TV Time - Part V
I have downloaded the entire first season of the Twilight Zoe... S01Ep09 is playing on my TV for background noise.
Sure, I want things easy, who doesn't? I want the final product of anything I build to be as simple and painless as possible for the end user, even if that end user is just me. But to get easy someone has to go through the hard. In this case, for easy to use software a developer has to go through the hard part of finding all the errors, bugs and strange behaviors involved in an app.
A couple examples have been discussed in previous articles such as the fact that the media centers (like Plex, Kodi and Jellyfin) are hungry for metadata. The more data the better the experience. So I need a way t capture that in addition to just the video feed. Another example is worker profiles, the config settings used for the various streaming service providers to get the best feed and most information possible. Sure that stuff doesn't matter if I were simply watching the clip once, but I am building a long term library.
Think of services like Netflix, or even Youtube. It is not just a collection of play buttons. There is tons of metadata about each and every file they host. That is what makes the library experience rather than a webpage experience. So it is vital that I build this as complex as possible at the skeletal level. Once the bones are in place it will start to shape up and will getter better with some cosmetics, but at the start I need to learn and understand all the caveats of each system or file source.
One feature I want to add is a Browser Extension for Chrome. Then while I go to the official Tubi website, I could simply click on a movie I want to save. Ideally it will automatically send that movie to the recording job queue list to start recording, re-encoding, moving the file to the Jellyfin library folder when finished and automatically refreshing Jellyfin server to offer the new clip in the library. I want to do this all by simply click a single button on a regular webpage using a regular browser. Simple right? But to get there the DNA of the app must be super complex.
As an update the app is working good so far, I have downloaded the entire first season of the Twilight Zone, 36 episodes and they all went directly into my Jellyfin server without a hitch. In fact, as I type this very article S01Ep09 is playing on my TV for background noise.