T2, PBTV, GMLOOP, and ROXi Internet Channels

[pixelstuff]

Do these internet streaming channels work by having the tuner forward a URL to the software and letting the software deal with it, or does the tuner box itself pull the "broadcast" stream from the internet and package it up so it looks like a regular OTA channel to the software?

[nickk]

A new manifest with URLs for the next audio/video segment arrives via the broadcast every few seconds.

[danieljlevine]

Cool. I can’t wait to see the initial implementation in the HDHR Flex 4K and app.

[bleggett29]

For anyone who wants to try these channels now: I put together BA Player, a free Windows program (GPL v3) that plays the part of a NextGen TV, so the broadcaster apps (GMLOOP, ROXi, station news/weather apps) and the internet channels (T2, PBTV) run in Chrome or Edge.

It works from a RabbitEars RENDER report (no tuner needed), so you can try any market’s apps. It comes with an El Paso sample.

On nickk’s privacy point: BA Player just opens each app as a normal web page in your own browser, with your own privacy and cookie settings. Treat them like any website.

Notes: it’s a test build. Some stations’ apps show nothing (no app set up by the vendor). Gameloop is finicky. T2 and PBTV sound needs an ffmpeg built with the unofficial AC-4 decoder (instructions included). Your PC clock must be accurate.

Download and source: https://github.com/bleggett29/BA-Player/releases/latest
Thanks to RabbitEars for RENDER.

I also have a Linux / Raspberry Pi version that works live from an HDHomeRun with the DEV upgrade (I use an HDFX-4K-DEV). It captures the whole RF channel continuously, and from that it:

plays the clear broadcast channels with a 10-minute rewind buffer
builds the program guide (ESG) from the air
gives the apps the station’s real signaling
keeps T2/PBTV current from the live broadcast, so they never go stale

It’s not packaged for others yet. If there’s interest, I’ll clean it up and put it on GitHub too.

[Trip]

For anyone who wants to try these channels now: I put together BA Player, a free Windows program (GPL v3) that plays the part of a NextGen TV, so the broadcaster apps (GMLOOP, ROXi, station news/weather apps) and the internet channels (T2, PBTV) run in Chrome or Edge.

It works from a RabbitEars RENDER report (no tuner needed), so you can try any market’s apps. It comes with an El Paso sample.

On nickk’s privacy point: BA Player just opens each app as a normal web page in your own browser, with your own privacy and cookie settings. Treat them like any website.

Notes: it’s a test build. Some stations’ apps show nothing (no app set up by the vendor). Gameloop is finicky. T2 and PBTV sound needs an ffmpeg built with the unofficial AC-4 decoder (instructions included). Your PC clock must be accurate.

Download and source: https://github.com/bleggett29/BA-Player ... s/tag/v1.0
Thanks to RabbitEars for RENDER.

I also have a Linux / Raspberry Pi version that works live from an HDHomeRun with the DEV upgrade (I use an HDFX-4K-DEV). It captures the whole RF channel continuously, and from that it:

plays the clear broadcast channels with a 10-minute rewind buffer
builds the program guide (ESG) from the air
gives the apps the station’s real signaling
keeps T2/PBTV current from the live broadcast, so they never go stale

It’s not packaged for others yet. If there’s interest, I’ll clean it up and put it on GitHub too.

This is cool. It worked for me on Linux from the command line without issue. That said, on both WHUT and WBFF, the T2/PBTV open the first frame but video never plays unless I use the slider to drag to "older" video.

I could get video out of Roxi in DC but no UI so I don't know what I clicked on, and Gameloop didn't work at all as far as I could tell. Tried them on your sample file as well, same result.

Still, really neat.

- Trip

[bleggett29]

For anyone who wants to try these channels now: I put together BA Player, a free Windows program (GPL v3) that plays the part of a NextGen TV, so the broadcaster apps (GMLOOP, ROXi, station news/weather apps) and the internet channels (T2, PBTV) run in Chrome or Edge.

It works from a RabbitEars RENDER report (no tuner needed), so you can try any market’s apps. It comes with an El Paso sample.

On nickk’s privacy point: BA Player just opens each app as a normal web page in your own browser, with your own privacy and cookie settings. Treat them like any website.

Notes: it’s a test build. Some stations’ apps show nothing (no app set up by the vendor). Gameloop is finicky. T2 and PBTV sound needs an ffmpeg built with the unofficial AC-4 decoder (instructions included). Your PC clock must be accurate.

Download and source: https://github.com/bleggett29/BA-Player ... s/tag/v1.0
Thanks to RabbitEars for RENDER.

I also have a Linux / Raspberry Pi version that works live from an HDHomeRun with the DEV upgrade (I use an HDFX-4K-DEV). It captures the whole RF channel continuously, and from that it:

plays the clear broadcast channels with a 10-minute rewind buffer
builds the program guide (ESG) from the air
gives the apps the station’s real signaling
keeps T2/PBTV current from the live broadcast, so they never go stale

It’s not packaged for others yet. If there’s interest, I’ll clean it up and put it on GitHub too.

This is cool. It worked for me on Linux from the command line without issue. That said, on both WHUT and WBFF, the T2/PBTV open the first frame but video never plays unless I use the slider to drag to "older" video.

I could get video out of Roxi in DC but no UI so I don't know what I clicked on, and Gameloop didn't work at all as far as I could tell. Tried them on your sample file as well, same result.

Still, really neat.

- Trip

Thanks for trying it, Trip, and for RENDER, which makes this possible.

The T2/PBTV stall is a good catch. BA Player works out the newest segment from the PC’s clock, and it’s cutting it too close for those origins. A clock that’s a few seconds fast would do it too. I was going crazy until I found out my PC was 2 minutes off. I’ll make the next version take the time from the stream server instead of the PC, and leave more margin.

On ROXi: did any arrow key or Enter bring up the menus after clicking into the page? Its menus came up for me in the DC RENDER report. with Chrome/Edge. Which browser were you using? A privacy or ad-blocking extension could also block its menus.

Gameloop is finicky: click into it, then press Esc and Space a few times. Sometimes it takes closing the tab and launching again.

This project began with hdhomerun_tui and render v0.3. And then I just started fiddling around. I actually incorporated ATSC1 reports into RENDER. I have a ZIP of Alamogordo, most of El Paso and a couple of Juarez if you want them. BTW, on RabbitEars, most, if not all, of the ATSC3 reports are from RENDER v0.3.3. I didn't find it in the DL area. Mind if I get a copy?

[bleggett29]

v1.1 is up: live channels now use the stream servers’ time and keep more margin, which should fix the T2/PBTV stall you saw on WHUT and WBFF. With my PC clock set 2 minutes off, both play fine now.

[Trip]

Cool deal. I'm on a different computer and grabbed the current build. Switching from Firefox to Chrome made GameLoop finally show me something other than a white screen. Roxi shows the UI following your suggestion; I'll have to check it on the other computer later. Both seem to be targeting the wrong screen resolution or something; Roxi is too small, while GameLoop is too large.

T2 and PBTV are telling me No streams to play at the moment.

RENDER 0.3.3 hasn't been released yet. It has some bugs that need to be hammered out. What do you mean by incorporating 1.0 into it?

- Trip

[bleggett29]

Cool deal. I'm on a different computer and grabbed the current build. Switching from Firefox to Chrome made GameLoop finally show me something other than a white screen. Roxi shows the UI following your suggestion; I'll have to check it on the other computer later. Both seem to be targeting the wrong screen resolution or something; Roxi is too small, while GameLoop is too large.

T2 and PBTV are telling me No streams to play at the moment.

RENDER 0.3.3 hasn't been released yet. It has some bugs that need to be hammered out. What do you mean by incorporating 1.0 into it?

- Trip

Most of the code was made in Python and ran on a headless PI5 using a browser my Windows PC to view the content. Then used Python to create the Windows executables. I only have headless Linux boxes so I haven't tested on a Linux GUI or non-Chrome base browser but still should work. Did you install the browser extension included in the download? The interactive apps have a fixed resolution. The browser extension allows them to be resized to the browser window size.

I modified both hdhomerun_tui and RENDER. I added a full scan to the tui that captures 240 seconds of ATSC3 and 30 seconds of ATSC1 then passes it to the modified RENDER to create the report. Here is a zip of the report I made a few days ago to give you an idea of how ATSC1 looks in RENDER. https://github.com/bleggett29/BA-Player ... 201612.zip

[Trip]

Most of the code was made in Python and ran on a headless PI5 using a browser my Windows PC to view the content. Then used Python to create the Windows executables. I only have headless Linux boxes so I haven't tested on a Linux GUI or non-Chrome base browser but still should work. Did you install the browser extension included in the download? The interactive apps have a fixed resolution. The browser extension allows them to be resized to the browser window size.

I modified both hdhomerun_tui and RENDER. I added a full scan to the tui that captures 240 seconds of ATSC3 and 30 seconds of ATSC1 then passes it to the modified RENDER to create the report. Here is a zip of the report I made a few days ago to give you an idea of how ATSC1 looks in RENDER. https://github.com/bleggett29/BA-Player ... 201612.zip

No, I didn't. You can tell I rushed right into trying it without reading too far. It was quite exciting to see.

This is interesting! I'd be very interested to see what your code looks like; maybe I could integrate some of it in. Was it AI-assisted like the how RENDER and the TUI were written, or did you do it manually?

- Trip

[bleggett29]

Most of the code was made in Python and ran on a headless PI5 using a browser my Windows PC to view the content. Then used Python to create the Windows executables. I only have headless Linux boxes so I haven't tested on a Linux GUI or non-Chrome base browser but still should work. Did you install the browser extension included in the download? The interactive apps have a fixed resolution. The browser extension allows them to be resized to the browser window size.

I modified both hdhomerun_tui and RENDER. I added a full scan to the tui that captures 240 seconds of ATSC3 and 30 seconds of ATSC1 then passes it to the modified RENDER to create the report. Here is a zip of the report I made a few days ago to give you an idea of how ATSC1 looks in RENDER. https://github.com/bleggett29/BA-Player ... 201612.zip

No, I didn't. You can tell I rushed right into trying it without reading too far. It was quite exciting to see.

This is interesting! I'd be very interested to see what your code looks like; maybe I could integrate some of it in. Was it AI-assisted like the how RENDER and the TUI were written, or did you do it manually?

- Trip

The reason I decided to port BA Player to windows is because when the program was run on the pi5 and uses WebSockets. I have to keep a SSH tunnel open to use the browser on my PC. But if the program and browser are on the same box, I don't need a SSH tunnel. I had at least 4 different SSH terminals open during testing.

I can't code if my life were depending on it. I know enough to get me in trouble. I can modify simple stuff on my own but not a full project. lol. I used Claude. When I get a chance, I'll put it on git.