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Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

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121–130 of 544 posts

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#121

This is awesome! How are the videos being chosen? Without any monetization, I guess we shouldn't expect anything more than a loop of the same videos, right?

The videos are hand-picked and are scheduled so everyone is watching the same thing at the same time.

I guess what I'm getting at is, we shouldn't expect this hand-picking to continue indefinitely, since this isn't a paid service. I'm guessing the playlists will start to loop before too long?

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to a lot of those is to just have a goto show that you watch. Before netflix removed The Office, that is what I always did when wanting something to watch while eating a snack on the couch or to have noise on in the background. I'd just fire up netflix and resume whatever episode it was last one. We ditched cable forever ago, but I do find that I miss just watching 15 minutes of some random show like I u…

> The solution to a lot of those is to just have a goto show that you watch. Cool! I have a list of movies to watch that I write from several recommendations sources, so I can try focus in watching instead of choosing. I can't say the same about music, I'm stuck for years hearing almost the same bands, which is kinda sad... > I usually forget about it until I'm at someone's house or a doctors office and catch a snipp…

>Here in Brazil that kind of shows that "we watch, we like but we don't know why" is a recurring joke, and we have three main ones: one about farming (Globo Rural), one about fishing (Pesca Alternativa) and one about trucks (Siga Bem Caminhoneiro)

Are those public access type shows that are meant to be somewhat educational?

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#123
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

> I also found a ton of old Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim bumps

Where were you able to find these? Recreating one of these channels has been a side project I’ve wanted to do for ages.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#125
This is perfect. Can it be customized (with custom channels and schedules)?

I was looking for exactly this to control my (and my kid's) TV habbits. My TV is only for YouTube. Everything we like watching is on Youtube.

But with remote in hand, it NEVER STOPS. We (and my kid) keep jumping from one video to another. When I watched TV as a kid, I only had to be in-front of TV on a schedule. I would be doing something else in other times.

THIS is the YouTube TV that I need.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#126
This is awesome, it really gives you the feeling of flipping through channels and stopping up and just watch something random that you might not have otherwise.

Much of YouTubes potential is pretty much wasted, because of the monetization policy. It permeates the platform, even if you're a "Premium" subscriber. Rather than optimize for "engagement", it would be nice, even if it was a Premium feature, to be able to say: "I want to watch content that will help improve my health, teach me to become a better developer or "On Friday evening, I want long format retro computing content".

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#127

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.

This is what makes the experience for me. You can tell someone "check out channel 12" and you'll both be watching the same thing just like we used to do.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#128

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.

But doesn't it make sense to pay for targeted political ads towards people opposed to you? The algorithm allows advertisers to do targeted advertising, and you were targeted, the subtle implication that targeted advertising would only show you "what you want to see" was intentional and misleading to get people on board with their attention being sold to the highest bidder.

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you pick randomly from your home page and let auto play do its thing?

The recommendation algorithms suggests things that are related to what I watched before. And I still need to choose one of the options that it recommends.

They recently introduced an anonymous mode

Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

#130
post #35
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.

Along the same lines, I have a near-terabyte of videos I have downloaded from Youtube, of my own vast and multivariate interests, and having it on random, with a simple pause/next/prev-style interface, is also a compelling viewer-experience equillibrium akin to the sets of yore ..

(cue Buggles..)

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