In this section we’ll go over making live channels. You can run live channels on your local LAN to be accessible over HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). The goal is to get a number of channels running from a single virtual machine 24 hours a day so that when flipping through channels you’ll get total continuity.

Essential Programs

• ffplayout - a 24/7 video streaming server supporting multiple channels
• Azuracast - a 24/7 audio streaming server, also supporting multiple stations

These programs specifically are recommended because they’re open-source, free, well supported and feature the ability to make multiple streams with a single server installation. If you want more control over the streams, here are a few more programs for advanced use or containerization:

• Owncast - a powerful way to stream and manage a single channel per instance. Can be containerized to support multiple channels. You need a second program to broadcast the Owncast endpoints however but the output stream can be plugged into TVS. There’s a Docker compose demo that can easily be customized with Owncast and ffplayout to stream a single directory to a single channel continuously.
• Icecast - industry standard audio streaming server; while this has the ability to do video streaming it’s not as great for TVS due to troubles with video formats in web browsers. Icecast and its broadcasting tools are most at-home with Theora video and this video format was dropped in Chrome and Firefox years ago. For audio though you can’t go wrong here. You need an external broadcasting tool, which leads me to:
• Liquidsoap - a broadcasting client with a rich scripting language for automation. Azuracast is built with an Auto-DJ function that uses Liquidsoap under the hood. The scripting that you can do here allows for smart shuffling of music in the same way that commercial radio stations use as well as advertisement interstitials. You can use Liquidsoap for audio or video and it’s good to know in general, even if you don’t use everything it has to offer.

Building a Content Library

MeTube is a frontend for youtube-dl that lets you aquire videos from many different sources. You can containerize it and set up a volume for other apps to take advantage of. There are large segments of VHS tapes on Archive.org and many video compilations on sharing sites of commercials from pretty much any decade. eBay can be your friend too when it comes to VHS or DVD lots for local video capture. If you have a Jellyfin or Plex library already you may be able to utilize your existing media. For a LAN deployment in your own house pretty much anything goes but be careful of copyright if your stream is on a public server.

For commercials I’ve found it’s better to download a compilation video since there are tons of 1990’s and 1980’s commercial videos that are an hour long or more. You can efficiently split these up into individual mkvs using ffmpeg-black-split which will do what it says and separate a larger video into smaller clips whenever the screen blanks. You can play around with the sensitivity to get fewer or more clips depending on what you want.

MP4 files play well in TVS; you’ll want a 4:3 aspect ratio unless you’ve manually changed the picture size in setup. 640x480 is native resolution.

Docker Live Streaming Channel Setup