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Universal Search

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Lawrence Ficek
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I know this is a bit of a biggie, but provide a capability to search across all Channels from the same search box.

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6 comments

  • 0
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    PlayOn Support (Chris)

    We would love to do this, but this is not possible because not all of the channels support search. This means any universal search box would only offer results from a smaller selection of channels. Also, searches would take an incredibly long time.

  • 0
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    Lawrence Ficek

    As a developer, you should never say "this is not possible". Anything is possible given time and resources.

    Essentially, the solution that would be the most ideal - then - if not all channels support search is to provide the capability for the channels that do, and provide messaging that not all channels support search.

    As for the incredibly long time part, create a localized datastore that gets refreshed on a regular interval. This is server software, so it is always running and thus can poll for updates regularly. When a user performs a search, search against the local datastore index - which could be incredibly quick if implemented correctly - and provide them with a message that indicates the last time the index was updated and a mechanism to force a new index or search against real-time data with the caveat it may take a while.

  • 0
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    PlayOn Support (Chris)

    Universal search is something we are looking into and would love to offer. We appreciate the suggestion, but maintaining an index of thousands of videos on a user's PC would require a lot of resources and time. Some of the websites, like Amazon, will throttle your connection after a short time, so collecting the data from those websites would take days. Websites change hourly and the index would take days to build and update. By the time this index was created, it would be outdated and it wouldn't become easier to maintain over time. 

    In addition to that, it would still only be a portion of the channels, which is both confusing and something that makes the whole thing much less effective. It would not be a very good user experience and would be a constant leech on network and PC resources. So while it is possible, it is not feasible at this time.

    There are other tools available that can help you search and find websites that offer certain TV shows or movies, like our own ShowFinder (playon.tv/showfinder) or www.canistream.it. Maybe as ShowFinder evolves, we can integrate a ShowFinder search box into PlayLater. That would probably be the best balance.

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    Lawrence Ficek

    Even better :-)

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    nnnn mm

    Chris

    Can you please remove (or repair) the reference to playon.tv/showfinder.

    I just tried it and there is only a Playon "template" page with the text "Playon Show Finder".

    Thanks

     

  • 0
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    Brandon Leidel

    I think we would all still like to be able to universal search the channels that DO provide search. Instead of having to search each one channel individually, PlayOn could show a results page that is segemnted by channel so the user can decide where to obtain the content if it exists on multiple channels.

    I imagine the current limitation has to do with the hidden browser which I assume is how searches are conducted behind the scenes, just like video capture. Maybe multiple instances of the hidden browser as long as you could automate control multiple instances or even tabs. Creating this solution would at the same time create the foundation for allowing multiple recordings at the same time from different channels.

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