I'm extremely excited to announce the public beta launch of Playlists for Newschoolers.

The goal is to allow you to organize videos you find everywhere on the site, and give you one extremely easy way to view them from the comfort of your couch after a long day of skiing.

The interface is optimized for usage with a desktop media center, laptop or tablet - connected to a SmartTV through whatever method you choose to use. Version 2 will address better smartphone capabilities in the future.

The system is relatively simple, though admittedly it uses some of our legacy technology, which works fantastically well, but you need to understand a few things.

So please, if you want maximum enjoyment, spend two minutes and RTFM.

Instructions:

1. Anywhere you see an 'Add to Playlist' button, you will be able to quickly add media to currently existing playlists, and to create new ones that might fit the vibe you want to create.

Example of a playlist button

Example of adding a video to a playlist

2. In order to view Playlists, you need to switch yourself into NSTV Mode. The only way to do that currently is by selecting it from the top navigation item. Once inside of NSTV you need to understand one very critical thing -

Click the NSTV Guide button to open navigation.

Open the guide and your mind will follow

This was modeled after satellite Television, so without clicking this button imagine how limited your experience is if you didn't know to click that guide button on the remote. It is very critical, but easy once you understand its there.

3. Once inside of the NSTV Guide, you select 'My Playlists' from the radio buttons up top, and are then able to navigate through all the various items you've added. Note that nothing will display here until you add a few playlists and get some videos into them.

4. After you've started adding items, the last slightly tricky piece of navigation is to manage your playlists. This only becomes important if you want to change the order of videos, delete videos, delete playlists or rename your Playlists.

For this you must click 'MyMedia' in the top left hand orange account module when logged into newschoolers with your account.

Playlist management in MyMedia

Once you've started to use these things, getting the order of videos right will greatly enhance the experience of you and your buddies enjoying a pizza after a long day of skiing.

Note as well, one of the main technologies we wanted to work towards is the ability to add items from any source, whether hosted on Newschoolers or any other video platform currently supported by our system. For the time being, only Newschoolers Videos, Vimeo, YouTube and EpicTV videos are supported. We will look at adding more in the future.

This platform allows you to aggregate video from everywhere around the internet, and save it for future viewing when you're chilling out.

One click to open the guide, two clicks to play.

Thanks everyone, this has been a long labour of love, and we're very excited about its launch. Hope you enjoy, and please provide any feedback in the official discussion thread here -

http://www.newschoolers.com/forum/thread/795665/NSTV-Playlists-Beta-Feedback

-Mr.Bishop