Jeff Sorry to have not been clear -- I don't always know the correct terms to use. Here's an update, along with a request. Your suggestion was better!
Background: I have one physical device [Panasonic TC-P42G25] Until now I had had two "logical devices" aka Recipes, both using the same physical device. [one for webTV and one for OTA TV]
Update: You suggested combining and putting both the webTV and the OTA-TV onto the same recipe. Did it. Here's what I found. Results are better. Just have a couple of small requests for the device settings. See below.
Results: With both webTV and OTA TV in the same Recipe:
+ no longer have the issues with the wrong NOW PLAYING appearing, along with the wrong, or no, shortcuts appearing, etc
- volume is no longer equalized - now, when switching between the two, webTV is much louder than OTA TV. (Panasonic told me there is no way to adjust it on the TV itself.) Advantage of using separate recipes for OTA TV and webTV had been that NEEO would balance the loudness. Not a huge deal though.
- using separate recipes, the recipe had been able to open the webTV viewing pane automatically, which isn't possible with only a single, combined recipe. Not a huge deal though.
- 'Smart Timer' had been included in the two, separate recipes, but didn't work/ wasn't useful in any case -- so no big deal.
+ Now that Shortcuts are customizable and able to be grouped together, the single recipe is fine, with shortcuts grouped logically onto separate pages, and able to avoid clutter.
Request: the following would be very helpful and the important ones seem easy for Andy to do.
Andy please adjust the physical buttons on the device [Panasonic TC-P42G25] as follows:
1- make the MENU button trigger 'VieraCast' (the current setting triggers an arcane TV menu which is very seldom needed, and so is much less appropriate for the physical button)
2- add to the buttons CHANNEL UP / CHANNEL DOWN the preceeding command, "EXIT" . By making it run "Exit > Channel Up" (rather than the current "Channel Up") will mean that the buttons will be usable even when in webTV mode. The User will thus be able to click the button and it will dependably jump to a channel. (Currently, when in webTV mode, those buttons do nothing.)
This may not be as easy, but would be an improvement if doable. For the shortcuts:
3- fix the Favorite Channels listings. Like in #2 above, these work only if you are in OTA TV mode, but do nothing if you are in webTV mode. I suspect the easy fix is to precede them with "Exit", so that you first exit webTV mode and then the favorites shortcuts would presumably work consistently.
This is a general suggestion. I know you aren't doing more firmware, so maybe this isn't possible. But it would be helpful if the shortcuts had visible labels and also if they could span the screen of the Remote:
4- allow visible labels to be added. As is, you can "rename" a SPACER and the name appears on the app only, not on the Remote. Better would be to offer the option to rename a SPACER such that the name/text appeared on the Remote too. (Perhaps distinguish the two versions by calling them SPACERS and LABELS - ie for "text appears only on the app only" versus "text also appears on the Remote") Further, since some labels would be longer and would need to span the screen on the Remote, maybe add a SPACER WIDGET that was three-single-spacers wide. Then the user could rename it with longer labels, e.g. AUDIO SHORTCUTS or WebTV SHORTCUTS etc. to make headers that appear on the Remote, with the aim being to make the shortcuts more user friendly e.g. for a first time user.
Thanks!!