Project: Creating a TV channel

[vma]

Hello,

An idea has been hovering in my mind: the creation of a TV channel. Like an amateur/non-profit TV channel.

The concept would be to have interested people applying for "time-slots". I would consider 8h of transmission, repeated 3 times a day with half-hour time slots. A person who has an allocated time slot would have to provide a 30 minute video (*.avi) on a weekly basis. Failure to provide the weekly video would result in a warning for the first consecutive or third miss (in the current year). Exceeding list, the time slot would go to the next applicant in the waiting line for a time slot.

In case of all time slots being adjudicated (2 x 8 x 7 =112 time slots), one could open the two other 8h blocks (instead of repeating the content).

Every "owner" of a time slot could provide a 30 minute video on whatever subject, except: no copy right infringement, no mature content, no politics, no hate, etc. - the usual stuff.

Broadcast would initially be IPTV via Youtube or similar, until a regular established function of 8h is achieved. Once this goal is reached (enough content), satellite operators and especially broadcasters could/should be approached with the goal of having them include the channel for free on their bouquet. The same could be tried on cable operators.

Technically I am building a software ("VMA MUX") that takes individual video files, lines them up, adds all required PID's, SDT, PAT, PMT, EPG and even Teletext, to then output a working TS over UDP. Right now the chain already works: I can modulate the TS to DVB-S/T/C and watch it on a regular TV. (I am only struggling with teletext, which works on StreamXpert, VLC and VMA Transport Stream Analyser - but not on TV's, which use HW decoding of Teletext).





At this point I would like to know what you guys think, understand if there is enough interest for contributors and help in case I forgot any detail.

Kind regards,
Vitor

PS: I do not own the rights for Beavies and Butthead and this is just my own internal testing.

 

[Channel Hopper]

I would have thought copyright would be applicable to Beavis and Butthead content.

Have you read (or listened to) the history of the Doctor Dish / Tectime broadcasts ?
Used to be on Intelsat 10, then Astra 1 and later to Hotbird., sharuing a couple of hours broadcast each week with a number of others.
Possibly the first broadcast to deploy dual audio / language

https://soundcloud.com/fmkompakt-1%2Fdr-dish-interview-christian-mass-jorn-krieger-12-08-2017

TecTime TV – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

DrDish TV - Broadcast Schedule

DrDish TV is a monthly TV-show broadcasted via 5 high power satellites worldwide in German and English language. The programme is the ultimate technical information source for satellite equipment owners, satellite equipment distributors, manufacturers, and satellite service providers. The...

web.archive.org

 

[Analoguesat]

An interesting idea. Thousands of people create what are effectively tv channels on youtube so thats probably the place to start. Once you get bigger than yt & start thinking about linear broadcast your biggest problem is likely to be compliance. You will need someone who fully understands the legal framework & licensing of the base country.

To begin with you could run a yt channel (or more than one if the content is very different) curating the content of multiple contributors so person A does a weekly strand on gardening, person B does a monthly show on 3D printing, person C does a a bi weekly show on underwater knitting etc. Then it doesnt matter if someone misses a couple of slots.

 

[Miika]

I think the conditions are too strict. So it would be better to collaborate whose who already have for example Youtube channel with content. Thats how you get the content ahead and can make plans in advance, both parties don't have to worry if one slot is missed whatever reason.


...

For my point of view, a software which "eat" video- and audio files, teletext, creates EPG etc and output it as ts-stream is great

But i'd like the version with multi-channel mux, not only single channel per carrier. Simplest example - having a lot of security cameras observing wildlife i'd like to have these in one mux. As seen from screenshot there may be an option for that?

 

[astra19]

I think the trouble with it is two-fold: distribution and licensing.
Why would people want to be part of a channel if it's not available anywhere other than Youtube, at the start?
And if you do want to distribute on traditional platforms, you would in many cases require licensing, and someone has to be on the hook if something goes wrong. Say someone calls for an insurrection on their show. You're ultimately responsible for broadcasting that.

 

[vma]

I am mainly interested in the technical aspect of it. Right now my software (VMA MUX, VMA Teletext Generator and VMA teletext Editor) is already working with automatic teletext generation (news and weather) and insertion. I get a valid TS that can be modulated and will play on a regular TV with EPG and teletext.

I don't think there are great legal issues with home made productions, as long as they are within norms (no mature content, no violence, etc.). And of course no copyrighted materials, either.

The goal is not a Youtube channel, but rather a PBS style amateur TV station. The main difficulty is to get contributions: regular contributions.

From the feedback on this thread, I am however already enlightend: there does not seem to be a market for people interested in having their own "show" on a TV channel.

 

[deeptho]

From the feedback on this thread, I am however already enlightend: there does not seem to be a market for people interested in having their own "show" on a TV channel.

Maybe the reason is below: :->

(no mature content, no violence, etc.).

Pirate TV would be a lot more fun, and as Berlusconi discovered a long time ago: there was a hiue market for it.

Seriously: a small market exists or existed for hotels: to play out hotel info and local touristic attractions (DVBC or DVBT). Of course this may have gone if the tvs are ip-connected.

 

[Miika]

Believe me, nature and puppy cams and one can get thousands of views. Even drying concrete and millions pair of eyes are granted as seen from last year. But it don't fulfill conditions - there are lot of mature content, violence, poo, fighting and death too (except that concrete thing).

Spoiler

https://www.looduskalender.ee/n/ just 4 cameras atm. At peak times over ten was online.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Maybe the reason is below: :->


Pirate TV would be a lot more fun, and as Berlusconi discovered a long time ago: there was a hiue market for it.

Seriously: a small market exists or existed for hotels: to play out hotel info and local touristic attractions (DVBC or DVBT). Of course this may have gone if the tvs are ip-connected.

I wouldn't call it 'pirate TV' if a marketable option to mainstream content is apparent, then it wil be exploited.

Berlusconi created something for the masses that I'm sure state television could have brought out, In the UK Channel 4 began in the early 80s for similar reasons. A decade later BBC3 was launched to claw back some of the lost audience.


There is hospital radio (and I would guess a television option exists ) to keep closed communities with local content.

 

[deeptho]

Believe me, nature and puppy cams and one can get thousands of views. Even drying concrete and millions pair of eyes are granted as seen from last year. But it don't fulfill conditions - there are lot of mature content, violence, poo, fighting and death too (except that concrete thing).

Spoiler

https://www.looduskalender.ee/n/ just 4 cameras atm. At peak times over ten was online.

A nice one from the past was "Bahn tv" and some fish tank channels (Bolajon on 52E for example) and of course "Melody Zen".

Although not on satellite, there was also a famous live feed of "dripping asphalt" but almost 100 years after the start of the experiment, and after a whopping 10 drops, the audience eventually got bored and the stream was suspended (I think). So there is plenty of content to go around.

I once created a stream for test purposes as I needed a DVB-T signal, so it is quite feasible.
.

 

[deeptho]

I wouldn't call it 'pirate TV' if a marketable option to mainstream content is apparent, then it wil be exploited.

Berlusconi created something for the masses that I'm sure state television could have brought out, In the UK Channel 4 began in the early 80s for similar reasons. A decade later BBC3 was launched to claw back some of the lost audience.

But it all started with illegal tranmissions and indeed there was a market for it. Just like on radio: radio Luxemburg for the UK to end the boredom, and a long list of pirate stations, broadcasting from the sea and from land, and then even some amateur pirate TV, relatively simple by placing a small transmitter, e.g., a VCR near to a cable headend station's receiving antenna's. Until they took measures. I also know of a few instances outside of Italy where more professional approaches were used to broadcast TV signals (did not last long)

Pirate radio was easy for the hobbyist at home. All that was needed was a soldering iron, some old TV (to scavenge components) some cupper plate, some some etching agent, a pen and some wires.

My FM transmitter reached only 500 meter, but it was remarkably stable in frequency (Clapp oscillator) despite not using a crystal oscillator. AM was more difficult actually.

There is hospital radio (and I would guess a television option exists ) to keep closed communities with local content.

 

[Analoguesat]

many of the hospital radio stations have closed in the last few years - one big factor seems to be that manglement at many locations have decided they can find more profitable use for all that lovely space the radio service are using for free. Secondly the audience is diminishing when anyone with a smart phone has got their own preferred play lists available in their pocket instead of having to suffer some awful presenter wittering on about Auntie Julie in ward 9 wanting to listen to some long dead crooner you have never heard of!

 

[Lexzie]

About Pirate TV, the Dutch tried it once quite professionally: TV Noordzee - Wikipedia

 

[vma]

Here is an update on my software development:

Part 1: VMA MUX


This applications looks for a folder with video files and plays them in series. Every file played goes to an OLD folder. New files are added to the playlist by time stamp (when they were copied into the folder). If no new files exist, the application will play the files in the OLD folder until new files appear in the media folder.

Simultaneously, the application will look for a teletext folder and embedd the available *.tti files to the TS. It also generates an EPG and proper service and provider names.

Part 2: VMA Teletext Generator



This application generates teletext pages dynamically. The user can specify RSS feeds that are parsed and converted into "News" pages: one index page and one subsequent page per news.

The same goes for Weather information. The user only specifies the cities to be included.

A status page and two test pages (897, 898 and 899) are created, as well as the index page (101).

Included is a Teletext Editor, which allows to create static teletext pages, like the intro page (100) or any other page in the non-dynamic page ranges.

One of the cool features (at least for me) is the IMPORT IMAGE function, which imports a PNG or BMP file and converts it automatically into a Teletext page using mosaic chares (2x3 resolution per character) and 1 BG/FG colour per char.




The end result is this:











This works on a real TV, if the output TS is routed to a modulator. I successfully tested it with DtLoop and my DTA2115.

I made another tool, called VMA Teletext Inserter, which takes an input TS, adds Teletext (generated with the same VMA Teletext Generator) and then outputs the new TS on a different port.

All in all I must say that I am fascinated with teletext and the complexity of it. Creating teletext pages is really difficult and there are many constraints.

This is what the code of the above page looks like in raw bytes:

 

[vma]

Here a "regular" news page:





Note that this content is generated automatically from parsing news RSS feeds...

This is another issue I realized: getting news feeds is not trivial and most, if not all, are actually protected and copyrighted.

For instance, I wanted to included automatic parsing and page generation for airport departure and arrival boards. Well, I failed miserably, because the data is protected or difficult to extract. For Flightradar24, you require a commercial API subscription to extract this data.

Offtopic: This shows how precious data is!

Anyway, I have given up on the idea of creating a TV channel. The main obstacle is getting usable content...

 

[vma]

 

[vma]

After further development, improvement and additional work, I have now my very own "Beavies & Butthead 24/7 TV Channel", broadcasting in DVB-T inside my lab. It features full EPG (new: includes Age Restriction, parsed Title, Short and Long Description from "*.epg" files attached to each video file).
Teletext is working, too.





I think that software-wise I can provide a working solution. All that is required is content and a modulator for DVB-S/S2/T/T2/C/C2.

 

[vma]

Broadcasting inside my lab with a small Zeenko Low Noise Amplifier (range is about 30cm air).

 

[Channel Hopper]

Broadcasting inside my lab with a small Zeenko Low Noise Amplifier (range is about 30cm air).

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Yes, of course local transmissions (as long as they never get out/send harmonics stopping pacemakers/starting WW3), pirate in the days of olde meant a channel that bleeds over everything else with content that could be good, or bad.



Try that nowadays in built up areas and you can get kit taken off air in minutes.

 

[deeptho]

Yes, of course local transmissions (as long as they never get out/send harmonics stopping pacemakers/starting WW3), pirate in the days of olde meant a channel that bleeds over everything else with content that could be good, or bad.



Try that nowadays in built up areas and you can get kit taken off air in minutes.

Not really. One radio station mentioned on this forum broadcast for several months or perhaps even years, before it was finally confiscated, after which it returned on DAB and shortwave. Last time I checked, many pirate stations were available on or near the medium wave (many Dutch ones and one or two from Italy). On shortwave there was also Charleston International with 100 year old music.

But indeed, the Dutch were better at piracy than the English:-->