Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels

Channel 1: Science and Technology Channel 2: Travel and Events Channel 3: Food Channel 4: Architecture Channel 5: Film and Animation Channel 6: Documentaries Channel 7: Comedy Channel 8: Music Channel 9: Autos and Vehicles Channel 10: News and Politics Channel 11: UFC Channel 12: Podcasts/Interviews/Talk Shows

• ollybee · 784 days ago

  This is what I was looking for, where did you see that info?

  • anarcat · 783 days ago

    I think they built it. :)

  • hadisafa · 783 days ago

    I made the thing :)

    • harshaxnim · 783 days ago

      May be you could put it up in the site too

    • edm0nd · 783 days ago

      This is such a neat project that you made!

• mxfh · 783 days ago

  Local 58?

• ks2048 · 783 days ago

  This is a good idea for this app, but maybe the least realistic part of the old TV experience. You'd have maybe 3 "premium" channels of a mix of tv shows, news, talk shows, sports. Maybe a dedicated sports channel and dedicated news channel. A channel more biased towards educational shows. A channel or two of weird low-budget shows (local access). A few channels that don't come in well (static and distortion). And add some off-air "colorbars" sometimes. And a channel or two in a foreign language. And then force the user to get off the couch and walk to the monitor to turn a knob when you want to change channel...

  • hathawsh · 783 days ago

    It's more like SiriusXM than broadcast TV, and I would say the SiriusXM model is a lot nicer. I like being able to choose a topic.

• pants2 · 783 days ago

  Would love a few more sports channels, a local news channel based on your location, and maybe a video gaming channel.

• hathawsh · 783 days ago

  This project is very cool. Amazing execution. Other channels I would suggest: - Cooking - Family movies (from the public domain?) - Baseball

  • pineaux · 783 days ago

    Also diy and maker channel. Just add voidlabs, mitxela, some other makers Colin furze, adam savage and some woodworking channels, like four eyes furniture. Some metalworkers like inheritance machining. Just general creative engineering stuff but not documentaries.

• kajecounterhack · 783 days ago

  Thinking back to childhood it was all History Channel, PBS, and Cartoon Network / Nick. Would be great to see analogues to some of those :)

• dbingham · 783 days ago

  It'd be really awesome to have a link to the channel and video that is playing in case I want to find it later. This is a wonderful discovery tool, but I'd really love to be able to save the content I discover!

  • denysvitali · 783 days ago

    On the bottom right there is an ID that looks like a YouTube video ID

• Apofis · 783 days ago

  Build that into the TV Guide!

• airstrike · 783 days ago

  I need this as a Roku app ASAP ;-;

• its-summertime · 783 days ago

  One channel I always appreciate wherever I go, is the low budget non-profit hobby regional channel. Would love to see people just working on projects they have around the house, not taking things too serious.

• thruway516 · 783 days ago

  I just wasted the last 2hrs watching instead of working and I have not even made it past Channel 8. Thank God there're only 12 channels, I was afraid they would find me dead from starvation at my workstation in about a week's time.

• bambax · 783 days ago

  Great. Can you elaborate a little on how channels are populated? Do you search YT for tags and order by most recent videos first? Or do you do some manual curation?

  • freddref · 783 days ago

    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

  • bambax · 783 days ago

    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] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41248008

• tempestn · 783 days ago

  Channels really should go from 2-13 instead, but this is awesome.

  • GeorgeDewar · 783 days ago

    Why is this? In my country they start at 1.

  • antoniojtorres · 783 days ago

    What’s wrong with channel 1?

    • tempestn · 776 days ago

      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.

This is great, really smooth

• hadisafa · 784 days ago

  Thank you!

Love how you captured the feel of channel surfing. Seems like most videos/channels I surfed through were at the midpoint or near completed in their play through (usual if you just hop on the tube at the middle of the hour).

The best part of this is the channel doesn't pause when you flip away from it. It is always "running" and if you flip away you will miss it. That builds in a FOMO trade-off which causes user to automatically/subconciously decide on channel they most want to watch, because they can't watch everything.

• aman2k4 · 784 days ago

  yeah when i noticed this, it blew my mind.

• hadisafa · 784 days ago

  channels are synced so everyone is watching the same exact content at the same time, just like TV.

• A_Duck · 784 days ago

  Yep this works really nicely, and psychologically it's somehow way more relaxing than having to curate what you watch I predict this appears as real youtube feature soon. Since it will also allow them to do a Spotify-style payola approach to scheduling.

  • digging · 783 days ago

    > I predict this appears as real youtube feature soon. I doubt it would. The modern style of binging on-demand streaming content seems to be too effective at capturing attention. Remember that lots of people get notifications on their phone the instant a new video comes out for a subscribed channel, especially kids and teens who haven't developed resistance to these business models. YT would be unlikely to spend any effort implementing an alternate mode that doesn't capture attention as effectively; the old model of live channels is likely a niche preference. If somehow this did prove to be more effective at capturing attention, I could see it being implemented, but that would surprise me.

  • Group_B · 783 days ago

    well they already have youtube shorts, which is kinda similar.

    • bobbob1921 · 783 days ago

      I hate that if anytime I upload a short video it forces the video to YouTube shorts. Especially since I’m not making content for the public - it’s more a demo video or something to specifically send to a few people. As with so many services nowadays, I like the ability to use YouTube shorts when I want, but I hate that it’s forced upon us with no reasonable and consistent method to not use shorts at the users discretion.

      • rd · 783 days ago

        Uploading horizontally or >1m should fix this? Most things or demos I send are horizontal, but I agree, the automatic shorts of vertical is annoying

    • crucialfelix · 783 days ago

      But that triggers an immediate tiktok dopamine chase. I immediately want to judge what I'm seeing and swipe to move on. I start wondering about the ML training on my every move and hesitation. It's restless

  • aa-jv · 783 days ago

    Along the same lines, I have a near-terabyte of videos I have downloaded from Youtube, of my own vast and multivariate interests, and having it on random, with a simple pause/next/prev-style interface, is also a compelling viewer-experience equillibrium akin to the sets of yore .. (cue Buggles..)

  • 0cf8612b2e1e · 783 days ago

    I have long wanted Netflix to offer this feature. Just give me a random episode of a low stakes sitcom. Seinfeld, SVU, whatever. My other wishlist item was that Netflix would offer a “shuffle” this series option. For standalone episodic shows, ordering does not matter, and it is a bunch of overhead to pick something.

    • saintfire · 783 days ago

      I didn't realize how much I would appreciate shuffle until i started using jellyfin. I use it all the time for shows that have self-contained episodes (e.g. Futurama).

    • dustincoates · 783 days ago

      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-...

  • dotnet00 · 783 days ago

    >I predict this appears as real youtube feature soon I highly doubt it. They're going to wait for competitors to implement it and have it for several years before they bother to poorly copy the idea.

  • teska · 783 days ago

    They experimented with it for a bit last year. I think Linus talked about it on the WAN show, and for a while LTT had it enabled on their channel. It was essentially a 24/7 livestream which played from their back catalogue, with the ability to add "promo" segments in between videos, which they used for products on their merch store. Seemed to dissapear around the same time the whole monoblock scandal and production shutdown happened last year, so I'm not sure if the YouTube experiment also concluded or if they turned it off during the shutdown.

• angry_moose · 783 days ago

  I added ErsatzTV to my Plex setup about a month ago and we honestly love it so much. I've got 2 sitcom channels, British panel shows, Taskmaster, all Star Trek all the time, British sitcoms, cartoons, and a few others. Its really nice to just sit down and watch "whatever is on" (even though I could switch over to the main library and watch any episode I want). Sometimes I just want a 0-effort/0-decision background noise while I work on something else or browse on my phone.

  • hadrien01 · 783 days ago

    I've done the same thing with dizqueTv for my grandmother. On her Android TV, I was able to integrate the IPTV channels on the same channels list, so she can simply use the remote to navigate between the digital channels and the IPTV channels (30 for Hercule Poirot, 31 for classic B&W movies, etc.)

    • archon810 · 783 days ago

      dizqueTv, ErsatzTV... these are the "Chinese company names on Amazon" of TV app names.

      • universa1 · 783 days ago

        No clue about dizqueTV, but ErsatzTV is German for tv replacement/substitute :-) so it has a little more meaning then the Chinese Amazon names ;-)

        • vijayr02 · 783 days ago

          Ersatz is also a perfectly cromulent English word [0] [0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ersatz

  • l72 · 783 days ago

    I've also been using ErsatzTV with my jellyfin setup. It can take a while to setup channels how you want them, but I love my sci-fi channel which is going through all the Star Treks, Stargates, and Twilight Zones. It is so much easier to flip it on to my Sci-fi Channel, animation channel, movie channel, or James Bond marathon channel then to decide what to watch. And since I've seen all this content, it is often kinda nice to start in the middle of an episode. I also found a ton of old Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim bumps that I use as some filler content if I want episodes to start on the hour. I've been thinking a lot about setting up some kids channels with specific hours (like channel comes on at 7am, goes off during part of the day, comes back on in the afternoon, and goes offline at bedtime) for my siblings kids, as I think letting them just browser youtube kids is terrible.

    • lackstein · 783 days ago

      > I also found a ton of old Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim bumps Where were you able to find these? Recreating one of these channels has been a side project I’ve wanted to do for ages.

      • l72 · 783 days ago

        I think it was mostly youtube and retrojunk.com Try searching for "$channel bump" Personally, I think Adult Swim had the best bumps, usually just some nice house music with a nice animation and some funny quotes.

        • ChadNauseam · 783 days ago

          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)

          • l72 · 783 days ago

            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...

      • fmj · 783 days ago

        There's a torrent going around the usual places that has every [as] bump from the launch of the network to whenever they last updated the archive (a few months ago in my case.)

    • vundercind · 783 days ago

      Do you know if that can operate with no transcoding? I’ve designed my media set-up around Jellyfin on a weak server that can’t handle transcoding, and very-capable clients that don’t need it. This lets me avoid like half the bugs on the Jellyfin bug tracker and all the instability an Nvidia or AMD video card would introduce to the server itself. I’m very interested in this, but can’t use it if it must transcode.

      • l72 · 783 days ago

        No, it must transcode to work correctly, which can be a problem for me too (although I just have an intel card and use vaapi). I believe there is a container you can use where it doesn't transcode, but it trips up every player I have tried, as they do not like having different resolutions/codecs suddenly swap.

        • vundercind · 783 days ago

          Damn, kinda what I figured. Thanks. Maybe some day I’ll upgrade/downgrade to a less perfectly-stable server that is transcoding capable.

      • Saris · 783 days ago

        What CPU? Intel Quicksync is very capable (even more so than most AMD/Nvidia cards) and any 7th gen or newer Intel CPU with integrated graphics has it and has good codec support.

        • vundercind · 783 days ago

          It’s an old used Lenovo workstation. It has a some kind of quad-core Intel processor but can’t usefully transcode from h.265 at all (no hardware support, I assume) and is bad at most other codecs at resolutions above 720p or so. Even transcoding within its limits seems to tax it, so I doubt it could maintain two transcodes at once in any case—we sometimes have three streams going, or one or two plus someone playing on its Minecraft server, and it can keep up with all that just fine, but transcoding’s out. I’ve even seen it turn into a slideshow remuxing original video with transcoded audio. It’s not very capable.

          • Saris · 783 days ago

            Ahh probably a Xeon CPU, they don't have an iGPU.

      • einsteinx2 · 781 days ago

        I was checking out their docs and ran across this option for channels: > HLS Direct does not transcode content and can perform better on low power systems, but does not support watermarks and some clients will have issues at program boundaries Sounds like that might be what you’re looking for?

    • Cyph0n · 783 days ago

      ErsatzTV is amazing. It’s actually excellent for settings up kids channels. You can configure start and end times and select a pool of content/shows/movies to pick from. One nifty feature is that you can configure “filler” content to inject randomly between episodes. I used this to add short educational clips from a kids TV channel in the Middle East.

  • enobrev · 783 days ago

    I've been using Quasi TV (android app) to try out the concept. I remember having something similar back in the boxee / xbmc days. I especially liked that it "just worked" without having to set anything up besides pointing it at my plex. I'm not afraid of hosting something, but I didn't want to go through the trouble if it turned out I wasn't going to use it. I quite like it. Unfortunately, the app's been a bit buggy - not always picking up the stream at the "current time" and sometimes navigation gets wonky. But it was a good test run and that, along with your post, has convinced me to give Ersatz (or something like it) a try.

• notfed · 783 days ago

  Another observation: with this setup, you essentially randomly jump into the middle of videos, skipping what is usually the most grating part of the show: the intro. In the intro to most shows/videos, there's annoying jingles, silly animations, a redundant summary of what's about to happen in an already short segment, or just useless chatter "hey guys! it's your boy, _. welcome to my channel, remember to smash that like button, we have a great show today". Because of all this intro bloat, I tend to jump a few minutes into most YouTube videos by default.

  • tantalor · 783 days ago

    The only thing worse than the intro is the 2nd intro. Just get to the GD content please.

  • ryandrake · 783 days ago

    This was the first thing I noticed, too. It's amazing how much better it is, simply leaving off all that "what's up guys" introduction.

  • fmj · 783 days ago

    It's no longer functional, but in the past if you appended the parameter t=wadsworth to a YouTube URL it would skip the first 30% of a video.

• recursive · 783 days ago

  I don't see how this is a good thing. It's a totally artificial constraint. It's already impossible to watch everything on youtube. I don't want software I use to instill fear as a design goal, detached from any of the outcomes of user actions.

  • squeaky-clean · 783 days ago

    Because like TV, when you're watching something, you know other people are watching exactly the same thing. And that's pretty cool.

• TheKarateKid · 783 days ago

  The FOMO would only work if the content was exclusively available during that livestream, and not re-posted later. That being said, I think the last thing society needs is to make these platforms more addictive. The algorithms already do a good enough job of keeping us glued.

• imiric · 783 days ago

  If only we had a TiVo...

• slillibri · 783 days ago

  > It is always "running" and if you flip away you will miss it. Throw in some ads and it will be everything I hate about broadcast TV.

• langcss · 783 days ago

  That is what it was like in the 90s! Although you could use your VCR to record the other channel.

• pests · 783 days ago

  I use Pluto for this. Quick download, no sign up required, and tons of topic-specific channels to switch to. I put it on all my devices and don't even worry about it. Google TV also has a "Live" tab that collects all the live channels across all your apps and puts it into a TV guide grid. I've installed Fubo and Tubi and others just to build out my TV guide. Works pretty well.

  • jondwillis · 783 days ago

    I was part of Pluto's launch team. We used to literally just be 95% YouTube embeds that were forced into a live-like experience client-side. Getting simple YouTube or even HTML5 video API calls to work reliably in 2013 was quite a feat. Loads of people still had Flash, mobile browsers were a crapshoot, and I caused many many thousands of early Amazon Fire TV hard restarts due to crashing their (kernel?) video decoder somehow. Fun times.

• isk517 · 783 days ago

  Each channel displays the video code for the YouTube video its playing so if you see something interesting you can easily access the video. I really like this as a curated discovery tool, there is something up flipping thru channels and catching something at just the right time to peak your interest that viewing a clickbaity thumbnail and video title just can't replicate.

• xcdzvyn · 783 days ago

  Similarly I find I sometimes enjoy listening to the radio more than Spotify because I don't feel forced to min/max my enjoyment. I have to listen to whatever is on.

Haha this is really well engineered, it feels honestly like TV and not a cheap iframe embed

I really like how there are only 12 channels, and you don't get to choose what's on. The only way to make it even more like tv from a few decades ago would be if half of the channels were static.

• loloquwowndueo · 784 days ago

  Given how full of crap content and intrusive ads YouTube is these days, I actually kinda miss tv from back then. About the only benefits at this point are time shifting and pause/rewind.

  • tracerbulletx · 784 days ago

    I mean you realize there were many more ads per hour on TV though right? What makes the youtube ones more intrusive?

  • add-sub-mul-div · 784 days ago

    With real TV and a DVR you haven't had to see a single commercial in the last 25 years if you didn't want to. We don't talk enough about how streaming has forced us into a much worse experience with ads that are unskippable, privacy-invading, and now I hear they're being dynamically inserted into programming mid-scene.

    • randomdata · 783 days ago

      We talked about it plenty back when the legacy media companies were refusing to move online. "The ad spend isn't nearly a high online." they would say, with "Yeah, but people actually watch the ads online. Give it a few minutes." in response. At some points topics become stale.

  • arethuza · 784 days ago

    I've long since concluded that YouTube's ads are merely a way of persuading me to upgrade to Premium. Given that they actually seem to be pretty good at recommending content to me I am mystified by why the ad selection is so awful.

    • randomdata · 783 days ago

      1. If the ad selection is too good, people will fall into the uncanny valley. They have to make it terrible enough to maintain user confidence. 2, They may not have anything better to select from. Quickly start/stop the ads a few times and it will usually (but not always) give up on showing any ad at all, which suggests to me that the available ad pool at that point in time is being exhausted.

    • UncleOxidant · 783 days ago

      I got a f'n Trump asking for money ad on YT last night. The algorithm should know better than to serve me something like that.

      • gwervc · 783 days ago

        If the ads are indeed just a way to push for subscriptions and you are upset or annoyed by a particular add, the algorithm is perfectly doing its job.

      • yesco · 783 days ago

        But doesn't it make sense to pay for targeted political ads towards people opposed to you? The algorithm allows advertisers to do targeted advertising, and you were targeted, the subtle implication that targeted advertising would only show you "what you want to see" was intentional and misleading to get people on board with their attention being sold to the highest bidder.

      • randomdata · 783 days ago

        Because you are already a donor?

    • aAaaArrRgH · 783 days ago

      The ad placements aren't tailored to you. They're tailored to the advertiser's wishes.

  • dbspin · 783 days ago

    It's still trivial to block these though with a combination of uBlock Origin and Sponsorblock. Despite Google's ongoing efforts to make this impossible.

  • naikrovek · 783 days ago

    have you forgotten how bad commercials were back then, and still are? I haven't watched TV in years and years and years, because of the ads. I have a YouTube premium subscription and I am not ever going to watch broadcast or cable tv again. ever.

    • Baljhin · 783 days ago

      > 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

      • naikrovek · 783 days ago

        By “bad” I mean “commercials exist and are shown on TV”. I don’t ever want to see a commercial. I have never been influenced by one. I never will be unless they change dramatically. There is no sales pitch that does not immediately make me dislike the salesperson. “You don’t deserve your money as much as I do.” That’s all a commercial is. “We want your money so here is some quick audio and maybe video designed to convince you to give your money to us, in exchange for something less valuable than the amount you paid.”

• zikduruqe · 783 days ago

  Or if they could simulate an antenna rotor and you had to turn it towards the station.

• gryn · 783 days ago

  if we're talking about stuff to make it more authentic, how about looking up my local weather if there's a strong storm the quality drops + more static, and a small (rng) chance of it completely breaking if the antenna upstairs got completely broken by the strong wind.

• Tiktaalik · 783 days ago

  For real accuracy of tv of a few decades ago they could add a 13th channel that takes content from Pornhub, but then adds a bunch of filters so you can barely see anything.

  • jagged-chisel · 783 days ago

    Even better: make not-porn videos with vegetables, but when it's obfuscated it would look like porn. Repetitive motions will help.

    • newswasboring · 783 days ago

      Is this an American thing? This sounds hilarious

  • edm0nd · 783 days ago

    A Girls Gone Wild channel on channel 13 that only starts past 10pm.

• myself248 · 783 days ago

  Integrate a Kinect / Realsense camera that estimates your body pose, so you have to stand in front of the computer and hold your arms in a specific way to direct a weak signal into the rabbit-ears...

This is neat! Feels just like old cable, the static transitions being a good touch.

• aroemers · 784 days ago

  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.

  • djeastm · 783 days ago

    This seems like it'd be great to have playing at an old folks home. I know my grandparents watch the Johnny Carson/Tonight Show channel for a taste of their old culture

  • pcthrowaway · 783 days ago

    Also discussed on HN: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36906022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25973955

  • racefan76 · 783 days ago

    Can confirm, I like it.

You should make the channels change the video they're playing on a schedule, and link to a tv guide listing that shows the schedule.

• ProllyInfamous · 784 days ago

  I understands what you're trying to replicate, but I believe this would distract from the charm since users could then just visit YouTube [directly] and search for things scheduled. The randomness and uninterrupted playback is why this is so cool =D

• hadisafa · 783 days ago

  The channels are on a schedule, everyone is watching the same exact video at the same timestamp!

Wow this is really cool. I'd love to have specific channels for Ai, NBA highlights, etc, all of which are readily available on Youtube.

Are we going full circle from TV to streaming back to TV? Probably not, but I do really enjoy the discovery aspect as well as reducing the overwhelming options of streaming down to a few channels. This has a super smooth feel and throws you directly in, really well done.

• chadcmulligan · 783 days ago

  Its the discovery aspect I miss, even cable had channels you could look at shows of a type - scyfi or Arena etc. Even free to air had reliable shows pre picked for you that you could rely on being decent. Now there's a fire hose of shows on Netflix, some good, some bad finding something to watch is now a task.

Now we need a TV Guide.

• jbobrow · 782 days ago

  https://git.jonathanbobrow.com/YTCH-Guide/

Is there an open source code repo for this?

• OwseiWT · 783 days ago

  By what I understood there's only front-end code. Ignoring the file server, of course.

  • justanotherjoe · 783 days ago

    Can't you just embed the youtube videos?

    • OwseiWT · 779 days ago

      Yeah, the site uses an iframe to youtube Perhaps the ideia of a back-end was the video selection, so everyone watches the same videos. But there could also be a video list in the source code, or maybe, but less likely, a deterministic usage of yt's algorithm

I’d love something like this where I can configure channels to have podcasts, music, movies and it all streams to my tv. Is there something like this? I’ve heard of other users mentioning side projects like this.

• zehaeva · 784 days ago

  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

• ibizaman · 784 days ago

  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.

• al_borland · 784 days ago

  For music I setup a micro pc at my place connected to a radio transmitter. I have a music library on it and set it to shuffle. I can have normal radios around my house, tune to my station, and it’s always something I like with no commercials. I don’t have multiple stations to flip to, but that’s ok. I like the simplify of turning on a radio without having to pick what’s playing. I can also turn on multiple radios and it works just like those fancy setups for multi room music streaming at a fraction of the cost/complexity. Something like Sonos or AirPlay requires a lot to do what a radio could do decades ago. The transmitter seems pretty weak, to maintain a legal status with the FCC, so some days it works better than others. I probably need to experiment with placement or other frequencies. I’m in a pretty congested area from that perspective. I found a website that suggests the best one based on the city a user us in and just went with that. I wish there were reserved frequencies for personal use that would make home transmitters better to use. I have 0 hope for that now, but during the era of FM transmitters being popular in cars, it would have been nice if it had gotten some attention.

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.

This is great, but the static doesn't seem random? It just bugged me a tiny bit. Otherwise, I love this.

• soneil · 783 days ago

  It looks like the static is tiled. So it's random (enough) within a tile, but you can perceive the tiling.

Must be my crappy internet connection that lets me watch the white noise for an unbearable amount of time. It's a very annoying white noise. Also, I wonder if some channels send a sign-off sequence once they run out of content.

• myself248 · 783 days ago

  Oh I love that idea, a signoff message followed by an image of a test pattern for several hours, until they sign back on the next morning.

Wish it had video settings like captions, video quality etc

• hadisafa · 783 days ago

  I'll add more control options soon :)

  • radlad · 783 days ago

    Closed captions would be really awesome so I can watch without sound.

  • acd10j · 783 days ago

    don’t add too many features, one of the usp of this is simplicity and suspense.

This is something I always wonder... Something that I really miss from TV on internet content (YouTube, movie streamings and so on) is turn it on and watching what's being transmitted without thinking about what I wanna see. Three reasons: 1. Picking something to watch takes time. Sometimes I only want to see something in the 15 minutes that I'm dining alone. My meal gets cold before I start the video 2. Choosing something to watch is stressful. If I'm tired and I don't know what I want to see makes me more tired and frustrated. These are the times that I don't want the freedom to watch I want because they are the times that I don't want to think about what I want 3. The random factor of watching something that I would never watch by myself it's something that makes me go outside my bubble. I can't say how many good movies (or songs, etc) I found by that randomness I'm not against the freedom of streaming services but there are moments that I just don't want that freedom. So, thank you!

• Almondsetat · 784 days ago

  Why can't you pick randomly from your home page and let auto play do its thing?

  • lucasoshiro · 783 days ago

    The recommendation algorithms suggests things that are related to what I watched before. And I still need to choose one of the options that it recommends.

    • Almondsetat · 783 days ago

      They recently introduced an anonymous mode

  • Mathnerd314 · 783 days ago

    Yeah, for me loading the homepage and clicking the top-left video is almost an automatic reflex at this point.

  • lukas099 · 783 days ago

    I wish my YouTube recommendations were anywhere good enough to do this.

    • s1artibartfast · 783 days ago

      Agreed, my recommendations are extremely narrow. Usually videos from the same three content creators, and ones that I've already seen or in there chronological queue that I already plan to watch.

  • digging · 783 days ago

    This works pretty well for YT when it knows your preferences, but for streaming TV services like Netflix I find it's a box of chocolates full of shit. It's just going to be whatever is being "promoted" at the time and has the most widespread appeal, not something interesting.

• asveikau · 783 days ago

  > Sometimes I only want to see something in the 15 minutes that I'm dining alone. I think the YouTube recommendation algorithm you get from opening the app or viewing the front page is good for this. They have a lot of random content and when the algorithm gets to know you, it will suggest things of interest that can be consumed this way.

  • Suppafly · 783 days ago

    I have so many subscriptions on youtube that the home recommendation is actually a quicker way to find something interesting if I have limited time, since the subscriptions are full of shorts and 'reruns' now where creators try to monetize old videos in new ways. The only issue is that my youtube is the one on the main tv, so sometimes the suggestions get messed up when my kids watch. Youtube probably has a really confusing set of conflicting beliefs about who I am.

    • asveikau · 783 days ago

      My kids mostly watch on tablets which are their own. On the TV, they have separate profiles on all the streaming apps. We don't do YouTube much on TV but when we do, I've always been sure to give them a different device that is not logged into my account. If I lend them a device to watch YouTube I usually do it in the browser in incognito.

  • cuanim · 783 days ago

    My youtube recommendations on my laptop are just short videos(all are below 3 mins with a few exceptions ;-;) I get so much better recommendations by using youtube tv but it sucks that they don't let us switch preferences. But well results in me spending less time on youtube so a win heh

  • butlike · 783 days ago

    YT is the best choice for something random for a small amount of time, but is absolutely maimed at the free-tier by 2 leading ads requiring 1+ user interactions to skip. I can't easily press 'skip' with a plate of pasta in one hand and a fork in another, and I don't want to watch two 2:30 leading ads, so I guess I'll just go somewhere else.

• Suppafly · 783 days ago

  The solution to a lot of those is to just have a goto show that you watch. Before netflix removed The Office, that is what I always did when wanting something to watch while eating a snack on the couch or to have noise on in the background. I'd just fire up netflix and resume whatever episode it was last one. We ditched cable forever ago, but I do find that I miss just watching 15 minutes of some random show like I used to. I usually forget about it until I'm at someone's house or a doctors office and catch a snippet of some random car show or cooking show.

  • lucasoshiro · 783 days ago

    > The solution to a lot of those is to just have a goto show that you watch. Cool! I have a list of movies to watch that I write from several recommendations sources, so I can try focus in watching instead of choosing. I can't say the same about music, I'm stuck for years hearing almost the same bands, which is kinda sad... > I usually forget about it until I'm at someone's house or a doctors office and catch a snippet of some random car show or cooking show. Another good point, watching something that I don't need to pay too much attention because I don't care about the subject, but can entertain me while I do other things... Here in Brazil that kind of shows that "we watch, we like but we don't know why" is a recurring joke, and we have three main ones: one about farming (Globo Rural), one about fishing (Pesca Alternativa) and one about trucks (Siga Bem Caminhoneiro)

    • Suppafly · 783 days ago

      >Here in Brazil that kind of shows that "we watch, we like but we don't know why" is a recurring joke, and we have three main ones: one about farming (Globo Rural), one about fishing (Pesca Alternativa) and one about trucks (Siga Bem Caminhoneiro) Are those public access type shows that are meant to be somewhat educational?

      • lucasoshiro · 783 days ago

        They are public access. Globo Rural for example is broadcasted every sunday morning. It's well produced, and its calm pace, its opening theme and the farming landscapes makes us feel good vibes. It fits perfectly the moment of waking up in the weekend, without having thinking about work and just chilling while we drink a coffee

    • massysett · 783 days ago

      > I can't say the same about music, I'm stuck for years hearing almost the same bands, which is kinda sad... I like SiriusXM for this. I'm often finding new channels to listen to, and once I pick a channel I don't have to pick out songs. Apple Music has some features that can work similarly, such as radio stations (though a lot of theirs are really more like podcasts) or they have lots of playlists of recommended hits from different genres and you can shuffle them.

• butlike · 783 days ago

  WHY is there not an "I'm feeling lucky" button for streaming services. Akin to "give me anything," though, I suspect the answer is the more time spent scrolling, the less data has to be streamed over the wire, so it's cheaper.

  • randomdata · 783 days ago

    More likely it is the inverse: Selecting a random video at scale is the costly problem. You can certainly fake it as a workaround. For example, you'll notice that "I'm feeling lucky" on Google simply follows the first search result. Streaming services could take what is already computed as the first result on the "Home" page and use that, for example. But at that point why not just click on the first video? Unlike Google, which doesn't give you much until you enter a search query, all of the streaming services I know of have already given you your "lucky" matches by the time a "I'm feeling lucky button" could be presented. Two buttons side-by-side that do the exact same thing doesn't offer much.

    • janalsncm · 783 days ago

      Users probably don’t want a random video, they want a video which is from the smaller subset of videos they were already likely to enjoy. The reason that might be preferable to just clicking the first result is that the second actually involves a choice since you’ve seen the second item.

      • randomdata · 783 days ago

        You're going to see the second item no matter what, unless streaming services give up showing any videos on initial interaction. But I expect that really is the best user interface for most users.

    • autoexec · 783 days ago

      > More likely it is the inverse: Selecting a random video at scale is the costly problem. if that feature existed it would never be a random video from all the available videos. It'd be a random-seeming video from a carefully curated selection of videos that youtube wants to push at certain users, and in some cases were paid to promote. Users wouldn't know and wouldn't care anyway because they pushed a button and got content without thinking.

    • butlike · 783 days ago

      That all makes sense and I never really considered the selection of the video being the costly problem at scale. Thanks! The only response I have is that purposefully-clicking the 'random' button has a psychological effect over clicking the first video returned which (gut check) makes me think it will be more easily tolerated if it ends up being "off-beat" since I didn't explicitly click the first selection (thus choosing it).

  • epanchin · 783 days ago

    Netflix had a shuffle button. It wasn’t popular so they dropped it. It didn’t feel the same as this at all.

  • usefulcat · 783 days ago

    > the more time spent scrolling, the less data has to be streamed over the wire, so it's cheaper. Google doesn't make money by avoiding sending streaming data; they make money by showing ads, which (mostly) aren't shown while you're scrolling.

• rubslopes · 783 days ago

  I hadn't watched actual television for years. Then, in a visit to my parents house, I randomly got to watch a band in a talkshow that later became a band that I love.

• archon810 · 783 days ago

  What I am really missing is a "Play random episode" or "Randomize episodes" button on TV shows. I want to just flip on Seinfeld or Family Guy and watch random episodes, not in order. Such a missed opportunity for Netflix, etc.

  • ksynwa · 783 days ago

    Jellyfin has this. Very nice feature for comedy shows.

  • Cthulhu_ · 783 days ago

    Part of that is because of the trend from the past few years (ever since Lost I believe but there's probably previous like soap operas) that TV shows are continuous. But even the 90's TV shows would have some continuity, referencing previous events. That said, I've been rewatching Star Trek DS9 (and may do so with Stargate as well) and the main overarching plot beats often happen at the start and end of a season, the episodes in between can often be randomised.

• langcss · 783 days ago

  Sitcoms solve this. Just watch your favourite one again.

  • slig · 783 days ago

    For Seinfeld fans, there's one site streaming it 24/7: WatchSeinfeld.net.

• xk_id · 783 days ago

  How strange, I’m the complete opposite. I’d never go back to letting corporates dictate how I engage with content; I even avoid recommender algorithms for the same reason. Being able to choose is so valuable to me.

  • llm_trw · 783 days ago

    >I’d never go back to letting corporates dictate how I engage with content You do realize that the search function is literally that?

    • throwaway290 · 775 days ago

      The entire way those platforms work is literally that. Ironically TV didn't dictate how to engage with content because there was not much. Compared to comment sections algorithmically boosting trolls to make you compulsively comment

  • lying4fun · 783 days ago

    I’m both, at times I don’t want to choose, at times I want full control. I didn’t have TV for years (was pushing a decade), but ~2months ago I got myself an analog antenna that has local channels and it’s been a blast: I caught some olympic games, watched Euro cup, couple of movies (I caught “Decision to leave” from my watchlist——tremendous movie), I saw some Anthony Bourdain shows and now I know who the guy is and i enjoyed the show, saw a documentary on war in my country, watched some live streams of city council meetings… Also, I wanted to say this somewhere in this thread I’m not trying to sell tv to you, you caught a stray bullet, but also I’m sharing that I watched it with a different curiosity after so long of not having it, and did have a great time just with those 17 channels of uncurated content, which was the main motivation——to have uncurated content

  • autoexec · 783 days ago

    Exactly. I go out of my way to try to make sure that the content is consume is "pulled" and not "pushed" as much as possible. I'm happy to take genuine recommendations from actual people, but I don't care what companies want me to see or listen to, and I resent it when they limit my options to try to force my hand.

  • Cthulhu_ · 783 days ago

    I think there's merit in both. One thing that is lost from choosing what you want to watch is that you don't get surprised anymore unless you want to be surprised, whereas with traditional TV you'd encounter things you didn't expect, or come across a movie you never heard of before. I think there's space for both. Or to make another analogy, if you go out and sit at a bench, who knows what will pass by?

  • lucasoshiro · 783 days ago

    > Being able to choose is so valuable to me. I agree, but sometimes I just don't want to choose because I don't have enough time or I'm to tired to do it

• sircastor · 783 days ago

  I miss channel surfing (a little). But from when the cable box was a dumb pipe and the picture would switch near instantaneously. The 3 seconds between channels in the last couple of decades was super obnoxious to me.

  • Cthulhu_ · 783 days ago

    Yeah, digital TV feels like a step back in that regard, but on the other hand it makes you reconsider switching / browsing channels. And of course the advantage is higher image quality and more channels.

• dicknuckle · 783 days ago

  Get Plex. There's a ton of free live streaming channels for a ton of tastes and genres. Some of them I think to myself "This should have been a steaming channel years ago".

  • notpushkin · 783 days ago

    Why do you need Plex for that?

• carlosjobim · 783 days ago

  Why are you stressed about what to select, when it is guaranteed that any selection you make will be better than something a network would select for you to watch? Just pick anything.

  • butlike · 783 days ago

    Cause the energy spent paying attention to the show is non-zero, and ideally I get _some_ enrichment out of what I watch.

It just needs upvote and downvote buttons and it would be perfect.

• al_borland · 783 days ago

  What would that do? It seems flipping away is effectively a downvote, stating to watch is effectively an upvote. I’m not sure why we feel like everything needs to be actively voted on these days.

Really cool with great execution. Out of curiosity, I'd love to know more: - how the backend look like? - Are the channels are based on a static pool of videos by category? - Is there a "schedule" for a channel or picked at random?

• hadisafa · 783 days ago

  - There is no backend, just html, css, and js - yes channels are based on categories(science, travel, documentaries, etc.) - yes there is a schedule, each video is scheduled to play at a certain time, so everyone is watching the same exact thing.

  • brandon272 · 783 days ago

    I love that this is a small amount of plain html and js, as I think the instinct for a lot of folks these days in creating this would have been to invest a lot of time in using the frameworks du jour.

  • shprd · 783 days ago

    Well done. Do you've plans for further development to grow this?

    • hadisafa · 783 days ago

      Definitely yes! Will add more features very soon.

  • wooly_bully · 783 days ago

    Two requests! 1. unique urls per channel so I can send it to a friend and say "check this out" 2. up + down keys for changing channels

• mayormcmatt · 783 days ago

  Also really enjoyed it and echo these execution questions.

You're showing your age there, hadisafa, with that static simulation :) Awesome work.

Awesome! But please remove the static fuzz it's really unpleasant.

• CamperBob2 · 783 days ago

  It's unpleasant because of the repeating patterns, IMHO. If it actually looked like NTSC or PAL snow it'd be quite nifty. That's probably one of those things that's harder to generate dynamically than it sounds like it would be, though. Perlin noise might be the right approach.

This hooked me right away! I wish it had pause though because I discovered a show I wanted to watch and had to work. :(

• prmoustache · 783 days ago

  you can record it though. OBS Studio becomes your VCR.

• hadisafa · 783 days ago

  you can copy the video id (below the controls) and watch it later on youtube

  • qingcharles · 783 days ago

    Is there a reason it's not a direct link? I just right-clicked "Search Google for..." but still...

Are those livestreams or videos? They seem like videos but if they would be livestreams it would be cool if you could speak to a livestream and then it would speech to text type it in the streamer's chatbox.

• hadisafa · 783 days ago

  These are just youtube videos but they are synced so everyone is watching the same thing at the same time.

  • mrkramer · 783 days ago

    I like UIs like this when just one thing is in the focus....I think few years ago here on HN someone did something like this but for Twitch; where you could switch back and forth between live streamers which had only 1 viewer. This format is definitely good for fast and easy discovery.

  • bob1029 · 783 days ago

    This is what makes the experience for me. You can tell someone "check out channel 12" and you'll both be watching the same thing just like we used to do.

    • ProllyInfamous · 783 days ago

      Yo Peter, just out Channel 9! [It's the best exam, kind of looks like Anne] —Office Space (1999), the movie which inspired me to drop out of graduate school and become an electrician

I worked at Google ~ 2010 and I distinctly remember playing with a TV like experience like this that Youtube was working on (it was part of the Google TV efforts at the time). I don't remember if it made it to the public but it's probably in the large graveyard of cool products Google killed.

So neat! I've been thinking of something similar to this where content creators would join their content to form channels in the original sense of the word and users would browse much like how they would on a normal TV