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Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

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Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#72

Post by slazaro »

I'd echo the sentiment that this is amazing, and that a TV guide would be awesome.

I'd also suggest maybe adding the channel names (like the comment you posted here) to the app itself (although i think it's cool when it's unnamed and you get the old-school feeling of channels just being numbers).

Also, I'd love to have permalinks for the channels. Not for the individual videos themselves, but just a link that when sharing would bring somebody else to the same channel you're watching right now.

Another thing, although probably outside your control, is that I use a Firefox extension called "SoundFixer" that I use to force the youtube audio to mono (since a lot of channels are annoying to me using headphones, they pan the audio sources too hard left/right and it's super distracting), but it doesn't seem to work on this website, probably because of the way they're embedded. I don't know if this can be changed somehow, or have a mode to force mono audio (which would be also oldschool like old TVs with one speaker only!). It's probably too niche and hard to do though.

Also I don't seem to find any volume control except mute?

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#74

Post by digging »

A_Duck wrote: post #35
tantalor wrote: post #6

The best part of this is the channel doesn't pause when you flip away from it. It is always "running" and if you flip away you will miss it. That builds in a FOMO trade-off which causes user to automatically/subconciously decide on channel they most want to watch, because they can't watch everything.

Yep this works really nicely, and psychologically it's somehow way more relaxing than having to curate what you watch I predict this appears as real youtube feature soon. Since it will also allow them to do a Spotify-style payola approach to scheduling.

> I predict this appears as real youtube feature soon.

I doubt it would. The modern style of binging on-demand streaming content seems to be too effective at capturing attention. Remember that lots of people get notifications on their phone the instant a new video comes out for a subscribed channel, especially kids and teens who haven't developed resistance to these business models.

YT would be unlikely to spend any effort implementing an alternate mode that doesn't capture attention as effectively; the old model of live channels is likely a niche preference. If somehow this did prove to be more effective at capturing attention, I could see it being implemented, but that would surprise me.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#76

Post by hadrien01 »

angry_moose wrote: post #49
tantalor wrote: post #6

The best part of this is the channel doesn't pause when you flip away from it. It is always "running" and if you flip away you will miss it. That builds in a FOMO trade-off which causes user to automatically/subconciously decide on channel they most want to watch, because they can't watch everything.

I added ErsatzTV to my Plex setup about a month ago and we honestly love it so much. I've got 2 sitcom channels, British panel shows, Taskmaster, all Star Trek all the time, British sitcoms, cartoons, and a few others. Its really nice to just sit down and watch "whatever is on" (even though I could switch over to the main library and watch any episode I want). Sometimes I just want a 0-effort/0-decision background no…

I've done the same thing with dizqueTv for my grandmother. On her Android TV, I was able to integrate the IPTV channels on the same channels list, so she can simply use the remote to navigate between the digital channels and the IPTV channels (30 for Hercule Poirot, 31 for classic B&W movies, etc.)

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#78

Post by mrkramer »

hadisafa wrote: post #69
mrkramer wrote: post #46

Are those livestreams or videos? They seem like videos but if they would be livestreams it would be cool if you could speak to a livestream and then it would speech to text type it in the streamer's chatbox.

These are just youtube videos but they are synced so everyone is watching the same thing at the same time.

I like UIs like this when just one thing is in the focus....I think few years ago here on HN someone did something like this but for Twitch; where you could switch back and forth between live streamers which had only 1 viewer. This format is definitely good for fast and easy discovery.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#79

Post by gwervc »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #66
arethuza wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long since concluded that YouTube's ads are merely a way of persuading me to upgrade to Premium. Given that they actually seem to be pretty good at recommending content to me I am mystified by why the ad selection is so awful.

I got a f'n Trump asking for money ad on YT last night. The algorithm should know better than to serve me something like that.

If the ads are indeed just a way to push for subscriptions and you are upset or annoyed by a particular add, the algorithm is perfectly doing its job.
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