24/7 Linear TV pirate streams - And other Linear TV dicussion

[Mr. Anderson]

Idk if this is allowed, so mods please take pity on this poor soul.
But I recently (as in like... Thanksgiving 2022) got into producing a 24/7 pirate streaming channel. It started with the death of the G4 revival. Used to keep something on my tv in the background while gaming nearly all the time while I was in community college and earlier. But sometime around 2018 I just stopped. Well with the revival of G4 I started doing it again. Naturally the mid day was full of Ninja Warrior and, while it was a bit weird hearing nothing but Japanese yelling while I was working (I am NOT a subs over dubs guy... unending overly expressive Japanese speech kinda weirds me out), I enjoyed having something to watch.
So when it died unceremoniously, I switched back to CN, the last thing I had watched, only to find that, as bad as it was back in 2016, it had gotten even worse. Or maybe my tolerance for it had just finally dropped off a cliff. So this prompted me to begin working on a project I'd sidelined a while ago where I rebuilt a specific day in CN History (I had picked May 17th, 2005). At some point very early on, I decided to look into playout software, only to find some existing projects focused on building easy to use playout software for hobbiests. Thus I began to build my channel.
Along the way, I found out of past and present projects with a similar goal. The most famous is Toonami Aftermath, but there's a whole community of people building these channels with a variety of focuses.
Idk, figured we could use a space to talk about them. I'll post a list of links to ones I know about if mods say it's ok, but I understand why they might not want to allow that.
But I think beyond that, it's sad to see linear tv die. TV used to be an event. You'd catch the same shows as at the same time and discuss it later with people. Blocks, especially in kids channels, made it feel like something special.
Now channels just air the same shows in a marathon style and wonder why no one watches. Sure, marathons were cool back in the day, but if someone wants to watch a show, they stream it. TV channels need to embrace what makes TV itself special. The ability to have a joint personality and build blocks, or give life to a time frame. For example, everything before midnight on Adult Swim is relatively tame. American Dad, Family Guy, Bob's Burgers, Koth, etc. After midnight, you get the weirdest stuff. Tom goes to the mayor, Oblongs, Moral Orel, Dream Corp LLC, etc. In the age of Tiktok, where people don't want to deal with choice peralysis, TV companies gimp themselves by not leaning into this.

 

[Racist Parrot]

Man I would watch this one streaming site a ton with my Dad because they'd have trailer park boys and its always sunny on 24/7, really dont remember the name though. Miss you buddy.

 

[Munchin' on Some Grindage]

But I recently (as in like... Thanksgiving 2022) got into producing a 24/7 pirate streaming channel.

What did you use to create it? I've been really wanting to build a ton of channels and have used some stuff that works with Plex libraries.

Still looking for something that gets super specific that allows me have commercials breaks in the middle of shows and something that has the ability to run certain programs on specific days of the week at a specific time.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

What did you use to create it?

I've personally found preference for ErsatzTV... Dizquetv is an alternative but I found ETV has more features.

Ersatz has a "midroll" option that runs in between chapters that does what you ask for. This does, however, mean you have to make sure your chapters are setup for every show, which can be a pain. I actually have 2 copies of some shows too because I will have some shows setup for plex viewing and then have to have a seperate version for ETV (for example, some shows will air episodes as a mix of 2 or 3 parts).
They both have the ability to run specific programs on specific days of the week. For example, with ETV you make your schedule and then set it to play on your channel based on month, day, and day of the week filters.

 

[Pee Cola]

OP could take it one step further and hook his TV playout system to a small analog UHF TV transmitter

As for software, I don't have any specific suggestions.

 

[Civillian 18]

I've personally found preference for ErsatzTV... Dizquetv is an alternative but I found ETV has more features.

Ersatz has a "midroll" option that runs in between chapters that does what you ask for. This does, however, mean you have to make sure your chapters are setup for every show, which can be a pain. I actually have 2 copies of some shows too because I will have some shows setup for plex viewing and then have to have a seperate version for ETV (for example, some shows will air episodes as a mix of 2 or 3 parts).
They both have the ability to run specific programs on specific days of the week. For example, with ETV you make your schedule and then set it to play on your channel based on month, day, and day of the week filters.

I use(d) ErsatzTV as well, unsure if you were aware they recently archived, I actually starting using Tunarr recently, have still yet to explore all of the options.
Brought up in the Home Media Server thread.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

OP could take it one step further and hook his TV playout system to a small analog UHF TV transmitter

As for software, I don't have any specific suggestions.

I have definitely wanted to, for a while now, get one of those boxes that has an input and then an output to Coax. Usually they are locked to a channel or you could get a tunable one I think, but either way one box for one channel. So I'd get a bunch of them and build an interhouse network on coax that just runs a whole fake cable lineup.
I have enough media to make a ton of different channels, and I would actually really like to get a widescreen CURVED crt to run them on. Flat CRTs are kinda weird and widescreen because, the newer stuff is 16:9.

I use(d) ErsatzTV as well, unsure if you were aware they recently archived, I actually starting using Tunarr recently, have still yet to explore all of the options.
Brought up in the Home Media Server thread.

Yeah I saw this. But I expect it won't hit all the features I need for a while. Hell, I'd still like to see the feature Dizque has where midrolls and trailing stuff pads equally, as well as just a hard cutoff at the time set.
I think Tunarr is made by the guy who made ETV. It just became too bloated from what I understand, so he's scaling it down for Tunarr.

 

[Civillian 18]

I have definitely wanted to, for a while now, get one of those boxes that has an input and then an output to Coax. Usually they are locked to a channel or you could get a tunable one I think, but either way one box for one channel. So I'd get a bunch of them and build an interhouse network on coax that just runs a whole fake cable lineup.
I have enough media to make a ton of different channels, and I would actually really like to get a widescreen CURVED crt to run them on. Flat CRTs are kinda weird and widescreen because, the newer stuff is 16:9.

Yeah I saw this. But I expect it won't hit all the features I need for a while. Hell, I'd still like to see the feature Dizque has where midrolls and trailing stuff pads equally, as well as just a hard cutoff at the time set.
I think Tunarr is made by the guy who made ETV. It just became too bloated from what I understand, so he's scaling it down for Tunarr.

I did not notice it was the same dude. Also it looks like he un-archived it and is instead going to Rewrite It In Rust! Oh goody.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

I did not notice it was the same dude. Also it looks like he un-archived it and is instead going to Rewrite It In Rust! Oh goody.

No idea what rust is, but I'm happy to see continued work on it.
It's really the best. Though honestly, I don't see it as "feature creep." It's a bunch of features needed for a well built playout software. And things like subtitle settings for block playouts don't exist. I'd also like the ability to shuffle through playlist groups. So you could make a playlist of a half hour show made of multiple smaller parts with commercial buffers in between (think like Cartoon Roulette on OLD school Toonami, how individual shorts made up the full episodes). You can make one play list group of the show, with each individual playlist being an episode. Then have, for a given slot, a random playlist from that group is picked. This would expand the usability of it substantially.
But I'm also for better stability. It definitely feels like a hobbyist project, but it's probably the best you can do short of digging into more professional software. Honestly, as someone who runs it basically 24/7, it's pretty stable.

 

[Civillian 18]

No idea what rust is, but I'm happy to see continued work on it.

Just a petty jab at the language/community around it honestly. The language is fine. Null is writing components of the forum re-write and other projects in it. The community is just irritating and loud.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

I just use synchtubes

 

[Mr. Anderson]

What's synchtubes?

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

What's synchtubes?

a synchtube is a type of website that runs a chat window and a video window you run youtube and other sources in, like psp-tv, or cytube
it's a little different from normal online video streaming, it's not like you host, you run a video, you transmit that feed live to the server, the server spits it out to viewers
it runs by sourcing from a youtube video (or archive.org or pomf type hosts), puts that in the window, then tells your browser "skip to the point everybody else is at" then every second or few pings "okay now make sure you're at 10m24s" and so on, so everybody sees the video at the same time
even if you're only using this for yourself, it's a REALLY simple way to get the same show in multiple rooms at once without much fussing, and when you get good you can encode stuff so it feeds off of archive or pomf types hosts easily and then pretty much the sky's the limit

 

[Mr. Anderson]

a synchtube is a type of website that runs a chat window and a video window you run youtube and other sources in, like psp-tv, or cytube
it's a little different from normal online video streaming, it's not like you host, you run a video, you transmit that feed live to the server, the server spits it out to viewers
it runs by sourcing from a youtube video (or archive.org or pomf type hosts), puts that in the window, then tells your browser "skip to the point everybody else is at" then every second or few pings "okay now make sure you're at 10m24s" and so on, so everybody sees the video at the same time
even if you're only using this for yourself, it's a REALLY simple way to get the same show in multiple rooms at once without much fussing, and when you get good you can encode stuff so it feeds off of archive or pomf types hosts easily and then pretty much the sky's the limit

Oh. No this is designed to be a recreation of a tv channel. All playouts are automated and it has shows, bumps, and commercials and the like

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Oh. No this is designed to be a recreation of a tv channel. All playouts are automated and it has shows, bumps, and commercials and the like

you can do that too

show ep 1
bumper
ad
show ep 2
bumper
ad

it has a little bit of an issue if the clip is under twenty seconds but yeah, you can line it up basically however you want, I use it for music and tv
it doesn't support hard branches to a particular time, so you can't set it to like "go to station ID at 7:00:00pm " but it will keep on chugging and you can flop along one element into the next

 

[Mr. Anderson]

What you described on the end is exactly what I'm trying to do.
It's less about sharing/watching together and more about having a channel that progresses whether you are there or not, just like cable tv, and is running 24/7, picking random episodes, bumps, and ads. Also, it fills the ads to the time slot given.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

What you described on the end is exactly what I'm trying to do.
It's less about sharing/watching together and more about having a channel that progresses whether you are there or not, just like cable tv, and is running 24/7, picking random episodes, bumps, and ads. Also, it fills the ads to the time slot given.

hrm
picking randomly from a bucket and filling automatically are def things it doesn't do
but yeah a lot of these sites already have a ton of channels going, usually it's just wall-to-wall marathon of a single show or specific gaggles of nerds getting together for a few hours, so even if it's not _exactly_ what you're looking for it might handle at least some of what you need

 

[The Token Ethnic]

If you want to scratch that old G4 itch, there's a channel that streams it mostly 24/7. New and old G4, Tech TV along with some odds and ends. You can check it out Here on Kick or Here on Twitch. Enjoy!

 

[Mr. Anderson]

If you want to scratch that old G4 itch, there's a channel that streams it mostly 24/7. New and old G4, Tech TV along with some odds and ends. You can check it out Here on Kick or Here on Twitch. Enjoy!

Yeah, I've aware of 4GTV. Very cool G4 rebuild.
Since someone else made the first post setting the precedent, I guess we're allowed to post links to this stuff?
So here's some I've found:
Obviously there's 4GTV - https://kick.com/4gtv
Toonami Aftermath - https://www.toonamiaftermath.com/
Probably the oldest, goes back to 2010 when Toonami went down before its revival
CN Classic - https://vaughn.live/cnclassic
Less a specific era more a a general vague concept of the best parts of CN. Also a bunch of shows CN never had.
Nicktoons Network Retro - https://vaughn.live/nnretro
Nick Picks - https://vaughn.live/nickpicks
SwimRewind - https://swimrewind.com/
That's So Disney - https://vaughn.live/thatsodisney

There's honestly quite a few people engaging in this... hobby? More than I initially expected. It's honestly pretty nice, though on kick even a lot of them tend to get taken down.
There was also a "SFTV" stream on twitch, but they seem to run randomly for a stint then stop. https://www.twitch.tv/sftv555 A lot of effort goes into this one to make it "themed" which is cool.
Fun bonus is the retroweatherchannel https://www.twitch.tv/retroweatherchannel
They do put ads on their stream which kinda sucks, and it's not worth more than just tuning in to giggle at for a minute. Basically a weatherstar4000 emulator running 24/7 on twitch set to a location (I think they change it randomly). I think my favorite part is they have a patreon link at the top that says "Show some love to bill for brining back the radar" followed by "radar data unavailble"

Good job, Bill.

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

Man I would watch this one streaming site a ton with my Dad because they'd have trailer park boys and its always sunny on 24/7, really dont remember the name though. Miss you buddy.

Trailer Park Boys Central?

Also, cytu.be is the gold standard for people creating their own TV channels.