https://github.com/ahamlinman/hypcast
A web-based multi-party live television streamer
https://github.com/ahamlinman/hypcast
Last synced: 15 days ago
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A web-based multi-party live television streamer
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/ahamlinman/hypcast
- Owner: ahamlinman
- License: mit
- Created: 2019-02-10T09:19:29.000Z (about 6 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-03-16T02:02:39.000Z (about 1 month ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-04-08T01:57:57.572Z (15 days ago)
- Language: Go
- Homepage:
- Size: 2.89 MB
- Stars: 11
- Watchers: 3
- Forks: 2
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE.txt
Awesome Lists containing this project
- awesome-pion - ahamlinman/hypcast - A web-based multi-party live television streamer (Media API)
README
# Hypcast
Hypcast is a web-based multi-party live television streamer based on
[GStreamer][gstreamer] and [Pion WebRTC][pion], designed to work with TV
tuner hardware on Linux hosts. Start it up, click a channel, and stream live
TV from wherever you are. Connect with another device and share a perfectly
synchronized live stream, even as you change channels.**Please note…**
- Hypcast is a personal project with a limited feature set that meets my
specific needs. It is made available to the public in the event that it
might be useful to others, however I provide no guarantees about
maintenance, functionality, or backwards compatibility. For example, flags
and environment variables used to configure the server may break at any
time.
- This is version 2 of Hypcast, a complete rewrite of the original project
using a radically different implementation and providing a completely new
user interface. The original version of Hypcast remains available at
https://github.com/ahamlinman/hypcast-v1, but is not maintained.[gstreamer]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/
[pion]: https://github.com/pion/webrtc## Setup Guidelines
There are no "official" instructions or support for running Hypcast, but if
you're willing to work through it and try it out here are some general
guidelines.Hypcast requires a [supported ATSC tuner card][linuxtv-atsc], along with a
[`channels.conf` file][linuxtv-scan] providing tuning information. The
[w_scan2][w_scan2] utility can generate this file. For example, to scan for
over-the-air channels within the United States:```sh
w_scan2 -f a -c us -X > channels.conf
```If you're okay with a software-based transcoding pipeline, it's probably
easiest to run Hypcast using the container image published at
`ghcr.io/ahamlinman/hypcast:latest`, with the following configuration:- TV tuner devices passed through with `--device /dev/dvb`
- `channels.conf` placed at `/etc/hypcast/channels.conf` inside the
container, e.g. by putting it at this location on the host and passing
`-v /etc/hypcast:/etc/hypcast:ro`
- Host networking enabled with `--net host`, to allow WebRTC connections to
the server without NAT traversal (which Hypcast does not support); the
`-addr` flag can configure the server port if necessary (default `:9200`)Alternatively, if you want to enable hardware accelerated video processing
through [VA-API][vaapi] (which the container image does not support), you can
install and configure GStreamer and gstreamer-vaapi on your own system, then
build and run the Hypcast binary yourself with `-video-pipeline vaapi`. See
the Makefile for details of how to build a Hypcast binary with embedded client
assets for convenience.**Hypcast is not designed to be exposed to the Internet!** It is expected to
run on a fast local network, or _perhaps_ over a private VPN. Allowing public
access could present security issues and/or violate laws in your jurisdiction
(be advised that I am not a legal professional, that the suggestion of this
possibility does not constitute legal advice, and that as a user you are
fully responsible for ensuring that your personal usage of Hypcast complies
with relevant local laws).[linuxtv-atsc]: https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hardware_device_information
[linuxtv-scan]: https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Frequency_scan
[w_scan2]: https://github.com/stefantalpalaru/w_scan2
[vaapi]: https://01.org/linuxmedia/vaapi## Potential Improvements
- The UI could use some additional work to ensure robustness against
failures, e.g. automatic reconnection if the server restarts or whatever.
- There are no controls for data rate and encoding quality like version 1 had.
Ideally these would adjust automatically based on connection quality,
possibly with some way for clients to request a lower quality to save data.
I don't expect this to be trivial to implement.
- The system does not support any form of NAT between the server and client,
including typical container networking implementations. This would require
configuring a STUN server.
- The UI is currently hardcoded to connect over insecure WebSockets.
- Closed captions are not supported.