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skampsta

Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:47 pm

Joined: 25 Aug 2005 Posts: 24

Hey all... was browsing the web today and came accross this http://www.locatetv.com/index.php

Only works for the UK and US, but is pretty cool for finding stuff!

Lottie B

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:29 am

Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Posts: 8

Hi skampsta, I'm from the LocateTV blog and I'm glad you like the site - if anyone's interested in an overview of why it's different to the other sites out there, there's a good post here: http://www.locatetvblog.com/?p=77.

I'd love to hear what other forum members think of it.

I was also wondering about the embeds - is there any way you can add them to posts here? I thought it would be a brilliant way of linking people to when and where the content is next on if you were talking about, say, Heroes or another show or actor.

(but then I would think that Wink

)

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R2-D2

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:41 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 11705

Lottie B wrote:

I was also wondering about the embeds - is there any way you can add them to posts here?

Seems straightforward:

The only issue is that "Sci-Fi" won't be a channel that's applicable to many people here, since we're mainly using the UK's Freeview channel selection. The next episode will actually be on BBC2 tomorrow.

Lottie B

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:45 am

Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Posts: 8

Thanks - I think my HTML options are turned off - how can I turn them on?

Re: the Sci Fi channel, you can set your region for the LocateTV site and the embeds. Just go to the top right hand side of the page and select your region and channels. Then it should show the information relevant to you. I'm in the UK, so with my settings it brings me the BBC2 result.

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R2-D2

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:48 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 11705

Lottie B wrote:

Thanks - I think my HTML options are turned off - how can I turn them on?

You can't turn them on, but you can use the BBCodes instead -- it's just an "Img" where the text part of a "URL" would be.

Code:

[url=LINKURL][img]IMGURL[/img][/url]

This may be common to a lot of forums, so it's possibly something that could be generated as another type of cut-and-paste option from your site.

Last edited by R2-D2 on Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:51 am; edited 2 times in total

Lottie B

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:50 am

Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Posts: 8

Great thanks R2-D2. Good advice.

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R2-D2

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:51 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 11705

Quote:

Re: the Sci Fi channel, you can set your region for the LocateTV site and the embeds.

It may be nice to be able to select the channel selection in the URL so that a poster has the option to make a more relevant link for all users, including those new to the site.

matt

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 9:10 am

Forum moderator Joined: 30 Mar 2005 Posts: 2231 Location: St Ives, Cornwall Transmitter: Redruth

When set to UK, I also tried to search for Medium (expecting BBC2's Sunday showing of the current series to be the top hit) but am getting "Sci-Fi" channel results, which are old/repeats.

When setting manually to UK/Freeview it worked.

I guess because I saw the flag - which only confirms region, rather than region and TV type - I would have never thought clicking on it would reveal more options. This needs to be more obvious to the user.

matt

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Lottie B

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 9:58 am

Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Posts: 8

Thanks Matt, I'll flag this up with the team and also maybe highlight it in a blog post. I do think the channel selection needs to be more obvious as it's an important bit of personalisation.

R2-D2, yep if you want to speifically show one channel or showing it might be good to be able to 'fix' the content displayed. However if the viewer is already a LocateTV user the embed will automatically generate to be relevant to them, so I think the embeds are dsigned to remain open to this.

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R2-D2

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:13 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 11705

Lottie B wrote:

However if the viewer is already a LocateTV user the embed will automatically generate to be relevant to them, so I think the embeds are dsigned to remain open to this.

I can see that the .gif changes based on the user's cookies -- it would be nice to be able to choose the default for when there's no cookie set (I'd choose a Freeview default for posting here, but a TopUpTV forums member might choose the TopUp list, etc.).

matt

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:17 am

Forum moderator Joined: 30 Mar 2005 Posts: 2231 Location: St Ives, Cornwall Transmitter: Redruth

That's also painfully cryptic, and the behaviour would vary from one machine to another without explicit statement as to why. not very user friendly.

for example, now that i have configured my UK/freeview cookie, i see BBC2 Heroes in the embed above, but a user would still see Sci-Fi if he has not set his cookie - conflicting information!

edit: i echo what R2 says

matt

R2-D2

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:22 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 11705

I must say, it's jolly clever and very useful! It might make a "Heads Up" thread very easy to do indeed.

gomezz

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 11:37 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 18 Nov 2005 Posts: 3053 Location: Buckingham

Anyone know of a similar site for sports (especially motorsports) coverage?

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R2-D2

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:52 pm

Frequent contributor Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 11705

Quote:

I can see that the .gif changes based on the user's cookies -- it would be nice to be able to choose the default for when there's no cookie set

And it might be nice if the .gif showed which channel selection is being used, so show something like "UK Region / All Ch" or "UK Region / Freeview".

Lottie B

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 2:21 pm

Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Posts: 8

R2-D2 wrote:

And it might be nice if the .gif showed which channel selection is being used, so show something like "UK Region / All Ch" or "UK Region / Freeview".

I hear you! We went through a collaborative design process for the embed with other bloggers on the net, as you can see on our blog: http://www.locatetvblog.com/?p=57 Including the channel was one option but most people preferred to keep it simpler rather than include the additional information. We may yet still release a more customisable embed but we had to kick off with getting a version out which complied with the concensus opinion!

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