6 ms·

Everyone Is Stealing TV

54 points by naves 8mo ago

rideontime 8mo ago
This doesn't seem sustainable.
- joriJordan 8mo ago
  The old economy is never sustainable because the people it props up die. Growth is slow but collapse is fast because it takes decades for those people to build, earn their status. With our eggs in one basket, a small group of elders, they all die off within just a decade or so of each other. A much faster process than the 30-40 years it took to for them to grow their worth to trickle down on us. Entropy tears apart all structure. Its mechanism for tearing apart society is generational churn. Time is non-linear. No thing has the same epoch and erodes at the same tick. Endless linear economic growth will never be because once dead belief the elders were rich has to be rethought.
functionmouse 8mo ago
Can't the cable company just include steganography with the subscriber ID encoded into the video stream, so that when NFL appears on one of these streaming boxes, they can just kill that subscriber's service and thus the pirate streams also?
- sparrc 8mo ago
  This would be much easier said than done, most video segments are served up by CDNs, so it would have to be done via processing on CDN edge nodes. Cloudflare might support something like this but most CDNs don't as far as I'm aware. Doing it server-side would kill CDN cache hit rates and massively increase cost.
  - elzbardico 8mo ago
    You don't need to serve it all the time. A couple hundred frames here and there maybe would do the trick.
    - trinix912 8mo ago
      Good luck finding the person streaming it and proving that they did. The days of BBC TV license vans are long over.
      - masfuerte 8mo ago
        You don't need to. During premium streams the clients are frequently rekeying. So you cancel the streamer's subscription and the stream soon stops. The streamer also loses the rest of the month's subscription and goes onto a blacklist. This is already a thing with, for example, Sky in the UK.
        trinix912 8mo ago
        This works as long as each of these boxes connects directly to the streaming provider's servers. With pirate streams often there's a pirate streaming provider with a legitimate subscription, whose STB handles the rekeying, then the already-decoded AV stream is captured and redistributed. The end-users never actually stream from the streaming company, they stream from the pirate. That's often how sports are pirated, and your best bet is going to everyone's homes and checking that they're not watching your streams without a license.
        masfuerte 8mo ago
        Right? Each legitimate stream, including the pirate's, includes a unique ID. The content protection company subscribes to the pirate stream, gets the ID, and shuts down the pirate. This works today. The problem that Sky has is that most premium sports content is available in other countries with less effective copy protection, so that's where the pirate streams originate, and Sky can't do anything about them. You're right that none of this affects the end-users.
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago
  Filter it out with some combination of ffmpeg and LLMs? Super easy if it's being served using HLS and .ts files. Also, in the case of over the air, you can just pull the signal locally out of the air at no cost. You can easily forward that local over the air signal to a private group (using ATSC to IP gateways and converters), and create a mesh if you have folks distributed geographically, each hosting an antenna and shipping an IP stream (which Plex and other systems can consume, not sure if Jellyfin supports this though). https://www.antennasdirect.com/big-game-tv-station-list.html https://www.antennasdirect.com/big-game-tv-station-list.html https://www.wgal.com/article/consumer-super-bowl-2026-antenna/70192945 https://www.wgal.com/article/consumer-super-bowl-2026-antenn... https://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/ https://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/
- MoonWalk 8mo ago
  No, because they'd have to decompress and then recompress every stream. This would reduce already-lame quality (not that they'd particularly care) and require a bunch of resources.
  - mavamaarten 8mo ago
    Nah that's not how it works. Streaming video is usually cut up into small segments. By having a couple of variants per segment, they can serve you a unique and identifiable sequence of segments without having to decompress (and encrypt) them for each user.
- 1317 8mo ago
  i think normally they just display a number on the screen
- beAbU 8mo ago
  This is exactly how netflix DRM works. Every device gets a unique stream, and if that stream pops up on the high seas, the account and device is blacklisted.
nkrisc 8mo ago
I too got tired of paying so much for TV so I canceled and just stopped watching it. I find the attitude that one is entitled to entertainment media fascinating. People like to say that it’s not stealing because there is no physical product the producer is being deprived of, which is factually true, but even so why are you entitled to it at no cost? NFL games aren’t water or food.
- m463 8mo ago
  I think it's just a war with two sides. Media fighting for funds, consumers fighting for respect. Both feel entitled to some degree.
- Der_Einzige 8mo ago
  Information wants to be free. All gatekeepers of information are ontologically evil. Aaron Swartz was a saint and he'd smile on current GenAI systems.
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago
  NFL does ~$23B/year in revenue, and is targeting ~$25B/year by 2027, there is no victim for those not paying them. In various US markets, the content is free over the air. To take the other side of the "entitlement" argument, I am fascinated by the "Felony Contempt of Business Model" mental model. "You can just do things." Public airwaves? Consumer owned compute enabling adversarial consumption and interoperability? Good luck. Mission Accomplished: NFL to Hit Goodell’s $25B Revenue Goal - https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/mission-accomplished-nfl-hit-goodell-190000733.html https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/mission-accomplished-nfl-h... - February 2nd, 2026
- ronsor 8mo ago
  Desire, convenience, and price are always in tension. Someone may desire to watch something, but it's too inconvenient. It may also be that there is not enough convenience for the price being paid. We see this issue regularly with DRM. Do people need to watch the content? No. Are people entitled to the content? Is it "stealing" or not? That last one is probably up for date. Regardless, the answers to those questions don't matter in the end. The public has made its demands clear time after time. The rightsholders can either deliver a convenient experience at a reasonable* price, or they can play whack-a-mole with pirates forever. Spotify managed to do it; Steam managed to do it. Only video media companies are so stubborn these days. *There is always much debate on what constitutes a "reasonable" price, but it is certainly no more than a consumer is willing to pay. If that's less than the cost of producing the product, then perhaps the business model simply isn't viable.
verdverm 8mo ago
Well, they unbundled stuff into streaming, then went around and made exclusive deals and forced us back into the same monthly amounts, if not more Consumers are reacting Maybe also an alternative if you want to participate in the boycotts until the CEOs stop cozying up to the US admin (emperor)
- tehwebguy 8mo ago
  > went around and made exclusive deals and forced us back into the same monthly amounts I've said this for years but most people probably don't watch more than 2 streamers / month every month. Pay for one month at a time and be pleasantly surprised at how many months you don't pay for 1 or more that you're paying for now.
  - mikepk 8mo ago
    Made me think, is there an opportunity to build a management layer for this? Handle subscribing and cancelling automatically when you want to watch certain things? Would probably be blocked pretty fast but amusing to think about.
    - secretballot 8mo ago
      [dead]
    - mindslight 8mo ago
      There is an astute sibling comment by 'secretballot that is [dead]. Turn on showdead in your HN profile to see (/vouch) for it.
- standardUser 8mo ago
  A decent cable package was around $150/mo in the 90's, before streaming took hold. That's for scheduled programming only, and always with lots of ads. Do you really think we're worse off today? Is anyone paying close to a 90's cable bill for their various streaming services? And is the quality the same as we endured back then?
jrgaston 8mo ago
You can live just fine without tv. Better, in fact. Read books -- they are a lot more interesting.
MoonWalk 8mo ago
Paywalled.
- sharts 8mo ago
  This is the reason people steal lol
Uhhrrr 8mo ago
https://archive.ph/t9pIW https://archive.ph/t9pIW (heh)
- kazinator 8mo ago
  Tired of subscriptions everywhere, readers are embracing trogue archive services.
Aurornis 8mo ago
The article buries the important part further down: These boxes are often used as botnet nodes and join residential proxy networks. The TV feature is a trojan horse to get it into your house. The high price makes it feel legitimate. More from Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-streaming-box-part-of-a-botnet/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-strea...
- kazinator 8mo ago
  Maybe you don't have to use their box. The article mentions that their streaming apps don't even come preinstalled on the box. That means users have to go through some activation and installation procedure that they could probably do on a mainstream, commercial Android box. Or maybe the malware is in the streaming app itself, in which case the box is irrelevant?
  - xethos 8mo ago
    You would think so, but: > You won’t find apps for either service on Google Play or any other app store; users who have tried report that it’s impossible to run them on any other third-party device, suggesting that they were custom-built by or on behalf of the makers of SuperBox and vSeeBox.
    - kazinator 8mo ago
      I'm lucky that I use a greymarket app for Japanese TV that runs on mainstream consumer boxes. If the vendor is insisting that you use their box and locks the application to that, that is suspicious; it clearly indicates they are not really serious about the service and really want that specific box in your home for some reason unrelated to the service. Huge red flag. Everyone normal who wants to sell a service would much rather just sell you the service for $200, without that having to include any hardware; dealing hardware is a hassle. Except in one sense in that you can sell a validated total configuration that requires less support.
- mindslight 8mo ago
  Oh no, not residential proxy networks. Gasp. I would much prefer a world where people installed communications privacy tools of their own volition, forming a critical mass of users that creates market pressure against companies that demand ever-invasive surveillance. But since that is apparently too much self-actualization to ask for, then I will settle for the world in which people are unwittingly induced to set up privacy tools for others, by dodgy companies promising free TV.
stuxnet79 8mo ago
It is estimated that all these pirate streams combined bring in more revenue than Netflix & other established media companies[1]. Margins are of course pretty incredible as capex and opex is effectively zero since the content is "free". Such a great business that it's attracted organized crime. But on a technical level how can a federated "shadow Netflix" operate out in the open and pull in that kind of revenue without ringing all kinds of alarm bells. They need infrastructure and obviously storing/streaming copyrighted content is against the policy of virtually every cloud provider. I also doubt these guys are bootstrapping & setting up their own datacenters. I would love a speculative analysis on how all of this works that goes in the weeds. [1] https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/iptv-market-79583912.html https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/iptv-market...
- jsnell 8mo ago
  That does not sound like credible estimate, and your link does not make any such claim.
1e1a 8mo ago
"There are no 6K TVs available for sale to consumers" This seems to be incorrect. What about the Samsung TQ65QN900FTXXC, which is claimed to have a resolution of 7680 x 4320 (8K)?
- guidopallemans 8mo ago
  I think the point the article wants to make is that specifically 6K isn't used by consumers, whereas indeed 4K and 8K are.
juujian 8mo ago
Even now living in the states, I cannot comprehend how someone can end up paying hundreds of dollars a month for tv streaming. Can someone enlighten me?
- MisterTea 8mo ago
  Live TV streaming such as Youtube TV is just cable TV packaged as an internet streaming service which costs something like $80 USD per month. In addition you have a $10-20+ Netflix subscription, Disney+/Hulu, Paramount, HBO etc. All that on top of your $50-$100+/month internet service. I know people spending over 250/month on multiple streaming services.
- michaelt 8mo ago
  Google ‘more fios tv’ As I understand it, the difference is sports channels. Sportsball stars’ high salaries are paid from TV rights, and the subscription cost reflects that.
- jabroni_salad 8mo ago
  If you subscribe to cable or satellite, your bill will somehow trend up to around $300/mo for what the CSRs inform you are perfectly good reasons unless you play the 'pretend to threaten to cancel' game every now and then. It's a form of market segmentation.
worik 8mo ago
TV and movies, but no longer music? Because the Spotify business model, so far, does not play silly games releasing, then removing content. It is very frustrating to pay money to streaming services and they remove content you're watching or they have partial content They have a better example in Spotify, or will causation go the other way?
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
xcrjm 8mo ago
Weird! This went from the home page to completely gone from the list in the time it took me to read a few paragraphs of the article...
- gfody 8mo ago
  I noticed this as well, presumably nuked from orbit by a hoard of Superbox
MisterTea 8mo ago
Going back I dumped all the streaming platforms as most of their new programming was not at all interesting. Turns out I was watching reruns of shows I downloaded years ago that were still sitting on my server. So I made my own cable channel by dumping every downloaded TV show into a single playlist then turn shuffle on. I have a low power PC hooked to my TV running Debian. The power is low enough that I just turn the TV off and leave the PC running. Since I mostly put the TV on to have background noise this solution works perfectly. It's really nice to turn the TV on and see random x-files, mst3k, max headroom, cowboy bebop, futurama, and so on 24/7. And most of it is in SD or ripped from TV/VHS which doesn't bother me at all, in fact, it adds charm and character via those artifacts of the past.
- laleck 8mo ago
  There are a couple projects dedicated to making "tv channels" from media servers like jellyfin. See: https://ersatztv.org https://ersatztv.org or https://www.quasitv.app https://www.quasitv.app
  - AshesOfOwls 8mo ago
    I've been working on my own flavor of this but it's digital media instead of local files, https://react.tv https://react.tv
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
jackhackett 8mo ago
I've read a few articles that claim a large part of the reason ATSC 3.0 is supported by broadcasters is the potential money to be made from marketing. All information about what you watch, and any personal details stored in the box, will be totally available to broadcasters. Supposedly they will be able to change the commercials shown to each viewer based on your information they get from the box. If your box has a dvr function they will able to change and update the commercials in any programs you have recorded. DRM is broadcasters way of finding more ways to sell people items or services they don't need or want.
janlucien 8mo ago
[dead]

54 points by naves 8mo ago

rideontime 8mo ago

This doesn't seem sustainable.

joriJordan 8mo ago
The old economy is never sustainable because the people it props up die. Growth is slow but collapse is fast because it takes decades for those people to build, earn their status. With our eggs in one basket, a small group of elders, they all die off within just a decade or so of each other. A much faster process than the 30-40 years it took to for them to grow their worth to trickle down on us. Entropy tears apart all structure. Its mechanism for tearing apart society is generational churn. Time is non-linear. No thing has the same epoch and erodes at the same tick. Endless linear economic growth will never be because once dead belief the elders were rich has to be rethought.

functionmouse 8mo ago

Can't the cable company just include steganography with the subscriber ID encoded into the video stream, so that when NFL appears on one of these streaming boxes, they can just kill that subscriber's service and thus the pirate streams also?

sparrc 8mo ago
This would be much easier said than done, most video segments are served up by CDNs, so it would have to be done via processing on CDN edge nodes. Cloudflare might support something like this but most CDNs don't as far as I'm aware. Doing it server-side would kill CDN cache hit rates and massively increase cost.
- elzbardico 8mo ago
  You don't need to serve it all the time. A couple hundred frames here and there maybe would do the trick.
  - trinix912 8mo ago
    Good luck finding the person streaming it and proving that they did. The days of BBC TV license vans are long over.
    - masfuerte 8mo ago
      You don't need to. During premium streams the clients are frequently rekeying. So you cancel the streamer's subscription and the stream soon stops. The streamer also loses the rest of the month's subscription and goes onto a blacklist. This is already a thing with, for example, Sky in the UK.
      - trinix912 8mo ago
        This works as long as each of these boxes connects directly to the streaming provider's servers. With pirate streams often there's a pirate streaming provider with a legitimate subscription, whose STB handles the rekeying, then the already-decoded AV stream is captured and redistributed. The end-users never actually stream from the streaming company, they stream from the pirate. That's often how sports are pirated, and your best bet is going to everyone's homes and checking that they're not watching your streams without a license.
        masfuerte 8mo ago
        Right? Each legitimate stream, including the pirate's, includes a unique ID. The content protection company subscribes to the pirate stream, gets the ID, and shuts down the pirate. This works today. The problem that Sky has is that most premium sports content is available in other countries with less effective copy protection, so that's where the pirate streams originate, and Sky can't do anything about them. You're right that none of this affects the end-users.
toomuchtodo 8mo ago
Filter it out with some combination of ffmpeg and LLMs? Super easy if it's being served using HLS and .ts files. Also, in the case of over the air, you can just pull the signal locally out of the air at no cost. You can easily forward that local over the air signal to a private group (using ATSC to IP gateways and converters), and create a mesh if you have folks distributed geographically, each hosting an antenna and shipping an IP stream (which Plex and other systems can consume, not sure if Jellyfin supports this though). https://www.antennasdirect.com/big-game-tv-station-list.html https://www.antennasdirect.com/big-game-tv-station-list.html https://www.wgal.com/article/consumer-super-bowl-2026-antenna/70192945 https://www.wgal.com/article/consumer-super-bowl-2026-antenn... https://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/ https://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/
MoonWalk 8mo ago
No, because they'd have to decompress and then recompress every stream. This would reduce already-lame quality (not that they'd particularly care) and require a bunch of resources.
- mavamaarten 8mo ago
  Nah that's not how it works. Streaming video is usually cut up into small segments. By having a couple of variants per segment, they can serve you a unique and identifiable sequence of segments without having to decompress (and encrypt) them for each user.
1317 8mo ago
i think normally they just display a number on the screen
beAbU 8mo ago
This is exactly how netflix DRM works. Every device gets a unique stream, and if that stream pops up on the high seas, the account and device is blacklisted.

nkrisc 8mo ago

I too got tired of paying so much for TV so I canceled and just stopped watching it. I find the attitude that one is entitled to entertainment media fascinating. People like to say that it’s not stealing because there is no physical product the producer is being deprived of, which is factually true, but even so why are you entitled to it at no cost? NFL games aren’t water or food.

m463 8mo ago
I think it's just a war with two sides. Media fighting for funds, consumers fighting for respect. Both feel entitled to some degree.
Der_Einzige 8mo ago
Information wants to be free. All gatekeepers of information are ontologically evil. Aaron Swartz was a saint and he'd smile on current GenAI systems.
toomuchtodo 8mo ago
NFL does ~$23B/year in revenue, and is targeting ~$25B/year by 2027, there is no victim for those not paying them. In various US markets, the content is free over the air. To take the other side of the "entitlement" argument, I am fascinated by the "Felony Contempt of Business Model" mental model. "You can just do things." Public airwaves? Consumer owned compute enabling adversarial consumption and interoperability? Good luck. Mission Accomplished: NFL to Hit Goodell’s $25B Revenue Goal - https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/mission-accomplished-nfl-hit-goodell-190000733.html https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/mission-accomplished-nfl-h... - February 2nd, 2026
ronsor 8mo ago
Desire, convenience, and price are always in tension. Someone may desire to watch something, but it's too inconvenient. It may also be that there is not enough convenience for the price being paid. We see this issue regularly with DRM. Do people need to watch the content? No. Are people entitled to the content? Is it "stealing" or not? That last one is probably up for date. Regardless, the answers to those questions don't matter in the end. The public has made its demands clear time after time. The rightsholders can either deliver a convenient experience at a reasonable* price, or they can play whack-a-mole with pirates forever. Spotify managed to do it; Steam managed to do it. Only video media companies are so stubborn these days. *There is always much debate on what constitutes a "reasonable" price, but it is certainly no more than a consumer is willing to pay. If that's less than the cost of producing the product, then perhaps the business model simply isn't viable.

verdverm 8mo ago

Well, they unbundled stuff into streaming, then went around and made exclusive deals and forced us back into the same monthly amounts, if not more Consumers are reacting Maybe also an alternative if you want to participate in the boycotts until the CEOs stop cozying up to the US admin (emperor)

tehwebguy 8mo ago
> went around and made exclusive deals and forced us back into the same monthly amounts I've said this for years but most people probably don't watch more than 2 streamers / month every month. Pay for one month at a time and be pleasantly surprised at how many months you don't pay for 1 or more that you're paying for now.
- mikepk 8mo ago
  Made me think, is there an opportunity to build a management layer for this? Handle subscribing and cancelling automatically when you want to watch certain things? Would probably be blocked pretty fast but amusing to think about.
  - secretballot 8mo ago
    [dead]
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    There is an astute sibling comment by 'secretballot that is [dead]. Turn on showdead in your HN profile to see (/vouch) for it.
standardUser 8mo ago
A decent cable package was around $150/mo in the 90's, before streaming took hold. That's for scheduled programming only, and always with lots of ads. Do you really think we're worse off today? Is anyone paying close to a 90's cable bill for their various streaming services? And is the quality the same as we endured back then?

jrgaston 8mo ago

You can live just fine without tv. Better, in fact. Read books -- they are a lot more interesting.

MoonWalk 8mo ago

Paywalled.

sharts 8mo ago
This is the reason people steal lol

Uhhrrr 8mo ago

https://archive.ph/t9pIW https://archive.ph/t9pIW (heh)

kazinator 8mo ago
Tired of subscriptions everywhere, readers are embracing trogue archive services.

Aurornis 8mo ago

The article buries the important part further down: These boxes are often used as botnet nodes and join residential proxy networks. The TV feature is a trojan horse to get it into your house. The high price makes it feel legitimate. More from Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-streaming-box-part-of-a-botnet/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-strea...

kazinator 8mo ago
Maybe you don't have to use their box. The article mentions that their streaming apps don't even come preinstalled on the box. That means users have to go through some activation and installation procedure that they could probably do on a mainstream, commercial Android box. Or maybe the malware is in the streaming app itself, in which case the box is irrelevant?
- xethos 8mo ago
  You would think so, but: > You won’t find apps for either service on Google Play or any other app store; users who have tried report that it’s impossible to run them on any other third-party device, suggesting that they were custom-built by or on behalf of the makers of SuperBox and vSeeBox.
  - kazinator 8mo ago
    I'm lucky that I use a greymarket app for Japanese TV that runs on mainstream consumer boxes. If the vendor is insisting that you use their box and locks the application to that, that is suspicious; it clearly indicates they are not really serious about the service and really want that specific box in your home for some reason unrelated to the service. Huge red flag. Everyone normal who wants to sell a service would much rather just sell you the service for $200, without that having to include any hardware; dealing hardware is a hassle. Except in one sense in that you can sell a validated total configuration that requires less support.
mindslight 8mo ago
Oh no, not residential proxy networks. Gasp. I would much prefer a world where people installed communications privacy tools of their own volition, forming a critical mass of users that creates market pressure against companies that demand ever-invasive surveillance. But since that is apparently too much self-actualization to ask for, then I will settle for the world in which people are unwittingly induced to set up privacy tools for others, by dodgy companies promising free TV.

stuxnet79 8mo ago

It is estimated that all these pirate streams combined bring in more revenue than Netflix & other established media companies[1]. Margins are of course pretty incredible as capex and opex is effectively zero since the content is "free". Such a great business that it's attracted organized crime. But on a technical level how can a federated "shadow Netflix" operate out in the open and pull in that kind of revenue without ringing all kinds of alarm bells. They need infrastructure and obviously storing/streaming copyrighted content is against the policy of virtually every cloud provider. I also doubt these guys are bootstrapping & setting up their own datacenters. I would love a speculative analysis on how all of this works that goes in the weeds. [1] https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/iptv-market-79583912.html https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/iptv-market...

jsnell 8mo ago
That does not sound like credible estimate, and your link does not make any such claim.

1e1a 8mo ago

"There are no 6K TVs available for sale to consumers" This seems to be incorrect. What about the Samsung TQ65QN900FTXXC, which is claimed to have a resolution of 7680 x 4320 (8K)?

guidopallemans 8mo ago
I think the point the article wants to make is that specifically 6K isn't used by consumers, whereas indeed 4K and 8K are.

juujian 8mo ago

Even now living in the states, I cannot comprehend how someone can end up paying hundreds of dollars a month for tv streaming. Can someone enlighten me?

MisterTea 8mo ago
Live TV streaming such as Youtube TV is just cable TV packaged as an internet streaming service which costs something like $80 USD per month. In addition you have a $10-20+ Netflix subscription, Disney+/Hulu, Paramount, HBO etc. All that on top of your $50-$100+/month internet service. I know people spending over 250/month on multiple streaming services.
michaelt 8mo ago
Google ‘more fios tv’ As I understand it, the difference is sports channels. Sportsball stars’ high salaries are paid from TV rights, and the subscription cost reflects that.
jabroni_salad 8mo ago
If you subscribe to cable or satellite, your bill will somehow trend up to around $300/mo for what the CSRs inform you are perfectly good reasons unless you play the 'pretend to threaten to cancel' game every now and then. It's a form of market segmentation.

worik 8mo ago

TV and movies, but no longer music? Because the Spotify business model, so far, does not play silly games releasing, then removing content. It is very frustrating to pay money to streaming services and they remove content you're watching or they have partial content They have a better example in Spotify, or will causation go the other way?

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

xcrjm 8mo ago

Weird! This went from the home page to completely gone from the list in the time it took me to read a few paragraphs of the article...

gfody 8mo ago
I noticed this as well, presumably nuked from orbit by a hoard of Superbox

MisterTea 8mo ago

Going back I dumped all the streaming platforms as most of their new programming was not at all interesting. Turns out I was watching reruns of shows I downloaded years ago that were still sitting on my server. So I made my own cable channel by dumping every downloaded TV show into a single playlist then turn shuffle on. I have a low power PC hooked to my TV running Debian. The power is low enough that I just turn the TV off and leave the PC running. Since I mostly put the TV on to have background noise this solution works perfectly. It's really nice to turn the TV on and see random x-files, mst3k, max headroom, cowboy bebop, futurama, and so on 24/7. And most of it is in SD or ripped from TV/VHS which doesn't bother me at all, in fact, it adds charm and character via those artifacts of the past.

laleck 8mo ago
There are a couple projects dedicated to making "tv channels" from media servers like jellyfin. See: https://ersatztv.org https://ersatztv.org or https://www.quasitv.app https://www.quasitv.app
- AshesOfOwls 8mo ago
  I've been working on my own flavor of this but it's digital media instead of local files, https://react.tv https://react.tv

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

jackhackett 8mo ago

I've read a few articles that claim a large part of the reason ATSC 3.0 is supported by broadcasters is the potential money to be made from marketing. All information about what you watch, and any personal details stored in the box, will be totally available to broadcasters. Supposedly they will be able to change the commercials shown to each viewer based on your information they get from the box. If your box has a dvr function they will able to change and update the commercials in any programs you have recorded. DRM is broadcasters way of finding more ways to sell people items or services they don't need or want.

janlucien 8mo ago

[dead]