For a no hacks alternative, I built TV Explorer. It puts the channel's published HLS stream into your browser with no interim steps. Uses the public GitHub list of more than 10,000 free channels.
That is an unbelievably slick thing that you've got there.
It feels very light-weight, it's approximately instantly-responsive. Back button works. I don't understand the stats (or my contribution to them), but whatever.
(the closed-captioning pop-up causes some overlay issues for me, though)
moar edit: Upon further review with my very not-special desktop box, I'm reasonably confident that this is the quickest, most-responsive "TV-watching" experience I've had since analog NTSC left the scene ~eons ago. It's fast like switching from channel 11 to channel 13 used to be with the very quickest and most well-behaved of tuners.
What aren't you doing that everyone else is doing?
Usually piracy software tries to maintain a little plausible deniability, but here this is suggesting it will help you stream this weekend's newly released $250m blockbuster.
I mean I get it, but also it's funny that you commented this 5 minutes after you edited the readme[1] to add in the exact type of plausible deniability I remarked was absent.
I’m not against piracy but the initial pitch made it seem like it’s more purely for trying to cast streams embedded in websites that you already are visiting and/or have access to, of which do not “allow” you to cast, or for whatever reason only work on a laptop and not on something like AirPlay. But the LLM-slop description of “random websites” in addition to the option for a TVDB API key confuse me as to what the actual focus is here.
I thought the whole point of turnstile was that it detects headless browsers and it's supposed to be "difficult" to bypass. Apparently this just simulates clicking on the checkmark. Is it really that easy?
It's a CLI that lets you select a movie, finds a matching stream from streaming websites, transcodes it, burns in subtitles in real time, and tells your TV to play it.
I tried with v1.4.1, TVs running Roku TV do not seem to be supported at this point of time, at least "castor scan" does not yield any results. Roku TV does support Apple AirPlay as an add-on as you probably know.
Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a set of interoperability standards for sharing home digital media among multimedia devices. Introduced 2004; 22 years ago.
Google Cast is a proprietary protocol developed by Google for playing locally stored or Internet-streamed audiovisual content on a compatible consumer device. The protocol is used to initiate and control playback of content on digital media players, high-definition televisions, and home audio systems using a mobile device, personal computer, or smart speaker. The protocol was first launched on July 24, 2013; 12 years ago.
For a no hacks alternative, I built TV Explorer. It puts the channel's published HLS stream into your browser with no interim steps. Uses the public GitHub list of more than 10,000 free channels.
https://tvexplorer.live
That is an unbelievably slick thing that you've got there.
It feels very light-weight, it's approximately instantly-responsive. Back button works. I don't understand the stats (or my contribution to them), but whatever.
(the closed-captioning pop-up causes some overlay issues for me, though)
moar edit: Upon further review with my very not-special desktop box, I'm reasonably confident that this is the quickest, most-responsive "TV-watching" experience I've had since analog NTSC left the scene ~eons ago. It's fast like switching from channel 11 to channel 13 used to be with the very quickest and most well-behaved of tuners.
What aren't you doing that everyone else is doing?
I think https://tv.garden/ has more channels than your especially if i look at Japan
This is incredible! It loaded so fast on my mobile and I’m able to watch channels from all over. Amazing stuff man. It requires a thread of its own
very cool. How would have this on actual TV? Load it in the built in browser?
This is such a high quality TV viewing experience, I really love it! Amazing work!
This is fantastic, as others have said. Could you talk a bit about how it's so wonderfully fast?
> I built it because I couldn't cast web video from my laptop to my TV: no Chromecast, no AirPlay.
Looks like Claude built it.
You're absolutely right and let me be honest about the honest load-bearing smoking-gun you point at.
That's the core tension — and you're right to call it out! Let me walk back my claims.
Usually piracy software tries to maintain a little plausible deniability, but here this is suggesting it will help you stream this weekend's newly released $250m blockbuster.
It could just be streaming the trailer.
Main use case
I mean I get it, but also it's funny that you commented this 5 minutes after you edited the readme[1] to add in the exact type of plausible deniability I remarked was absent.
[1] - https://github.com/stupside/castor/commit/847abd1ad0dbe893fc...
the interface shows the top movies right now on https://www.themoviedb.org/
I’m not against piracy but the initial pitch made it seem like it’s more purely for trying to cast streams embedded in websites that you already are visiting and/or have access to, of which do not “allow” you to cast, or for whatever reason only work on a laptop and not on something like AirPlay. But the LLM-slop description of “random websites” in addition to the option for a TVDB API key confuse me as to what the actual focus is here.
I thought the whole point of turnstile was that it detects headless browsers and it's supposed to be "difficult" to bypass. Apparently this just simulates clicking on the checkmark. Is it really that easy?
> was that it detects headless browsers
> Apparently this just simulates clicking on the checkmark
Not just that. It also spoofs a bunch of browser stuff.
A standard headless browser will probably get flagged.
If you can make the browser pass all the other checks going on in the background, clicking the checkmark is all that's left.
Yes, kindof…
Seems to be missing some context. What is this used for? Piracy?
It's a CLI that lets you select a movie, finds a matching stream from streaming websites, transcodes it, burns in subtitles in real time, and tells your TV to play it.
Do I need to bring my own sources or is there a maintained list?
You mean the streaming website source ? You can use the one present in the config.yaml of the project, it works fine.
I am not sure how this would help with piracy? It can only play a stream you already have access to, it doesn’t break encryption or anything.
The default config has a bunch of such sources: https://github.com/stupside/castor/blob/main/config.yaml
sources: - proxies: - "https://vidsrc-embed.ru" templates: movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}" episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}-{episode}"
It's an alternative way to cast media to your TV by way of somehow ripping the streaming video off said website or service.
I agree, is the use case any video stream other than big established ( which already support casting)... So... bootleg sports streams?
It casts whatever stream's on the page, same as VLC plays whatever file you open.
Docker version on MacOS might not find your TV.
You probably have to expose it to do Upnp through the VM that is needed for docker on Macos.
Can you cast to a Roku device with this?
I tried with v1.4.1, TVs running Roku TV do not seem to be supported at this point of time, at least "castor scan" does not yield any results. Roku TV does support Apple AirPlay as an add-on as you probably know.
This is interesting, instead of a command line interface it made me wonder what an interface right on the tv could look like.
Comparisons to watching tv, are usually a TV interface, with a TV device/app, be it an Android TV/Apple TV, etc.
Maybe I'm missing it, I couldn't see a tv interface.
The part where it can send video to any kind of tv is a pretty remarkable piece.
It's also remarkably "old" in a digital sense:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLNA * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_CastOld also in this case keeps TVs useful longer