Rendered at 12:47:23 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
dtagames 8 hours 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.
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 4 hours 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.
liquidnitrogen1 6 hours ago [-]
I think https://tv.garden/ has more channels than your especially if i look at Japan
maxweylandt 4 hours ago [-]
Seems to depend on the country, tv.garden has nothing in Namibia, for example
asimpletune 5 hours ago [-]
Both of these are amazing
jusonchan81 8 hours ago [-]
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?
normie3000 5 hours ago [-]
Just stays on the loading screen for me (Safari, iOS 26).
b112 4 hours ago [-]
Same here. I wonder if it's hugged to death?
liamwire 8 hours ago [-]
This is fantastic, as others have said. Could you talk a bit about how it's so wonderfully fast?
nchagnet 7 hours ago [-]
This is such a high quality TV viewing experience, I really love it! Amazing work!
jarym 5 hours ago [-]
Love it
inigyou 2 hours 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.
hperrin 8 hours 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.
xonery 40 minutes 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 14 minutes ago [-]
Yeah don't listen to HN dorks. Unless youve handwritten the code using Mayan virgin blood on papyrus scrolls they will complain.
simondotau 4 hours 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>
yard2010 7 hours ago [-]
You're absolutely right and let me be honest about the honest load-bearing smoking-gun you point at.
dimator 6 hours ago [-]
That's the core tension — and you're right to call it out! Let me walk back my claims.
krackers 11 hours 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?
inigyou 1 hours ago [-]
The point of Turnstile is to sell a warm fuzzy feeling of security to website owners, block Tor users who don't enable JavaScript, and convince website owners to give a copy of all their traffic to the NSA for free.
Actual security is barely relevant except to the extent that if it doesn't add any security, the NSA might get worried that people will stop using Cloudflare.
Fake security - number of blocked users, which Cloudflare calls "bots" regardless of whether they're people or bots - is used in Cloudflare marketing.
jeroenhd 3 hours 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.
KomoD 11 hours 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.
bob1029 4 hours 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.
Saris 11 hours 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.
xonery 11 hours ago [-]
Yes, kindof…
slg 10 hours 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.
inigyou 1 hours ago [-]
I suppose it searches your configured sources for that movie and comes back "not found"
Stremio does this. Stremio is a legal application that finds media from any configured plugin. You're supposed to add the illegal Torrentio plugin to automatically pirate media. By doing it this way, most development can take place in public.
A similar situation exists with the emulator Azahar and the illegal fork Azahar Plus which can automatically decrypt games.
Edit: lolno this project just has pirate sites built into it
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.
xonery 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
stef25 4 hours ago [-]
Immediately worked for me on a simple Samsung bought 15+ years ago.
Seems to be missing some context. What is this used for? Piracy?
xonery 11 hours 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 10 hours ago [-]
Do I need to bring my own sources or is there a maintained list?
inigyou 1 hours ago [-]
it comes preconfigured with three different illegal pirate sites.
xonery 10 hours ago [-]
You mean the streaming website source ? You can use the one present in the config.yaml of the project, it works fine.
keepupnow 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
9 hours ago [-]
cortesoft 8 hours 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.
You already have access to pirated streams. This app plays them for you. Check the source addresses in config.yaml.
pogue 11 hours 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.
mikeweiss 10 hours ago [-]
I agree, is the use case any video stream other than big established ( which already support casting)... So... bootleg sports streams?
xonery 9 hours ago [-]
It casts whatever stream's on the page, same as VLC plays whatever file you open.
selectively 11 hours ago [-]
[dead]
m00dy 3 hours ago [-]
>Castor launches headless Chrome with a randomized fingerprint and stealth scripts to hide automation.
you lost me in there.
m00dy 3 hours 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 1 hours ago [-]
Depends what you're trying to bypass. Cloudflare isn't as strict as Google.
xonery 10 hours ago [-]
Docker version on MacOS might not find your TV.
monksy 7 hours ago [-]
You probably have to expose it to do Upnp through the VM that is needed for docker on Macos.
aussieguy1234 4 hours ago [-]
Can this be used without a TV, lets say if I just want to play the streams with VLC?
dizhn 2 hours 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.
ranger_danger 10 hours ago [-]
Can you cast to a Roku device with this?
kls0e 7 hours 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.
j45 10 hours 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 10 hours 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.
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.
We're just throwing straight up piracy on HN now? We're vibing piracy now? Felonies via API?
inigyou 1 hours 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.
vivzkestrel 8 hours 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 1 hours ago [-]
You type in the ID of a movie and it pirates it for you
https://tvexplorer.live
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?
Seems to be the fact that there's no advertising, tracking or other SDKs and the entire JS is contained in two files.
Looks like Claude built it.
</sarcasm, mostly>
Actual security is barely relevant except to the extent that if it doesn't add any security, the NSA might get worried that people will stop using Cloudflare.
Fake security - number of blocked users, which Cloudflare calls "bots" regardless of whether they're people or bots - is used in Cloudflare marketing.
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.
> 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.
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.
Stremio does this. Stremio is a legal application that finds media from any configured plugin. You're supposed to add the illegal Torrentio plugin to automatically pirate media. By doing it this way, most development can take place in public.
A similar situation exists with the emulator Azahar and the illegal fork Azahar Plus which can automatically decrypt games.
Edit: lolno this project just has pirate sites built into it
[1] - https://github.com/stupside/castor/commit/847abd1ad0dbe893fc...
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 ?
sources: - proxies: - "https://vidsrc-embed.ru" templates: movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}" episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}-{episode}"
you lost me in there.
I use "Web Video Caster" on Android to stream videos from websites to my TV. Free version is fine.
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.
- can someone kindly explain what is the actual problem statement and what the author is trying to solve here?