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.
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!
Why can't you pick randomly from your home page and let auto play do its thing?
I wish my YouTube recommendations were anywhere good enough to do this.
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.
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.
They recently introduced an anonymous mode
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.
Yeah, for me loading the homepage and clicking the top-left video is almost an automatic reflex at this point.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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?
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.
Jellyfin has this. Very nice feature for comedy shows.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I mean you realize there were many more ads per hour on TV though right? What makes the youtube ones more intrusive?
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.
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.
Or if they could simulate an antenna rotor and you had to turn it towards the station.
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...
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.
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.
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
This is what I was looking for, where did you see that info?
I made the thing :)
May be you could put it up in the site too
I think they built it. :)
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...
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.
Would love a few more sports channels, a local news channel based on your location, and maybe a video gaming channel.
Local 58?
Thinking back to childhood it was all History Channel, PBS, and Cartoon Network / Nick. Would be great to see analogues to some of those :)
This project is very cool. Amazing execution. Other channels I would suggest:
- Cooking
- Family movies (from the public domain?)
- BaseballIt'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!
Build that into the TV Guide!
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?
- 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.
Well done. Do you've plans for further development to grow this?
Definitely yes! Will add more features very soon.
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.
Also really enjoyed it and echo these execution questions.
This is awesome! How are the videos being chosen? Without any monetization, I guess we shouldn't expect anything more than a loop of the same videos, right?
The videos are hand-picked and are scheduled so everyone is watching the same thing at the same time.
I guess what I'm getting at is, we shouldn't expect this hand-picking to continue indefinitely, since this isn't a paid service. I'm guessing the playlists will start to loop before too long?
This is still an experiment at the moment, we'll figure it out.
Cool. Even if it never updates, I think it's awesome. Thanks for building and releasing it.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
These are just youtube videos but they are synced so everyone is watching the same thing at the same time.
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.
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.
This hooked me right away! I wish it had pause though because I discovered a show I wanted to watch and had to work. :(
you can copy the video id (below the controls) and watch it later on youtube
Is there a reason it's not a direct link? I just right-clicked "Search Google for..." but still...
you can record it though. OBS Studio becomes your VCR.
What a different experience than default UI. Are you making the source for this public, and/or is it based on an existing project?
There is no backend, just plain html, css and js. The source is public.
Amazing! Are you generating the list.json and just pushing new data when it's due to run out? Or is there some logic that loops it?
Is there an open source code repo for this?
By what I understood there's only front-end code. Ignoring the file server, of course.
Can't you just embed the youtube videos?
I'd echo the sentiment that this is amazing, and that a TV guide would be awesome.
I'd also suggest maybe adding the channel names (like the comment you posted here) to the app itself (although i think it's cool when it's unnamed and you get the old-school feeling of channels just being numbers).
Also, I'd love to have permalinks for the channels. Not for the individual videos themselves, but just a link that when sharing would bring somebody else to the same channel you're watching right now.
Another thing, although probably outside your control, is that I use a Firefox extension called "SoundFixer" that I use to force the youtube audio to mono (since a lot of channels are annoying to me using headphones, they pan the audio sources too hard left/right and it's super distracting), but it doesn't seem to work on this website, probably because of the way they're embedded. I don't know if this can be changed somehow, or have a mode to force mono audio (which would be also oldschool like old TVs with one speaker only!). It's probably too niche and hard to do though.
Also I don't seem to find any volume control except mute?
You can probably do the audio fix systemwide with EasyEffects.
Thank you for the feedback, I'll see what I can do regarding the mono audio issue, and I'll try to add more features as soon as possible.
In Brave, even disabling ad blocker, all I get is static on all 12. Did we kill it?
*edit - oops, I have an extension to stop autoplaying html5 videos. Disabling that did the trick.
It does take much longer than I expected to load (~15 seconds), but it does work for me
Similar experience using Firefox. I don't have extensions or userscripts specifically blocking html5, but I'll check my user.js settings.
Til then, still getting the static.
This is neat! Feels just like old cable, the static transitions being a good touch.
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.
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
This blew my mind, it's such a different experience. Currently watching the music channel (8, The Lumineers - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)).
Since the author is reading here, one feature request: Please put a volume slider on it and also make a mouse wheel scroll on any part of the page change the volume.
I think it's the lack of timeshift which triggers me so much, since it's a somewhat standard feature on TVs. No way to pause makes me a bit anxious. I have a bad habit of nesting YT videos, where I pause one, watch another, pause that one, watch another, when it finishes I go back to the previously paused one and so on until I end up watching the first video to the end.
Theoretically you could add a per-client timeshift feature.
If you really like a video and want to watch it later, it displayed the video ID.
I really like the no pausing / everyone being in sync aspect, it's maybe the best feature
Why not add a link to the video instead of just the id?
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
:)
When a channel reaches the last video, list.json will be fetched to get an updated list of videos.
I see that you're the creator, I absolutely love what you made :)
I'm curious, do you generate that list on-the-fly, based on the current time/day? Or is it more static?
Wish it had video settings like captions, video quality etc
I'll add more control options soon :)
Closed captions would be really awesome so I can watch without sound.
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.
The channels are on a schedule, everyone is watching the same exact video at the same timestamp!
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
This is simply awesome, but apologies, I don't follow, what's the source for all the content?
The content is hand picked, no algorithms :)
This is great, but the static doesn't seem random? It just bugged me a tiny bit. Otherwise, I love this.
It looks like the static is tiled. So it's random (enough) within a tile, but you can perceive the tiling.
This is what will replace tiktok: Television. Having to scroll down or swipe is just so tiresome, it leaves marks on the screen and ... who cares if i have to wait for a crap video to end , maybe there s something good after that. We are going to come full circle
I reckon TikTok will just scroll for you.
It seems like random videos are being played from many years ago and/or getting live feeds of some stations. Does everyone get the same selection of channel feeds?
Yes everyone is watching the same content at the same time just like an actual TV channel.
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.
+1 would love to read a writeup about how this was made. Very cool.
This is amazing! I want this on my TV as the default firmware!
Thank you!
Well done, bravo!
Thank you.
This is great, really smooth
Thank you!
Need a larger "static" sprite so it's not obviously a sprite.
Maybe an atlas, or a selection of (larger) sprites to choose from, displayed in random order
Awesome! But please remove the static fuzz it's really unpleasant.
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.
Add an “upload video” link and YouTube suddenly has competition.
Maybe you realize this (or not), but each channel is comprised of YouTube videos streaming from Youtube. This website is a very well done, clever front-end. But it doesn't host or stream any video.
Copy the ID of any of the channels and you can bring up the source video on YouTube by adding it to the YouTube URL after the ?.
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.
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.
this is phenomenal, i love it, it genuinely feels like flipping TV channels. really excellent work!
Thank you :)
It just needs upvote and downvote buttons and it would be perfect.
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.
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).
I love this. I've often thought about this type of interface for youtube and also beyond. Also, the same thing with audio, bringing a terrestrial radio type of experience to internet based audio content. Very cool to see someone taking actual steps and not just day dreaming. :)
To everyone saying this needs this feature or that feature: it really doesn't, it's perfect as it is. Please don't complicate it OP!
Now we need a TV Guide.
This is awesome since it removes decision fatigue completely. It turns YT into a TikTok with quality content. Great.
You're showing your age there, hadisafa, with that static simulation :)
Awesome work.
Loved this. Would it be possible to add subtitles?
This is perfect. Can it be customized (with custom channels and schedules)?
I was looking for exactly this to control my (and my kid's) TV habbits. My TV is only for YouTube. Everything we like watching is on Youtube.
But with remote in hand, it NEVER STOPS. We (and my kid) keep jumping from one video to another. When I watched TV as a kid, I only had to be in-front of TV on a schedule. I would be doing something else in other times.
THIS is the YouTube TV that I need.
I have an extra suggestion: Maybe some keyboard key mapping, like up/down for switching the channel. I'm imagining having this perma-running in a small PC connected to a TV and the small wireless remotes have mappings for the arrow keys and up/down for channel would be perfect for that. (maybe other mappings as well)
This is amazing! It brings back old school feelings. Just turn it on and let it run in the background. The limited choice is sooo freeing.
I thought this was stupid.
Then I tried it. It's awesome. I can't tell you why, but there's something about it that, I guess, has been programmed into my brain over decades.
Great work.
This is mesmerizing. I zapped twice, landed on an interesting channel and... Moved the window to another monitor and full-screened it. Well done.
I love this, it would be perfect for my parents. The algorithm tends to send them down weird rabbit holes and echo chambers.
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
So amazing and so well executed. Brings a tear to my eye. I'd love this app on my tv. I hate deciding what to watch.
This is just delightful. What would make it perfect is the white noise that you get while switching channels.
Wow this is really cool! Such a simple idea but very well executed and definitely hits the nostalgia factor too. As others have mentioned, I do miss the "stress-free-ness" of not having to pick a specific content to watch and how everyone is getting the same stream at the same time.
Hey, this is great! Could you make it so clicking on the video ID in the bottom right corner opens the full video in a new tab? It would be nice to be able to like / save the whole video for later. Kinda like DVR.
I know it's no way possible to add any Hollywood Movies, but if it's possible it would just look like a real TV
This is awesome, it really gives you the feeling of flipping through channels and stopping up and just watch something random that you might not have otherwise.
Much of YouTubes potential is pretty much wasted, because of the monetization policy. It permeates the platform, even if you're a "Premium" subscriber. Rather than optimize for "engagement", it would be nice, even if it was a Premium feature, to be able to say: "I want to watch content that will help improve my health, teach me to become a better developer or "On Friday evening, I want long format retro computing content".
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.
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.
I love this! This is how I want to watch stuff sometimes, very relaxing to take away all the functionality and (mental) noise that comes with it. Thanks.
plz add subtitles, if they exist
Brilliant - and if the channels are actually broad in content and varied... Yeah!
This is brilliant. Great for my old TV where browsing youtube (or the internet) is a chore.
Goodness. I never realized how nostalgic it would feel to flip channels. Your project took me all the way back to being a kid in the 90s and clicking through channels on the TV at my grandparents' house after school.
I love it when I unexpectedly encounter something that turns on the nostalgia in such a deep way. Awesome project.
Do I love it because of the nostalgia, or is there something novel here worth exploring further?
This is genius.
Keeping the number of channels limited (<50?) is important to the experience, I think.
In a similar vein: https://radio.garden
https://www.youtube.com/tv used to be this, but they closed it down.
I would love to see this with my feed. Like personalized but always running. Seems like a good alternative to clickbait thumbnails and titles.
Incredibly well done! Great execution
Thanks, I love it. When I open YouTube homepage, I often have decision paralysis, but jumping right in the middle of a video glues my ADHD brain in.
Also, this really highlights how better is modern YouTube than TV that I used to watch as a kid.
This scratched the right itch for me. Deciding what to watch is so difficult and this limits options in just the right way. It really does feel like TV. Good job!
Feels way better without the likes, comments, ads and recommendations.
Very cool concept, congratulations!
I do have two bugs to report.
1) I only see static until I fiddle with the mute button, which makes the image work besides working as expected. As soon as I change channel, all static again until I hit mute. I'm on Chrome over Windows using a corporate network.
2) The info button shows a reasonable email address, and, under "Support", the string "bc1q4s2f6df2cqa8stenwp8y5tlmd5pywy8dwqqxvh". I have no idea what to do with that string.
Just like https://80s.myretrotvs.com/
It's surprising I've never heard of anything like this before!
Oh no.
(This is great. Just... it's too easy to get lost in this!)
Absolutely love this.
If youtube had channels you'd need a TV license to watch it.
Please make this an Amazon Fire TV Stick App! Would love to simply switch on and keep doing my work.
boomer.tube is not yet taken
Very cool, I like the old school feel of watching whatever is on. That said I immediately noticed the lack of volume control, which IMO is essential.
This reminds me of Neverthink tv, which basically did the same thing except (recycling youtube videos into "tv channels") with heavy manual curation of content.
cannot get past UNSTARTED or buffering... Am I doing something wrong?
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.
I've put it on for 2 hours now, this hits the spot.
this is the best thing ive seen in a long time! instant pmf
This is such a fun idea, great execution too.
In a way I feel TikTok taps into this type of TV-like discovery, where you are not overloaded with options but instead just swipe through channels until you find something you want to stop and watch.
Great stuff, I really like it! As others mentioned, channel names, a channel list or a guide would help. Also, if you're looking for new channel ideas: (british) game shows or talk shows!
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 I wish I could customize or disable the flashing between channel changes, it's really strobe effectish when changing quickly and hard on my eyes
I see channels 1-12 = static. The status of each says Unstarted.
Same experience with a different browser. Also same after shifting location.
Haha this is really well engineered, it feels honestly like TV and not a cheap iframe embed
What about commercials?
Funny, how we are slowly attracted towards the thing that we were planning to revolutionize away from.
1. Cable is expensive, pretty much majority of streamming services bumped up their $$$, if you add 3-4 of them, the cost will be the same as cable.
2. When i used this, cant lie. I missed the nostalgia.
Why I f*cking love this? Congrats.
This is the kind of brilliant idea that seems so completely obvious in hindsight that it's hard to believe no-one has done it before
even the mainstreaminess is well-captured
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.
Awesome. Now I can just flip between channels constantly. "Doom scrolling" the kids call it.
This is amazing. Let's hope youtube doesn't block it.
I already pay for YT Red and would love this to be an official feature.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Damn, kinda what I figured. Thanks. Maybe some day I’ll upgrade/downgrade to a less perfectly-stable server that is transcoding capable.
Where were you able to find these? Recreating one of these channels has been a side project I’ve wanted to do for ages.
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.
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)
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.)
dizqueTv, ErsatzTV... these are the "Chinese company names on Amazon" of TV app names.
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.
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.
well they already have youtube shorts, which is kinda similar.
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.
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
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.
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).
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-...
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.
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.
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.
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..)
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.
The only thing worse than the intro is the 2nd intro. Just get to the GD content please.
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.
If only we had a TiVo...
channels are synced so everyone is watching the same exact content at the same time, just like TV.
yeah when i noticed this, it blew my mind.
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.