

I believe that the idea is more of multipliable random playlist based on meta tags on the video files. You have to have memory of the channels that you pasted. Thats why it would be best to put the random play as playlist for at least current use.

[Ryoga79]

Out of curiosity, has anything happened with this script beyond the planning phases? I really like the idea of "virtual channels", and being able to just sit down and watch "what's on" is really the only thing keeping me from cancelling my cable subscription.

[moontan77]

its a great idea but looks like its dead in the water

[fillidill]

This is a really cool idea. I would use it.

[Ryoga79]

Seconded here. I have no coding experience, but i have a large library and a lot of beta testing experience so i would be happy to do any testing the plugin would need.