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Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

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Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#271

Post by confused_boner »

madrox wrote: post #267

Well done. My team built this at Disney six years ago when we were trying to solve content discovery problems. The problem with endless carousels of thumbnails is that it really doesn't draw you in. Sometimes you just need to drop people into content like it's channel surfing. Netflix tried something similar a few years ago, but in my opinion it missed a critical ingredient, which was dropping people into the middle…

could that be solved by finding and using the 'most replayed' mark timestamps for each video and using that to find the best start points for each video

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#272

Post by stuxnet79 »

r3vrse wrote: post #264

Neat! I have wondered how much of a foothold "retrograde" tech will take in the next 10-20 years. Decision fatigue, nostalgia, attenuation — call it what you will. At some level we're tacitly acknowledging that the vast ocean of content and complexity we've created is beyond what is desirable or even healthy to effectively evaluate. A very modern malaise. Excuse the armchair philosophizing.

There's certainly a market for it among the older crowd, but for those who've spent their formative years consuming content in the Netflix / Youtube era ... you can't miss what you've never had. I do echo the decision fatigue complaint - there is simply too much content out there to meaningfully engage with. The downsides of living in such a connected world ...

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#274

Post by a1o »

confused_boner wrote: post #271
madrox wrote: post #267

Well done. My team built this at Disney six years ago when we were trying to solve content discovery problems. The problem with endless carousels of thumbnails is that it really doesn't draw you in. Sometimes you just need to drop people into content like it's channel surfing. Netflix tried something similar a few years ago, but in my opinion it missed a critical ingredient, which was dropping people into the middle…

could that be solved by finding and using the 'most replayed' mark timestamps for each video and using that to find the best start points for each video

Uhm, only if this mark doesn't get affect by it being streamed here or it was be less relevant later.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#276

Post by efsavage »

As someone who grew up with a handful of channels and no recording or TV guide besides the one that came in the paper, this experience is pretty accurate* , so kudos on the execution, but in contrast with some other comments, it is not nostalgic in any positive way. I will gladly take clickbait thumbnails and titles over wasting time flipping through garbage.

* It's missing the part where you get your little sister to hold the antenna in a certain position so you can get a clear picture.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#277

Post by Saris »

vundercind wrote: post #140
l72 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been using ErsatzTV with my jellyfin setup. It can take a while to setup channels how you want them, but I love my sci-fi channel which is going through all the Star Treks, Stargates, and Twilight Zones. It is so much easier to flip it on to my Sci-fi Channel, animation channel, movie channel, or James Bond marathon channel then to decide what to watch. And since I've seen all this content, it is often kind…

Do you know if that can operate with no transcoding? I’ve designed my media set-up around Jellyfin on a weak server that can’t handle transcoding, and very-capable clients that don’t need it. This lets me avoid like half the bugs on the Jellyfin bug tracker and all the instability an Nvidia or AMD video card would introduce to the server itself. I’m very interested in this, but can’t use it if it must transcode.

What CPU?

Intel Quicksync is very capable (even more so than most AMD/Nvidia cards) and any 7th gen or newer Intel CPU with integrated graphics has it and has good codec support.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#278

Post by vijayr02 »

universa1 wrote: post #251
archon810 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dizqueTv, ErsatzTV... these are the "Chinese company names on Amazon" of TV app names.

No clue about dizqueTV, but ErsatzTV is German for tv replacement/substitute :-) so it has a little more meaning then the Chinese Amazon names ;-)

Ersatz is also a perfectly cromulent English word [0]

[0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ersatz

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#279

Post by FullstakBlogger »

r3vrse wrote: post #264

Neat! I have wondered how much of a foothold "retrograde" tech will take in the next 10-20 years. Decision fatigue, nostalgia, attenuation — call it what you will. At some level we're tacitly acknowledging that the vast ocean of content and complexity we've created is beyond what is desirable or even healthy to effectively evaluate. A very modern malaise. Excuse the armchair philosophizing.

> At some level we're tacitly acknowledging that the vast ocean of content and complexity we've created is beyond what is desirable or even healthy to effectively evaluate.

I don't think there's enough useful and organized information to evaluate. There's no reason for everyone to be stuck in a vast ocean of content labeled with a handful of vague categories, except that that's just the way that someone decided to make it.

If I want to figure out if I want to try a game, I can go to steam and watch a trailer, look at the tags, and still have no idea if the game is worth playing. How do I make a decision?

If I just watch 3 minutes of a lets play, or a live stream, I can get an idea of what the game is like. This youtube channels thing is giving us exactly that experience.

Opening a youtube video directly, on the other hand, is an entire ordeal. It's slow to load, takes up a bunch of ram, puts the video in your history and messes up the minigame of trying to micromanage the algorithm so you don't end up with bad recommendations. It's hard to just simply watch a few seconds of a bunch of videos to get a vibe.

There's so much low hanging fruit in terms of content organization/discovery, it drives me insane that the experience is generally so bad, and getting worse.

Clay Shirky gave a talk on this years ago (also I think it's a blog post) called "It's not information overload, it's filter failure". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI

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