>>hadisa+(OP)
I download videos and schedule them as channels with https://ersatztv.org/ to watch through Plex locally to get the same effect. I usually want some noise on the background and in that mode I can't be stopping frequently to choose the next video or mess with playlists.

>>yadaen+T5
There's a project called DizqueTV[0] that lets you set up "channels" of media to be streamed to a Plex server, which then lets you send that onto a TV.

It's not quite the same as straight TV channels. But it's pretty close!

[0]: https://github.com/vexorian/dizquetv

>>racefa+D4
Perhaps you like this nostalgic TV as well then: https://90s.myretrotvs.com. It also uses Youtube as a source and plays uninterrupted like an old-school channel.

>>yadaen+T5
I know of https://ersatztv.org which I used a while ago. With a Kodi frontend you can play on TV. Not sure it does podcasts and music though but I used it successfully for movies and TV shows.

>>hadisa+(OP)
This is cool and really well done, I'm kinda blown away. Would love to hear from the creator on what inspired them and how they designed and made it retro yet also minimal and so smooth. It's been awhile since I saw something so well polished!

Imagine if it also included to an index channel like the old Cable TV Guide programming schedule screen, with the blue background and time slot cells. Some versions of this even had a PIP (Picture-in-Picture) sort of capability.

E.g. https://i.redd.it/ygxao2bj0jz81.jpg

>>hadisa+(OP)
TIL alternative front-ends are a thing.[1]

I wonder what an alternative commercial culture might look like, to enable a monetized FRAND ecosystem of UI diversification and evolution.

[1] https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends

>>hadisa+(OP)
In a similar vein: https://radio.garden

>>hadisa+(OP)
https://www.youtube.com/tv used to be this, but they closed it down.

>>naikro+Oa
> have you forgotten how bad commercials were back then

Most weren't 'bad', just noise.

Sure there were some cringy ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts0XG6qDIco

But some were GREAT!

-- Remember 'CH-ch-ch Chia Pet!' ?? ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzY7qQFij_M

-- How's about local commercials, like in Philadelphia: "Krass Brothers - Store of the Stars!!" ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5R4rNxSWFw

>>hadisa+(OP)
Also works on localhost, run these commands:

`wget -r -np -k https://ytch.xyz` - downloads the website recursively

`wget https://ytch.xyz/list.json` - download the list of what every channel plays and will play (I'm not sure if this ever really changes. The real website adds ?t=<time since epoch in ms>)

Then for instance run `python3 -m http.server` and visit localhost:8000

:)

>>0cf861+fm
Netflix offered this in France back in 2020[0], but appeared to have removed it in 2022[1].

0: https://www.vulture.com/2020/11/netflix-linear-channels-dire... 1: https://www.numerama.com/pop-culture/1273686-netflix-direct-...

>>hadisa+(OP)
Just like https://80s.myretrotvs.com/

>>l72+ml
I'm really interested in this but I'm having trouble googling. What is a bump? Is it referring to this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(broadcasting)

>>hadisa+(OP)
Did something similar years ago for tech-related topics: https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/l3kel1/tech_tv/

Didn't get much love from the internet but it was featured on a popular site, along with other similar TVs: https://www.makeuseof.com/fun-streaming-sites-for-a-tv-like-...

Regarding the iframe, the YT controls. Someone has noted that it takes the TV experience away. I agree, but hiding the YT embedded UI is against TOS. Plus the UI already has sound control, subtitles, link to the video - features that others suggested here.

>>ChadNa+gw
Yup. Here's a playlist for adult swim ones. I just used yt-dlp and passed in the playlist URL and it will download all the bumps as separate files:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS8kchdwFPM&list=PL075thqiB6...

>>aroeme+O6
Also discussed on HN:

- >>36906022

- >>25973955

>>hadisa+(OP)
remings me of https://90s.myretrotvs.com/

>>univer+IF
Ersatz is also a perfectly cromulent English word [0]

[0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ersatz

>>r3vrse+1K
> At some level we're tacitly acknowledging that the vast ocean of content and complexity we've created is beyond what is desirable or even healthy to effectively evaluate.

I don't think there's enough useful and organized information to evaluate. There's no reason for everyone to be stuck in a vast ocean of content labeled with a handful of vague categories, except that that's just the way that someone decided to make it.

If I want to figure out if I want to try a game, I can go to steam and watch a trailer, look at the tags, and still have no idea if the game is worth playing. How do I make a decision?

If I just watch 3 minutes of a lets play, or a live stream, I can get an idea of what the game is like. This youtube channels thing is giving us exactly that experience.

Opening a youtube video directly, on the other hand, is an entire ordeal. It's slow to load, takes up a bunch of ram, puts the video in your history and messes up the minigame of trying to micromanage the algorithm so you don't end up with bad recommendations. It's hard to just simply watch a few seconds of a bunch of videos to get a vibe.

There's so much low hanging fruit in terms of content organization/discovery, it drives me insane that the experience is generally so bad, and getting worse.

Clay Shirky gave a talk on this years ago (also I think it's a blog post) called "It's not information overload, it's filter failure". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI

>>klauss+pV
Instagram tried this with IGTV. I actually liked the format too but they did shutdown due to lack of interest https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17484436/instagram-igtv-v...

>>klauss+pV
I used to love this chrome extension back in the day, unsure if it still works but same idea:

https://ottoplay.tv/

>>hadisa+(OP)
I've built a similar thing 3 years ago -> https://tv.istasyon.app Your comments here are golden and congrats to @hadisafa for his clean and simple execution.

My project was never used (except me and just my family) nor resurfaced on forums etc. but our choice of the same favicon touched me :)

My concern for such a project was that I found using the content that others created without attributing the og creator a bit sketchy.

P.S: It seems I leaked my app 10 months ago under another thread -> >>37905024

>>HL33ti+jg
I attempted a similar one 3 years ago actually (https://tv.istasyon.app). It was a weekend project and I left it as is since then.

>>lazyli+SO
Agreed, it is so clean and simple what @hadisafa did! In my version (https://tv.istasyon.app/) I made it more obvious instead of hiding title etc., I thought it would be more honest to the actual creator with a ref back.

>>sev+mV
I've also noticed that when I did my version of this app more than 3 years ago (https://tv.istasyon.app). Somehow the ads are limited or gone if you play videos as embedded. At some point, I thought YouTube had fixed that but seemingly not. The easiest way to do it is to find the YouTube video URL and replace that part `/watch?v=` with `/embed/`, then voila!

>>hadisa+(OP)
This is very cool! I've actually been working on something similar for some time as a feature on my website https://www.bingeclock.com. Can I ask if you've done something to minimize the number of banner ads Youtube pushes onto the screen? That has been a challenge for me and yours looks very clean! Awesome job!

>>hadisa+(OP)
This is amazing. It reminds me a little of betamaxmas[0]. I wish I could find a Christmas Channel! :)

It also occurs to me that there are a whole bunch of people here for whom this doesn't offer any nostalgia or memories, but is purely just a weird old affectation.

[0] https://betamaxmas.com/

>>jeffhu+Mr
Even better, host it on github pages - then you mirror the code too https://stevemk14ebr.github.io/YTCH/ . Author, how do generate the list

>>hadisa+(OP)
Very neat. I like the channel idea. There’s also https://random-video.com which shows one of 4.5 Billion YouTube videos randomly (or with a filter for view count, language, year).

Pretty fun to discover what’s out there, without being influenced by YouTubes algorithm. It’s based on the YT Archive project and some other sources, since YT sadly has no randomize function.

>>lovich+9j1
* https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv

* https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

* https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink

* https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock

* https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/

* https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

Did I miss any, chat?

>>hadisa+(OP)
I'm old enough to miss channel changing and really like this.

But even moar than that, boy do I love me some Youtube iframe API - https://developers.google.com/youtube/iframe_api_reference - it's probably the last but certainly coolest piece of FAANG Web 2.0-ness left

>>throwi+rv1
https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube Is great for chromecasts and other google tv boxes. Basically newpipe, but in a tv format.

>>bambax+Yy1
I'm curious here too, I only flipped through your channels for a minute, but found something interesting immediately.

I go to youtube and seem to run out of quality quickly. I even went as far as crawling the HN frontpage for videos - see hacker news TV - https://xiliary.com/bck/hn-tv.html

>>hadisa+(OP)
Source https://github.com/stevemk14ebr/YTCH

>>gerdes+tk1
"If you're deaf in one ear, your ability to hear and understand speech in particular goes down a lot, even if someone is talking on your good side."

This is personal experience, but it is the personal experience of my specialist telling me. [1] is some less anecdotal information on the subject. My use of the term "game over" was specifically for audible speech interpretation.

Lip reading is indeed something I'll probably need to get better at into my mid-30s and beyond as things continue to degrade. My hearing loss is low-frequency-first (Meniere's Disease [2]).

[1] https://www.cochlear.com/au/en/home/diagnosis-and-treatment/...

[2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menieres-dise...

>>hadisa+(OP)
I made the same thing a few years ago. Youtube embeds, react, socket.io and postgresql on a node.js server. I got the idea from poolside.fm's video player.

https://wem5637.medium.com/i-made-a-probably-illegal-youtube...

>>bambax+Yy1
Going through your comments I see that you answered this elsewhere, and said that videos are handpicked [0]. Congrats for the dedication this implies!

So now my question is, how do you imagine this will work going forward? Do you plan on selecting more videos indefinitely, or are you working on some search system?

[0] >>41248008

>>TechSq+Qf2
This is built using the official youtube api.

https://developers.google.com/youtube/iframe_api_reference

>>hadisa+(OP)
Really love this and couldn't help but sketch out a quick YTCH-Guide https://git.jonathanbobrow.com/YTCH-Guide/

Github repo is here: https://github.com/jbobrow/YTCH-Guide

>>whoisc+P5
https://git.jonathanbobrow.com/YTCH-Guide/

>>throwi+rv1
If you want to use sponsorblock with newpipe, use the tubular fork instead https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular

>>thwart+es1
Toonami Aftermath is very similar to this, but for late 90s/early 2000s.

https://www.toonamiaftermath.com/

>>antoni+LD1
In North America there was no channel 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_1_(North_American_TV)

Old school TV dials went from 2 to 13.