[HN Gopher] Tunarr: Create and configure live TV channels from m...
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       Tunarr: Create and configure live TV channels from media on your
       servers
        
       Author : Larrikin
       Score  : 136 points
       Date   : 2025-04-12 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (tunarr.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (tunarr.com)
        
       | obviyus wrote:
       | I tried this for a while with ErsatzTV and _really_ loved it. I
       | don't have cable anymore but I remember fond memories of cycling
       | through channels as a child.
       | 
       | I set up a food channel that would cycle through Masterchef and a
       | few travel cooking shows, one for anime and one for Bollywood
       | movies.
       | 
       | It was incredibly enjoyable. I could just put on a channel after
       | work without having to consciously make a decision on what to
       | watch. Just watch whatever's on the channel and switch over to
       | something else if it didn't click!
       | 
       | Definitely going to try this out on my NAS.
        
         | skerit wrote:
         | I tried ErsatzTV, but didn't manage to get it actually up and
         | running. This was a few years ago though, guess I'll try again!
        
           | dewey wrote:
           | I've done it a few months ago and it was super smooth. Sounds
           | like the process got better.
        
         | thakoppno wrote:
         | > fond memories of cycling through channels as a child
         | 
         | One thing that's missing is the low-latency old analog systems
         | had changing channels. Has anyone figured out a way to achieve
         | this in the digital era?
        
           | joezydeco wrote:
           | I worked on a DVB-H receiver back in the day and we tried to
           | speed it up by having a complete second tuner in hardware and
           | starting the acquisition on the _next_ stream while decoding
           | the first one.
        
             | thakoppno wrote:
             | That's fun. I suppose flipping up channels is far more
             | common than down, but presumably one direction would be
             | faster with this solution.
        
               | justinsaccount wrote:
               | Not really. the definition of what the 'next' stream is
               | could easily change depending on what the last button you
               | pressed, with the assumption that you would continue
               | pressing that button:                 * up - next stream
               | is one more channel up       * down - next stream is one
               | more channel down       * last/prev - next stream is the
               | previous channel.
        
         | krick wrote:
         | That sounds fun, is it computationally expensive? Is it, like,
         | actually processing the stuff even if nobody's watching? I'm
         | not gonna try it on my current NAS, because it's all HDDs and I
         | can hear it in the room, so I mostly use it as "cold" storage,
         | but your post really made me want to try it. Also, now that I'm
         | thinking of it, must be pretty hard for HDDs too, if you don't
         | use some dedicated all-SSD NAS specifically for that...
        
           | ertian wrote:
           | No, unless somebody starts a stream there's no computation.
           | If nobody is watching, it's idle.
           | 
           | If somebody tunes in, the server figures out where to start
           | the stream and begins streaming.
        
           | unixhero wrote:
           | /r/homelab and /r/homedatacenter called. We love
           | computationally expensive.
        
       | smegger001 wrote:
       | I have been threatening to do this for a while just put all of my
       | dvd rips on a server on make channels based on genera scifi (star
       | trek stargate etc) cartoon (loony toons popeye...) sitcoms
       | (scrubs HowIMetYourMother Frasier Cheer) all of my kids horrible
       | shows on another. i often find i end up flipping thorugh netflix
       | with option paralysis when i mostly want background noise this
       | would be nice.
        
         | kilroy123 wrote:
         | I recommend it! I did that and started using
         | https://www.quasitv.app, which is similar. It completely
         | removes the paralysis you're talking about.
        
         | hypercube33 wrote:
         | After using pluto.tv for a while this inspired me to look into
         | some HD rf modulators and get this project going
        
       | wpm wrote:
       | Once you have the channels, the next step is to pick up a few old
       | RF modulators and run your own cable TV network at home.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7m7OW2xrJE
        
         | dantastic wrote:
         | This is awesome! This is what I'd like to do at home albeit
         | with DVB-T.
         | 
         | I've seen a lot of clabretro's videos and am especially hooked
         | on the token ring series. I don't know why since that was just
         | outside of me starting to work on networking (we ran a
         | 10-base-2 at home since my dad worked in networking) but he's
         | so calm and a good story teller. Highly recommended channel!
        
         | doublerabbit wrote:
         | I recently bought an HDMI Transmitter and as my laptop's HDMI
         | port doesn't output sound. I've rigged a Bluetooth RX/TX dongle
         | plugged in to the headphone-out port which made me giddy in
         | nerd. It's voodoo.
         | 
         | Being able to stream from my laptop to my TV in 1080p without
         | any additional cables and using emulators for games is kind of
         | dark magic.
         | 
         | I need to purchase a usb DAC and better quality BT streaming
         | devices, creative a web-ui to finish the setup. But that was
         | cool, would love to do something when I upgrade from an
         | apartment especially with the 3x cable monitors.
        
       | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
       | "If you want to play the TV channels in Plex using the spoofed
       | HDHR, Plex Pass is required."
       | 
       | FYI with ErsatzTV, the one I use, (which is great) a Plex Pass
       | isn't needed.
        
         | byronvickers wrote:
         | If you've got it working then obviously it must be possible,
         | but I'm a touch confused because the ErsatzTV documentation
         | says "A Plex Pass is required for ErsatzTV to work with Plex."
         | (https://ersatztv.org/docs/user-guide/configure-clients)
         | 
         | Is it possible that you had this working in the past but Plex
         | has since removed the functionality from their free tier?
        
           | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
           | I've never had a Plex Pass and I currently use ErsatzTV
           | through Plex daily. I also tried out Tunarr this afternoon
           | and got it working. Though I'll be sticking with ErsatzTV.
        
       | floathub wrote:
       | Now if you set up some DVR software to record the channel ...
        
       | matthewcanty wrote:
       | My dad, who passed away 2023, left a stack of over 100 VHS tapes
       | full of 80s TV. It's mostly music (esp. bass guitar orientated),
       | steam trains, photography and I think this would make the perfect
       | way to digest that content.
       | 
       | Thanks for sharing.
        
         | aspenmayer wrote:
         | Please consider uploading the tapes to Internet Archive,
         | YouTube, an open directory, etc.
        
       | digitaltinfoil wrote:
       | What a dream!! This is something I have wanted for a long time,
       | and can't wait to set this up
        
       | haunter wrote:
       | I'm backing up my Youtube favorites locally since 2018, so far
       | 10k videos. I might try to use this because seems like would be a
       | fun way to play them in the background on a second monitor.
        
         | VTimofeenko wrote:
         | I've been thinking about doing this. What's your setup?
        
           | madphilosopher wrote:
           | Not the OP, but I have a Postfix mail server running on my
           | home media box that receives YouTube URLs sent to its special
           | email address. Postfix passes the message to a Python script
           | that parses out the URL and places it into a Redis queue. A
           | second Python program, running as a daemon, watches the queue
           | and then downloads the video using yt-dlp. I can also enqueue
           | video URLs from the command line.
           | 
           | This is the command that the daemon runs to request 720p, for
           | example:                   command = 'yt-dlp --write-info-
           | json -f "bv*[height<=720]+ba" --output "out.%%(ext)s"
           | --merge-output-format mp4 "%s"' % url
        
             | yard2010 wrote:
             | You live in the future
        
             | darkwater wrote:
             | Sounds like how RMS browses the web. Nice setup, by the
             | way.
        
           | haunter wrote:
           | yt-dlp
           | 
           | I just parse the URLs from the liked playlist every couple of
           | days with a Chrome extension then simply run the app.
           | 
           | yt-dlp would work automatically too with logins but I'm
           | always too nervous that Google would just straight up ban my
           | account for whatever reasons. So I rather do it in a more
           | manual way.
        
           | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
           | I run a flask app with an endpoint that takes a video URL and
           | runs yt-dlp. I have a bookmarklet that submits the URL of the
           | current video page I'm on to the web service.
           | 
           | Also when I'm in NewPipe on the phone I can go to a video and
           | share the URL to an app that forwards it to the web service.
        
       | unixhero wrote:
       | Yes!!! I have been wanting to make this for a long time. I want
       | to make 1990s TV channels and have them on TVs around the house.
       | 
       | I just love the feeling this gives. I'm even almost tempted to
       | add some K-Mart infomercials vhs rips:)
        
       | nighthawk454 wrote:
       | Does anyone know how this compares to ErsatzTV?
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-12 23:00 UTC)