[HN Gopher] Open-TV: Ultra-fast, simple and powerful cross-platf...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Open-TV: Ultra-fast, simple and powerful cross-platform IPTV app
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 117 points
       Date   : 2024-10-10 01:14 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | sirfz wrote:
       | I have to say that IPTV apps across all platforms have a
       | horrendous UX and are especially slow and clunky. I always felt
       | that there's so much to improve in the space and I'm happy to see
       | this project, looks promising judging from the description
       | (although I haven't been using IPTV for a while now and can't try
       | this).
        
         | allyant wrote:
         | https://tivimate.com/ is about the nicest, but yes the IPTV
         | scene doesn't have a nice UX at all, naming conventions (or
         | lack of) especially.
        
         | maximinus-thrax wrote:
         | Unfortunately this one looks good at first but fails some basic
         | UI. There is no information on what the stream is doing, so if
         | it fails to fetch any data it'll just sit there spinning with
         | no feedback. Hypnotix (a similar app) has the same issue, it's
         | very annoying and you'd imagine easy to fix.
        
         | dewey wrote:
         | I've been using https://iptvx.app on my iPad / Apple TV. It
         | looks pretty decent, but a lot of them look extremely ugly.
        
       | dreamlayers wrote:
       | I don't think apps running in a web browser are very efficient.
       | Calling something like that "ultra-fast" doesn't seem right.
        
         | Mashimo wrote:
         | Does the framework matter if the UI is snappy?
        
         | saghul wrote:
         | But it's not a web browser? It now seems to use Tauri just for
         | UI and do the actual rendering with mpv.
        
         | 9865yh95467hy4 wrote:
         | Are you living in a pre 2008 world or something? Stop being so
         | pedantic.
        
           | bilekas wrote:
           | There is merit to everything not being on the web. Some
           | things don't need to be. I don't have any dog in the fight
           | but seems to me maybe an IpTV service which would be tailored
           | for you could potentially be more responsive as a local
           | application instead. No need to knock that mentality as a
           | generational thing or "old fashioned "
           | 
           | Edit: Merit to things "not" being on the web.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | While I have an opposite mindset that not everything needs
             | to be an app and can just be a website whether that is
             | mobile or desktop
        
               | bilekas wrote:
               | I don't always subscribe to the expression "just use the
               | right tool for the job" sometimes it's nice to do things
               | differently just to learn, but in this case, I still see
               | some more benefits in this case of iota application being
               | a bit more "synchronous" and local. But to be fair I have
               | worked for a few years on a cloud streaming provider, but
               | we had "set top boxes" to work with so I am maybe a bit
               | biased.
        
           | mihaaly wrote:
           | I knew a person judging women by their height. ... I am
           | unsure why I recall this now! ; )
        
       | neogodless wrote:
       | I'm not a user of IPTV services and haven't really heard about
       | it.
       | 
       | I found this which lists apps and services that provide IPTV:
       | 
       | https://github.com/iptv-org/awesome-iptv
       | 
       | Is that kind of service common in some parts of the world? Do
       | people set up their own IPTV servers to share content? What are
       | the most popular use cases?
        
         | diggan wrote:
         | From time to time we use it. My wife is from South America but
         | we live in Europe, bunch of channels she wanna watch aren't
         | available legally here so it's the only way.
        
         | pzmarzly wrote:
         | That list seems to have been cleaned up last year, this is the
         | previous version that contains more providers:
         | https://github.com/iptv-org/awesome-iptv/pull/169/files
         | 
         | I personally prefer using legal IPTV providers (e.g.
         | https://polbox.tv/en/ for Polish TV, https://ibox.ie for UK and
         | Irish, etc), though having to use VPNs for the content I
         | already paid for is getting annoying.
        
         | eddieroger wrote:
         | Reading through the list of providers on your link, I think the
         | answer is that yes, it's more common in the parts of the world,
         | and those parts aren't necessarily the US.
        
         | dewey wrote:
         | > Do people set up their own IPTV servers to share content?
         | What are the most popular use cases?
         | 
         | Most people I know use it to watch (pirated) sports broadcasts
         | that are either very fragmented (So you'd have to subscribe to
         | 5 providers, which is very expensive) or not available in the
         | geographic location. Personally I use it to watch Sky UK, which
         | isn't available in my location even if I wanted to pay for it.
         | 
         | You can self-host an IPTV server with https://ersatztv.org +
         | Plex. I've recently set that up just for fun and there's people
         | running channels with real old ads from their childhood just
         | for nostalgia reasons.
        
         | ranger_danger wrote:
         | Probably not a great idea to link to a bunch of pirated
         | streams. Some of those are official but a lot of them are not.
        
         | denysvitali wrote:
         | Init7 provides all their TV7 channels via IPTV:
         | https://www.init7.net/en/tv/channels/
         | 
         | You can choose between multicast or HLS. This only works if
         | Init7 is your ISP of course.
        
       | DrNosferatu wrote:
       | How does it compare to "yuki-iptv"?
       | 
       | https://codeberg.org/liya/yuki-iptv
        
       | ForHackernews wrote:
       | Nice to see something using IP multicast!
        
       | fredol wrote:
       | Hey guys, I'm the dev of Open TV. Someone from here sent me an
       | email so I just made an account to give a bit more context about
       | my project.
       | 
       | Open TV is a search-based IPTV player designed for desktop use.
       | It puts to the fire many of the sins of UI/UX design of
       | traditional IPTV apps to prioritize simplicity and speed. Many
       | classic IPTV features like the EPG are absent on purpose just to
       | keep that commitment.
       | 
       | I've been developing Open TV solo for the past 2 years. It used
       | to be a very basic electron app that I made for my relatives so
       | they would stop using proprietary, slow and almost malware-tier
       | IPTV apps.
       | 
       | I shared it with others as a "it's useful for me, maybe also for
       | you". I had absolutely no intention of making it bigger than a
       | stupid simple m3u viewer (it didn't even have xtream support
       | before, or even categories). But I received so much positive
       | feedback from users that I decided to give it some more love.
       | It's been on and off, and at some point I reached 0.9.8 and
       | pretty much called it quits for a while. I wasn't paid to work on
       | Open TV so it was very difficult to allocate even more time.
       | 
       | I decided to revisit the project 4 months ago. Over the past 3-4
       | months, I've completely rewritten the app in Rust/Tauri so that I
       | could finally add features requested by the community and to be
       | able to publish it on Flathub/Microsoft Store.
       | 
       | One of the very first feature request of this project was to put
       | it on flathub and I'm really proud to finally deliver on that.
       | I'm a Debian user, so it feels like I'm finally giving back to
       | the open source community by making it my app so widely
       | accessible on Linux.
       | 
       | If you like Open TV and its dedication to be simple, fast and
       | bloat-free, please consider donating. I'm still solo on this and
       | doing it purely for the sake of my users (I don't really watch
       | TV...), so any contribution is really appreciated.
        
         | SunlitCat wrote:
         | >It used to be a very basic electron app that I made for my
         | relatives so they would stop using proprietary, slow and almost
         | malware-tier IPTV apps.
         | 
         | Those tend to be some of the best projects! <3
        
       | Brainspackle wrote:
       | I don't see any channels worth watching though
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-10-10 23:01 UTC)