Features
Channel and group options
A long press on a channel is the door to almost every way of changing what the live list shows. The menu that opens mixes three different jobs — parental locks, housekeeping, and per-channel overrides — and knowing which is which is most of what this page is for.
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The live picture is not the only thing a long press can act on. On a television, holding OK on a channel row or on a programme cell opens the channel menu; on a phone or tablet, the same menu opens with a long press. From there you can lock a channel, take it out of the list, change how it is named and decoded, or work through the whole listing a row at a time.
Three of those jobs look similar in a menu and behave nothing alike. Blocking is parental control. Hiding is housekeeping. The manage screens are bulk versions of the same two flags, plus favourites. The rest of this page takes them in that order.
Opening the menu
On a television, move to the channel row in the list or to a programme cell in the guide and hold OK. In the guide, the cell has to be on now or still to come; a finished programme has no channel action to offer, so a held OK there does nothing. Holding OK in the channel column opens the menu about the channel rather than about a programme.
On a phone or tablet, long-press the row or the cell instead. A short tap still plays the channel, or — inside one of the manage screens — flips that row's mark. The menu is the same one on both builds; only the gesture that opens it differs.
The rows you see depend on the channel and on the state it is already in. A channel that is not blocked offers Block channel; one that is offers Unblock channel. The same is true of a group. Rows that need a programme, such as recording or a reminder, are present only where the press landed on a usable slot.
Blocking and hiding are not the same thing
This is the distinction worth reading twice, because the two rows sit next to each other in the menu and the words sound interchangeable.
| Block | Hide |
|---|---|
| Parental control | Housekeeping |
| Asks for the PIN every time it is changed or opened | Never asks for a PIN |
| The channel stays in the listing with a padlock | The channel leaves every live listing |
| Undone from Manage blocking or the same menu row | Undone from Manage visibility |
| Does not change any channel's position | Changes the position of every channel behind it |
A blocked channel is visible on purpose: the lock is a statement about who may watch, so the row stays where the user can see what is locked. A hidden channel is not a statement about anyone; it is a channel the user does not want in the way, so it leaves the list entirely.
Blocking one channel
Choose Block channel and the app asks for the parental PIN. If no PIN has ever been set, this is where you create one; a block without a PIN would be a lock with no key. The PIN is asked again when the channel is opened, and again when it is unblocked — an unblock that needed no proof would make the block decorative.
Once the write lands, the row gains a padlock and a toast says Channel blocked. Opening the channel from any route now asks for the PIN. The block belongs to one channel of one playlist, so two playlists that both carry the same channel id keep separate answers.
Blocking is enforced at playback rather than by filtering the list. That is why the channel is still searchable, still listed, and still counted in the guide. It is also why a channel blocked here can be found on a phone and on a television with the same result: the flag is in the app's database, not in a screen's memory.
If a blocked channel plays
Check whether parental controls are still on. A blocked channel with no active PIN is allowed to play, because the only way to reach that state is to disarm the feature deliberately. Re-enable parental controls and the block applies again.
Hiding one channel
Hide channel takes a channel out of every live listing. There is no PIN and no lock: hiding changes what the list contains, not what anyone is allowed to watch. If the channel is playing at the time, playback carries on; the hide is about the list, not the stream.
The first time you hide a channel, a card asks you to confirm and tells you where it comes back from. Don't show again suppresses the card on later hides, never the action itself. The card exists because a hidden channel leaves no row to long-press, so the route back is not somewhere a user would stumble across.
The channel is still in the playlist and still in the app's database. To bring it back, open Manage visibility from the same menu. That screen reads the listing with the hidden channels included, so it can show a channel that no ordinary listing would.
Manage favorites, blocking and visibility
The three manage rows open the same screen in three different modes. The guide stays exactly where it is; a mark column appears on every row, and the whole row — programme cells included — becomes one target that flips that channel's flag. A key box in the corner names what each key does.
| Mode | Mark | What a press changes |
|---|---|---|
| Manage favorites | Star | Whether the channel is in Favorites |
| Manage blocking | Padlock | Whether the channel is blocked by parental control |
| Manage visibility | Eye | Whether the channel is listed at all |
The keys are the same in all three modes: OK changes the focused row, Left resets every channel in the listing and Right sets every one. On a touch screen, tap the row to flip it. Back leaves the mode and returns the guide to browsing.
Manage blocking asks for the PIN once on the way in, then nothing inside it asks again; the mode itself is the proof, and leaving it ends that proof. Manage favorites asks before Left or Right, because on All Channels those two keys cover every favourite you have rather than only the rows on screen. Manage visibility is the one mode that changes the listing: a channel hidden inside it drops out of the ordinary listing when the mode is left, so the app reads the list again on the way out.
Blocking or hiding a group
The group rows use the same two ideas at the scale of a group. Block group sets one flag on the group, and every channel in it is treated as blocked when it is opened. It is deliberately one flag rather than a write per channel: a playlist refresh replaces a group's channels wholesale, and a per-channel block would leave every new channel unblocked. The group's row in the navigation carries a padlock while the block is on.
Hide group removes the group from the playlist navigation. It writes the same visibility setting that Manage groups edits, so the group appears hidden there and comes back from there. The confirmation says so, because the row that reaches Group options is the row that has just left. Because the group can no longer be reached from the guide, hiding it asks for the PIN first, even on a device that has not used parental controls yet.
Channel options
Channel options opens a second panel of per-channel overrides. Nothing is written until you change something, so a channel you never touch occupies no extra space in the database.
| Row | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Channel name | A display name for this channel. The playlist's own name is untouched. |
| Restore channel name | Drops the rename and returns to the playlist's name. |
| Channel names editor | Prefixes and suffixes removed from every channel name, such as US:, UK: or | HD. One global rule, not a per-channel edit. |
| Audio decoder and Video decoder | Hardware or software for this channel, or Default to follow Settings, Playback. |
| External player | Whether this channel opens in another app, or Default to follow the playback setting. Your build may show this row as locked. |
| EPG time offset, h:min | Moves this channel's guide data up to 12 hours either way, in five-minute steps. |
| Block channel and Hide channel | The same two flags as the menu, reachable from the panel. |
The channel offset wins over the group offset. That ordering is what makes it useful: correct the group once, then correct the one channel whose source is still wrong. The offset is not a timezone setting; it moves the guide's programmes, not the device's clock.
Group options
Group options is the equivalent panel for one group. A group is identified by its playlist and its own group id or name, so two providers that both ship a NEWS group are still two different groups.
| Row | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Group name | A display rename. The name the playlist declared stays the group's identity. |
| Restore group name | Drops the rename and returns to the playlist's label. |
| Channels sorting | Default, By order in playlist, By name, By date added, By watch time or Manual. Default means playlist order. |
| Show favorite channels first | Puts favourites at the top of the listing, whichever order is chosen. |
| Group channels by playlists in "All playlists" category | Keeps each playlist's channels together when several playlists are shown as one list. |
| Show favorites only | Narrows the group to its favourites. |
| External player | The same override as the channel row, applied to the whole group. |
| EPG time offset, h:min | A group-wide offset that channels inherit unless they have their own. |
| Block group and Hide group | The same two group flags as the menu. |
| Manage groups | Opens the playlist's own group manager, where visibility and group order also live. |
Manual is the one sort that needs a second step: Reorder channels becomes available only after the group is set to Manual, because any other order would immediately sort over the arrangement. Reordering is offered only while the guide is showing that group, since a position means nothing in All Channels or Favorites.
Reset watch time and Reset positions sit under Channels sorting. In this build they report that they ran but do not yet rewrite the stored history, because nothing in this version records watch time. They are harmless to press and worth knowing about before you conclude that they fixed an order.
Where these settings live, and what they do not do
Every override on this page is stored in the app's own database, keyed by the playlist and the channel or group it belongs to. That has three consequences worth knowing:
- A playlist refresh does not clear the settings. The imported channels are replaced; the overrides are not.
- Deleting a playlist deletes the settings that belonged to it, including its favourites and its manual channel order.
- Backup and restore carries the settings to another device, because they are part of the app's data rather than the playlist file.
None of this edits the playlist itself. A rename changes what the app prints, not what your provider sent, and hiding a channel does not ask the provider to stop listing it. If the channel should be gone for everyone, that is a change at the provider.
The features also do not filter content. A block is a lock with a PIN, and a hide is a list preference; neither knows what a stream contains. Restricting what can be watched is a matter of restricting what the playlist contains.
Phone and television
The menu, the manage modes and both options panels are shared by the mobile and television builds. What differs is the input. On a television the guide is driven by the D-pad, so the manage screens spend OK, Left and Right and show a key box naming them. On a phone the same actions are taps, the long press opens the menu, and the key box has nothing to teach. The fullscreen guide on a television has its own copy of the guide, but it edits the same stored flags, so a change made there is the change the browse guide shows.
If you are looking for the parental PIN itself rather than the channel-level block, parental controls covers what the PIN locks and what it deliberately does not. The TV guide page explains the grid these menus open over, and favourites and My List covers the store behind the star.