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ObShameless reminder that https://puffer.stanford.edu https://puffer.stanford.edu remains free of charge. The site streams San Francisco affiliates and local s
by keithwinstein 6y ago
ObShameless reminder that https://puffer.stanford.edu https://puffer.stanford.edu remains free of charge.
The site streams San Francisco affiliates and local stations of NBC/CBS/ABC/PBS/FOX/CW as part of a university study on video streaming algorithms -- it's essentially a big A/B test to try to reproduce or clarify some of the findings in the research literature. We're now posting all our data and analysis each day. Research talk here: https://youtu.be/63aECX2MZvY https://youtu.be/63aECX2MZvY
The content is... well, it's U.S. network television and associated daytime programming. But some people like it! And it's free (for people inside the U.S.).
- gundmc 6y agoOnly downside is it is regularly overloaded during any moderately interesting sports event.
- jijojv 6y agoyeah "The study is limited to 500 participants simultaneously, meaning that at most 500 people are allowed to watch Puffer at a time."
- justinator 6y agoI guess good thing those are in short supply.
- xhrpost 6y agoWow that's impressive. I'm on the east coast and seeing instant buffering when changing channels.
- hadrien01 6y agoI'm in France, and switching channels is faster than on DTT!
- crazygringo 6y agoI'm no lawyer, but it doesn't exactly seem legal. Streaming free local network broadcasts was definitively ruled as illegal by the Supreme Court in 2014 -- remember that was Aereo's entire business model. [1] It seems like the Stanford service is trying to justify themselves by being an academic study and limiting to 500 concurrent participants... but it's telling they don't list any legal justification on the site, and merely generically claim: > Stanford respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe your copyright has been violated on a Stanford site, please notify puffer-copyright-notices@cs.stanford.edu and give notice as stated under Reporting of Alleged Copyright Infringement. [2] I'm honestly shocked this ever passed Stanford legal review. Maybe it never did? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo [2] https://puffer.stanford.edu/terms/ https://puffer.stanford.edu/terms/
- Paul-ish 6y agoCouldn't they ask the librarian of Congress for an exemption?
- ls612 6y agoI never understood what the business interest of the tv stations was in preventing streaming online. They already give away for free the stream over the air. What gives? Do they make money on the antennas or receivers or something?
- closeparen 6y agoThe rights to distribute a program on different media and in different geographies are sold separately. The broadcaster itself is likely not authorized to distribute the show online, so they can't authorize you to do it either.
- derefr 6y agoMuch of the programming of the OTA networks are produced in-house. (Previously, it was 100% in-house.)
- anon102010 6y agoWow. How can this be SO much better than even my cable box! Seriously, clicking up down with channels, there is very little of that slow feeling blank out / blank in thing that is so annoying. I'd love to have an OTA receiver go into something like this at my house with this simplicity and speed (I did HD Run or something once and the hoopjumping was high and quality low).
- julianlam 6y agoWhile hoopjumping is still rather high (I did need to configure a MySQL database and read through some rather cryptic docs for SchedulesDirect), it was much easier to get running using MythTV than it was a couple years prior (last time I had tried). It's definitely a nice weekend project if you are serious about cutting the cord and are in an area with decent OTA signals. I will say though, that MythTV does have the annoying "slow channel switch" issue, since it literally needs to buffer some video data before it begins to play.
- nitrogen 6y agoAh, takes me back. I ran a MythTV box ages ago. What is the I-frame interval on ATSC streams? Is it all still MPEG-2 or are there more advanced streams being broadcast now? Presumably you have to wait for an I-frame, or show garbled video until you get one.
- toast0 6y agoATSC 3.0 is starting to show up in some markets, which brings with it newer than mpeg-2 codecs. I haven't yet started to pay attention to that, but it looks like it's h.265 They skipped ATSC 2. There were a couple broadcasters experimenting with newer codecs on ATSC, but I think that mostly fizzled out.
- toast0 6y agoOTA channel surfing is slow because before you can see a picture, first you have to tune the digital signal, then you have to wait for an I frame, plus whatever decoder delay and output image processing. In order to make it better, you really need to three tuners, so you can process the streams of the up and down channels. Random access would still be slow, but oh well. I imagine cable is pretty similar, but I suspect most cable boxes are more capable than tuners in tvs, so they may be running multiple tuners, and I think there's more of a chance of subchannels being useful, too.
- ozbonus 6y agoThis was the first time I've watched live broadcast US TV since leaving the country ten years ago. Are there any shows on, or is every channel besides PBS just advertisements all day?
- aahhahahaaa 6y agoyeah holy crow it has gotten way worse? are episodes shorter or something? I think I just sat through 5 minutes of ads.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoHour shows are 40 minutes. Half hour are 18.
- applecrazy 6y agoHoly crap. Half-hour shows are basically YouTube videos in terms of length
- astura 6y agoAnd yet YouTube videos themselves are approximately 30% non-content. https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/the-wadsworth-constant/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/the-wadsworth-const...
- masklinn 6y ago> And yet YouTube videos themselves are approximately 30% non-content. That's "non-useful" content rather than "non-content", those 30% are intro and filler which you might also find in non-youtube content. And obviously it also depends strongly on what kind of content you're using youtube for. Skipping the first 30% of a recital is probably going to skip interesting content.
- ballenf 6y agoI really wish YT would drop the 10 minute cutoff for mid-roll ads. It's a destructive incentive to the platform. Let creators put ads wherever they want on whatever length video they want (within reason and with abuse checks). Then you won't get 7 minute videos with 3 minutes of added fluff just so they can be better monetized. And we can ignore creators who over-monetize if we want (or buy Premium or use adblocking).
- jerryoftheyear 6y agoJust wanted to say I'm a huge fan of this.
- zelly 6y agoFYI these are the same channels you can get with rabbit ears
- astura 6y agoOnly if you 1) live in the US 2) own a TV and 3) live close enough to the broadcasting stations to pick up their signals. I live in the US and own a TV but I don't live within 50 miles of any station broadcasting TV signals, so I can't pick up any signals with a TV top antenna.
- Jeremy1026 6y agoReplying to save for later.
- tannhaeuser 6y agoNot a mod but please don't do this as it'll litter a thread with mechanical, generated comments, like it did with "linkback" blog post comments in the 2000s and early 2010s.
- happymellon 6y agoOr click on the favourite link, or bookmark it, or literally anything else other than worthless comments like this. This isn't Facebook.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoFacebook has saves and if you click the timestamp link you can bookmark, etc.. The 'comment to bookmark' is just as wrong there.
- happymellon 6y agoDon't know and literally don't care. Facebook brings up the dregs of humanity, so I am not surprised when I see worthless comments. I would hope for a slightly higher quality of comment here though. At least we don't have > First post!
- drumhead 6y agoI love listening to another Countries radio or watching their television. It just so interesting watching their commercials or listening to their local news and events. One of my favourite things to do is ask my google home to stream random radio stations, so I’ll ask it to stream whim and see what happens, most of the time it’ll find nothing, neutral sometimes it come up with a radio station in Bakersfield, Or Detroit or Memphis. Even randomly asking for radio Toronto brings something up.
- isiahl 6y agoI know how you feel bout that. I think you would like http://radio.garden/ http://radio.garden/, it lets you spin a globe to pick a radio station from that area!
- lkxijlewlf 6y agoAnyone else getting a CSRF error on Firefox?
- thorwasdfasdf 6y agoThank you so much for mentioning this! I didn't know about it. And, it's great to have alternatives. I've been looking to diversify my viewing away from YouTube and am interested in viable alternatives.