Hello
I would like to make an app of some sort … on win10… that will act like a tv channel for my kid brother to watch cartoons.
All content will be local… meaning on the pc… no fancy nas thing yet
I just need it to start up with a double click and it would be great to have scheduling where each time slot is a folder and it randomly picks from that folder
I’m guessing it’s supposed to be free?
Use YouTube live stream/or similar to share the final stream (provided it doesn’t have to be LAN only).
To build the final broadcast, you can try using OBS Studio, and in an extreme situation, you can probably do it with VLC…
The easiest way is to create a playlist that will simply open and run it at a specific time and the end recipient will see what you are broadcasting, although you will not be able to manipulate the stream in such a simple solution.
Doesn’t meet all your criteria, but how about just creating a playlist of all the videos, and creating a desktop shortcut to launch VLC in shuffle mode?
vlc --fullscreen --random PLAYLIST
Anything more complex than that is going to quickly get very time-consuming.
I used to use an add on for kodi which did something like this
YouTube might result in a mountain of content ID claims and forced ads. For this, a self-hosted stream like Owncast might be better.
If you have a Plex server, something like GitHub - vexorian/dizquetv: Create live TV channels from your own media. Access the streams using the simulated HDHomerun tuner or the generated M3U URl. might be worth looking into.
This and a script that changes between playlists based on the time sounds like a great solution IMO.
This idea is great.
You could also create “channels”, having different playlists for different kinds of shows too, that way it does not always shuffle from the entirety of your collection.
Shot in the dark but you can probably make a playlists on VLC that’s constantly playing and streaming and you’d just need to make a short cut to address it’s playing from
That’s if you want a “live TV”
Otherwise just jellyfin or plex server
Traditional live TV is dying because you have the convenience of on demand content from subscription services and YouTube
The appeal of live content these days is you can interact with the liver
nginx rtmp plugin + vlc/ffmpeg = done (and simple)
If you want to be super serious have a look at CasparCG server + client =)
create a playlist for vlc or any other media player that supports m3u/m3u8 scripting.
its very easy to do in vlc…
open your media folder. and open the first mp4 with vlc…
once it starts playing.
multi select all the other mp4’s in the folder and drag them into vlc.
then open the playlist and use the given option to create on from the list of files you imported.
save it and close vlc.
then when you want to play the files, just double click the playlist.
with this theres no need to create a dedicated media server with a potential security problem of 3rd party scripts.