Discussion Your Own Cable TV

[zanetti]

had an idea a few months back. was wondering if its even possible.

the idea is to channel surf your local content as if it was aired on cable or OTA. sit down, grab TVs (!) remote, turn on the TV, and channel surf. channel 10 has 'breaking bad' playing 24/7. click. hop onto channel 50 and here you have 80s sitcoms playing 24/7. oh, wanna go back to channel 10? press 10 on your TV (!) remote and youre back watching 'breaking bad' at the exact same spot you left it when you switched the channel! great, innit? all channels are pseudo playing 24/7 selected content but it pauses when you switch the channel and continues playing when you go back to it. you could have 10 movie channels, or even actors channels, directors, TV stations, genres possibilities are endless. if one wanted, and nerds will want it, you could start building funny TV ads collection and insert them after each episode or movie, yeah, i know id be tempted lol.

is all this even possible, has anyone any idea? ive found something similar via plex and faking having a TV tuner installed so you could do it via plexs LIVETV option. downside? you have to use plex. i mean, dont get me wrong, i like plex but for channel surfing? bleh (could be wrong here, since ive never used plex for live TV, but i presume there is some delay and sluggishness involved, right?). i also presume there should be some sort of media caching involved, at least for currently 'playing' episodes/movies, right. is there something similar for kodi maybe?? i presume if one wanted to have real channel surfing experience like you get with cable or OTA some major hardware would have to be involved, and that sounds expensive. it most definitely is expensive (anything beyond 300 smackaroos is expensive lol).

so, lets get down to it. ideas. solutions. comments. cheers!

 

[DeepSpace]

Upload everything to twitch

 

[zanetti]

Upload everything to twitch

interesting idea. but, even with 10gbit upload it would take forever. lol.

 

[cartman0208]

So that would only be for one user?
It might be even possible with some medium sized hardware.
For more than one person you would need a serious HW upgrade for buffering and usermanagement.

 

[DQ]

I use LiveTV on plex and it works great. That is why I use a dedicated Plex PC (vs running on a NAS) because I have a tuner card installed in it that connects to my antenna. And that is why I use plex for all my viewing needs. I can watch local channels or my media collection in the same app.

 

[zanetti]

So that would only be for one user?
It might be even possible with some medium sized hardware.
For more than one person you would need a serious HW upgrade for buffering and usermanagement.

yeah, one user. me. lol. as i said, plex can do it via faking having TV tuner installed, thus you can create channels, add stuff to them, manage playlists and even inject ads for inbetween episodes or movies etc and then use its liveTV to 'channel surf your own cable TV'. has anyone at least tried that? ill try finding it somewhere in gajillion bookmarks i have accumulated... so, maybe that could be a start? maybe the whole process has gotten easier and feature rich in the past year or so since ive read about it.

edit: ok. this is what ive found thus far. pseudoTV for kodi and dizqueTV for plex. visited pseudoTVs page but no download nothing. weird. dizqueTV seem ok, has installtion for windows. will give that a try. theres also pseudo for plex but from what ive gathered there no installation for windows, python blah blah, lines of code... not for me, thank you. anyone has any experiences with these? any alternatives maybe?

well, dizqueTV installed, configured (no transcoding involved, just direct play), fairly simple, it works but it just too janky. AVC AC3 for some unknown reason in one instance refuses to play, in plex app it plays fine. some series are loading fine, other take up to 30 seconds, subtitles require transcoding etc. i mean, it sort of is what im looking for but then again it isnt. lol. janky playback of standard files is like a major red flag IMO. every playback is automatically recorded since it depends on faking having a homerun tuner, and most importantly: theres no channel surfing. sure, you have recent channel selection on the bottom, but no up and down at least not that ive found. but it definitely is fun seeing this when you click on liveTV tab in plex:
love the logos. but in plex app on shield there are two logos displayed: one like depicted here and then one next to the episode name and of course those are vertical and logos are horizontal so it looks yuck and i dont think these can be configured, bummer. also, channels can be on demand so it pauses playback when you switch channels but thn there are no episode names in the guide. lol, just found out that if the show is on demand then the secondary logos, which are actually posters, are pulled from main logo, but if the show is not on demand then posters are actually displayed (beat bobby play and dd&d), weird:



next on the chopping block (channel 15 FYI, lol) is pseudoTV live for kodi.

 

[zanetti]

small update. tried pseudoTV but not pseudoTV LIVE since im still at 18 and have xonfluence configured the way i like it. anyways, it works even better than plex alternatives, channel surfing experience is great, but channel cofiguration is major PITA since there are no global options (e.g. delete all channels, set all channels to series/movies etc) and you need to do everything channel by channel. AFAIK pseudoTV LIVE should be more advanced so ill try setting that up on one of the LAN computers, but am skeptical how it will handle sources over LAN. anyways, my dream of channel surfing local material is possible, albeit with some downsides. anyone has any ideas, suggestions, tips they are more than welcome. cheers!

 

[zanetti]

another update. since my channel connect for plex is simply not working, after working only once when installed, i tried finding solutions and stumbled upon something else, aka topic of this thread. another one is ersatzTV. installed it but not deployed as of yet. another one, fairly simple but not free, is quasiTV. an androidTV app that is ridiculously easy to set up, fast, but lacks advanced options and settings. beware, i did no limit for TV shows and movies and got an empty guide, so i set minum for TV at 4 and ditched the movies for the time being. now it works, its fast, hopefully more advanced options are added soon (adding logos, more scheduling and sorting opttions etc). will look into ersatzTV and report later on. cheers.

LATER ON: ok, fiddled with ersatzTV, same principle as dizqueTV, aka add libraries, add fake tv tuner to plex, surf your local TV in plex. after linking plex with ersatzTV it correctly recognized all of my 4000 movies but fell short with TV series, managed to find around 70%. tried deep scan, nothing. gave up and besides you need to use plex which IMO is kinda sluggish even on shield pro. f it. im sticking to quasiTV because its easy and most importantly fast. install, connect to plex, wait a few minutes and thats it. press UP on your remote and you get the guide which is light, and most impotantly fast as hell. bought it and hoping the developer keeps on adding more stuff. and btw, channel connect for plex still aint working for me. it did for a few months and then... nothing. if anyone has any ideas, youre more than welcome. cheers.