3 ms·

Better and Cheaper Than IPTV

348 points by xonery 4mo ago

selectively 4mo ago
We're just throwing straight up piracy on HN now? We're vibing piracy now? Felonies via API?
- inigyou 4mo ago
  Yes. Unironically yes. Except that it's a misdemeanor. It's a felony for the author of this code and for dang if he doesn't remove this post (distributing piracy tools), but it's a misdemeanor for the ones watching the streams.
- Razengan 4mo ago
  FAAS
rideontime 4mo ago
Seems to be missing some context. What is this used for? Piracy?
- selectively 4mo ago
  [dead]
- pogue 4mo ago
  It's an alternative way to cast media to your TV by way of somehow ripping the streaming video off said website or service.
- xonery 4mo ago
  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.
  - 2gremlin181 4mo ago
    Do I need to bring my own sources or is there a maintained list?
    - xonery 4mo ago
      You mean the streaming website source ? You can use the one present in the config.yaml of the project, it works fine.
    - inigyou 4mo ago
      it comes preconfigured with three different illegal pirate sites.
      - whatsupdog 4mo ago
        Looks like they removed now, and changed some language in Readme: https://github.com/stupside/castor/commit/692b2f18b8f6e99c321f03fdb0464b833d589cb9 https://github.com/stupside/castor/commit/692b2f18b8f6e99c32...
        inigyou 4mo ago
        Lol. I wonder how that will hold up in court. "Your Honor, Castor is not designed for piracy" "Then why did the last version automatically access three pirate sites?"
  - keepupnow 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
  - rideontime 4mo ago
    What kind of streaming websites? Like, Netflix? Amazon Prime?
- mikeweiss 4mo ago
  I agree, is the use case any video stream other than big established ( which already support casting)... So... bootleg sports streams?
  - xonery 4mo ago
    It casts whatever stream's on the page, same as VLC plays whatever file you open.
    - mikeweiss 4mo ago
      But you didn't answer my question
- cortesoft 4mo ago
  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.
  - PieUser 4mo ago
    The default config has a bunch of such sources: https://github.com/stupside/castor/blob/main/config.yaml https://github.com/stupside/castor/blob/main/config.yaml sources: - proxies: - "https://vidsrc-embed.ru https://vidsrc-embed.ru" templates: movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}" episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}-{episode}" - proxies: - "https://1embed.cc" - "https://www.vidking.net" templates: movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}" episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}/{episode}" - proxies: - "https://www.rivestream.app" templates: movie: "/embed/torrent?type=movie&id={itemID}" episode: "/embed/torrent?type=tv&id={itemID}&season={season}&episode={episode}" - proxies: - "https://www.rivestream.app" templates: movie: "/embed?type=movie&id={itemID}" episode: "/embed?type=tv&id={itemID}&season={season}&episode={episode}"
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    You already have access to pirated streams. This app plays them for you. Check the source addresses in config.yaml.
krackers 4mo ago
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?
- xonery 4mo ago
  Yes, kindof…
- KomoD 4mo ago
  > 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.
- Saris 4mo ago
  If you can make the browser pass all the other checks going on in the background, clicking the checkmark is all that's left.
- bob1029 4mo ago
  People have been automating WoW for a generation using things like peripherals duct taped to oscillating fans despite multi-million dollar budgets designed to defeat things far more sophisticated than this. I would think of headless browser automation in exactly the same way you would about cheating in FPS video games. The red team always has the initiative and can win if they want to spend enough time and money.
- jeroenhd 4mo ago
  With the right simulated events, a headless browser becomes indistinguishable from a real browser without platform detection. It's not hard to figure out that these headless browsers are running a software renderer on Linux. In time, they're just going to have to detect Linux users and force them to fill out one or multiple challenges if workarounds like these keep getting used. The checkbox is just a small part of what the checks are doing. It's monitoring everything the browser is doing and how the browser is responding to certain events up until you tick the checkbox, at which point it determines if you need one of those "are you human" challenges or if you can pass without interruption, based on how bot-like you are.
xonery 4mo ago
Docker version on MacOS might not find your TV.
- monksy 4mo ago
  You probably have to expose it to do Upnp through the VM that is needed for docker on Macos.
j45 4mo ago
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.
- defrost 4mo ago
  It's also remarkably "old" in a digital sense: Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a set of interoperability standards for sharing home digital media among multimedia devices. Introduced 2004; 22 years ago. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLNA 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. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cast
  - j45 4mo ago
    Old also in this case keeps TVs useful longer
slg 4mo ago
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.
- devindotcom 4mo ago
  the interface shows the top movies right now on https://www.themoviedb.org/ https://www.themoviedb.org/
- some-guy 4mo ago
  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.
  - xonery 4mo ago
    [flagged]
- quantummagic 4mo ago
  It could just be streaming the trailer.
  - xonery 4mo ago
    Main use case
    - slg 4mo ago
      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/847abd1ad0dbe893fc17473fc982fa80b61b79cf https://github.com/stupside/castor/commit/847abd1ad0dbe893fc...
ranger_danger 4mo ago
Can you cast to a Roku device with this?
- kls0e 4mo ago
  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.
dtagames 4mo 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 https://tvexplorer.live
- nchagnet 4mo ago
  This is such a high quality TV viewing experience, I really love it! Amazing work!
  - dtagames 4mo ago
    Thank you very much. I'm delighted that you like it!
- ssl-3 4mo ago
  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?
  - mschuster91 4mo ago
    > What aren't you doing that everyone else is doing? Seems to be the fact that there's no advertising, tracking or other SDKs and the entire JS is contained in two files.
    - dtagames 4mo ago
      Thank you for noticing!
hperrin 4mo ago
> 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.
- yard2010 4mo ago
  You're absolutely right and let me be honest about the honest load-bearing smoking-gun you point at.
  - dimator 4mo ago
    That's the core tension — and you're right to call it out! Let me walk back my claims.
    - Razengan 4mo ago
      Yearly Quota Exceeded. Click here to buy the $69/minute plan.
- simondotau 4mo ago
  I'm pretty sure it was built by a compiler, using libraries provided by Google and others. Until Claude can directly output machine code packaged for distribution, it's just another middleman between the source of intent (the human) and the final deliverable. </sarcasm, mostly>
- xonery 4mo ago
  Claude helped me out for sure, i'm not a DLNA or FFMPEG beast, but i solved a problem I had and that's what matters. If it solved a problem you have, even better.
  - haaz 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - goodmythical 4mo ago
vivzkestrel 4mo ago
- very stupid comment: i still have no idea what this project does even after reading the README - can someone kindly explain what is the actual problem statement and what the author is trying to solve here?
- inigyou 4mo ago
  You type in the ID of a movie and it pirates it for you
aussieguy1234 4mo ago
Can this be used without a TV, lets say if I just want to play the streams with VLC?
- dizhn 4mo ago
  I would hope it would do the "find and extract stream source" on the web page bit well. (This is quite hard on some sites). From there VLC can handle it. I use "Web Video Caster" on Android to stream videos from websites to my TV. Free version is fine.
stef25 4mo ago
Immediately worked for me on a simple Samsung bought 15+ years ago. What's the best way to use it, write your own search to parse all the json pages https://vsembed.ru/movies/latest/page-1.json https://vsembed.ru/movies/latest/page-1.json ?
m00dy 4mo ago
>Castor launches headless Chrome with a randomized fingerprint and stealth scripts to hide automation. you lost me in there.
- m00dy 4mo ago
  I work with browser fingerprinting, so I took a look at the repo to see what it actually does. From what I can tell, it only patches navigator, the Audio API, and the Canvas API. That is pretty basic, so it will likely get flagged easily.
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    Depends what you're trying to bypass. Cloudflare isn't as strict as Google.
    - m00dy 4mo ago
      depends on what you're trying to bypass in Cloudflare, turnstile or interstitial ?
inigyou 4mo ago
This situation where bots have to run a headless browser in a new profile is just stupid. Can we have the old internet back? Please? Cloudflare you're not stopping bots, you're just wasting effort on both sides while siphoning access logs and passwords to the NSA.
paxys 4mo ago
It's about as much effort as a torrent, so I don't see the point.

348 points by xonery 4mo ago

selectively 4mo ago

We're just throwing straight up piracy on HN now? We're vibing piracy now? Felonies via API?

inigyou 4mo ago
Yes. Unironically yes. Except that it's a misdemeanor. It's a felony for the author of this code and for dang if he doesn't remove this post (distributing piracy tools), but it's a misdemeanor for the ones watching the streams.
Razengan 4mo ago
FAAS

rideontime 4mo ago

Seems to be missing some context. What is this used for? Piracy?

selectively 4mo ago
[dead]
pogue 4mo ago
It's an alternative way to cast media to your TV by way of somehow ripping the streaming video off said website or service.
xonery 4mo ago
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.
- 2gremlin181 4mo ago
  Do I need to bring my own sources or is there a maintained list?
  - xonery 4mo ago
    You mean the streaming website source ? You can use the one present in the config.yaml of the project, it works fine.
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    it comes preconfigured with three different illegal pirate sites.
    - whatsupdog 4mo ago
      Looks like they removed now, and changed some language in Readme: https://github.com/stupside/castor/commit/692b2f18b8f6e99c321f03fdb0464b833d589cb9 https://github.com/stupside/castor/commit/692b2f18b8f6e99c32...
      - inigyou 4mo ago
        Lol. I wonder how that will hold up in court. "Your Honor, Castor is not designed for piracy" "Then why did the last version automatically access three pirate sites?"
- keepupnow 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- rideontime 4mo ago
  What kind of streaming websites? Like, Netflix? Amazon Prime?
mikeweiss 4mo ago
I agree, is the use case any video stream other than big established ( which already support casting)... So... bootleg sports streams?
- xonery 4mo ago
  It casts whatever stream's on the page, same as VLC plays whatever file you open.
  - mikeweiss 4mo ago
    But you didn't answer my question
cortesoft 4mo ago
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.
- PieUser 4mo ago
  The default config has a bunch of such sources: https://github.com/stupside/castor/blob/main/config.yaml https://github.com/stupside/castor/blob/main/config.yaml sources: - proxies: - "https://vidsrc-embed.ru https://vidsrc-embed.ru" templates: movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}" episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}-{episode}" - proxies: - "https://1embed.cc" - "https://www.vidking.net" templates: movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}" episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}/{episode}" - proxies: - "https://www.rivestream.app" templates: movie: "/embed/torrent?type=movie&id={itemID}" episode: "/embed/torrent?type=tv&id={itemID}&season={season}&episode={episode}" - proxies: - "https://www.rivestream.app" templates: movie: "/embed?type=movie&id={itemID}" episode: "/embed?type=tv&id={itemID}&season={season}&episode={episode}"
- inigyou 4mo ago
  You already have access to pirated streams. This app plays them for you. Check the source addresses in config.yaml.

krackers 4mo ago

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?

xonery 4mo ago
Yes, kindof…
KomoD 4mo ago
> 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.
Saris 4mo ago
If you can make the browser pass all the other checks going on in the background, clicking the checkmark is all that's left.
bob1029 4mo ago
People have been automating WoW for a generation using things like peripherals duct taped to oscillating fans despite multi-million dollar budgets designed to defeat things far more sophisticated than this. I would think of headless browser automation in exactly the same way you would about cheating in FPS video games. The red team always has the initiative and can win if they want to spend enough time and money.
jeroenhd 4mo ago
With the right simulated events, a headless browser becomes indistinguishable from a real browser without platform detection. It's not hard to figure out that these headless browsers are running a software renderer on Linux. In time, they're just going to have to detect Linux users and force them to fill out one or multiple challenges if workarounds like these keep getting used. The checkbox is just a small part of what the checks are doing. It's monitoring everything the browser is doing and how the browser is responding to certain events up until you tick the checkbox, at which point it determines if you need one of those "are you human" challenges or if you can pass without interruption, based on how bot-like you are.

xonery 4mo ago

Docker version on MacOS might not find your TV.

monksy 4mo ago
You probably have to expose it to do Upnp through the VM that is needed for docker on Macos.

j45 4mo ago

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.

defrost 4mo ago
It's also remarkably "old" in a digital sense: Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a set of interoperability standards for sharing home digital media among multimedia devices. Introduced 2004; 22 years ago. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLNA 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. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cast
- j45 4mo ago
  Old also in this case keeps TVs useful longer

slg 4mo ago

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.

devindotcom 4mo ago
the interface shows the top movies right now on https://www.themoviedb.org/ https://www.themoviedb.org/
some-guy 4mo ago
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.
- xonery 4mo ago
  [flagged]
quantummagic 4mo ago
It could just be streaming the trailer.
- xonery 4mo ago
  Main use case
  - slg 4mo ago
    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/847abd1ad0dbe893fc17473fc982fa80b61b79cf https://github.com/stupside/castor/commit/847abd1ad0dbe893fc...

ranger_danger 4mo ago

Can you cast to a Roku device with this?

kls0e 4mo ago
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.

dtagames 4mo 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 https://tvexplorer.live

nchagnet 4mo ago
This is such a high quality TV viewing experience, I really love it! Amazing work!
- dtagames 4mo ago
  Thank you very much. I'm delighted that you like it!
ssl-3 4mo ago
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?
- mschuster91 4mo ago
  > What aren't you doing that everyone else is doing? Seems to be the fact that there's no advertising, tracking or other SDKs and the entire JS is contained in two files.
  - dtagames 4mo ago
    Thank you for noticing!

hperrin 4mo ago

> 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.

yard2010 4mo ago
You're absolutely right and let me be honest about the honest load-bearing smoking-gun you point at.
- dimator 4mo ago
  That's the core tension — and you're right to call it out! Let me walk back my claims.
  - Razengan 4mo ago
    Yearly Quota Exceeded. Click here to buy the $69/minute plan.
simondotau 4mo ago
I'm pretty sure it was built by a compiler, using libraries provided by Google and others. Until Claude can directly output machine code packaged for distribution, it's just another middleman between the source of intent (the human) and the final deliverable. </sarcasm, mostly>
xonery 4mo ago
Claude helped me out for sure, i'm not a DLNA or FFMPEG beast, but i solved a problem I had and that's what matters. If it solved a problem you have, even better.
- haaz 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - goodmythical 4mo ago

vivzkestrel 4mo ago

- very stupid comment: i still have no idea what this project does even after reading the README - can someone kindly explain what is the actual problem statement and what the author is trying to solve here?

inigyou 4mo ago
You type in the ID of a movie and it pirates it for you

aussieguy1234 4mo ago

Can this be used without a TV, lets say if I just want to play the streams with VLC?

dizhn 4mo ago
I would hope it would do the "find and extract stream source" on the web page bit well. (This is quite hard on some sites). From there VLC can handle it. I use "Web Video Caster" on Android to stream videos from websites to my TV. Free version is fine.

stef25 4mo ago

Immediately worked for me on a simple Samsung bought 15+ years ago. What's the best way to use it, write your own search to parse all the json pages https://vsembed.ru/movies/latest/page-1.json https://vsembed.ru/movies/latest/page-1.json ?

m00dy 4mo ago

>Castor launches headless Chrome with a randomized fingerprint and stealth scripts to hide automation. you lost me in there.

m00dy 4mo ago
I work with browser fingerprinting, so I took a look at the repo to see what it actually does. From what I can tell, it only patches navigator, the Audio API, and the Canvas API. That is pretty basic, so it will likely get flagged easily.
- inigyou 4mo ago
  Depends what you're trying to bypass. Cloudflare isn't as strict as Google.
  - m00dy 4mo ago
    depends on what you're trying to bypass in Cloudflare, turnstile or interstitial ?

inigyou 4mo ago

This situation where bots have to run a headless browser in a new profile is just stupid. Can we have the old internet back? Please? Cloudflare you're not stopping bots, you're just wasting effort on both sides while siphoning access logs and passwords to the NSA.

paxys 4mo ago

It's about as much effort as a torrent, so I don't see the point.