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Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
441–450 of 544 posts
Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#442This is unbelievably good
Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#443One thing about analog interfaces is that they are really in a way empowering to the User. Don't like what you're seeing? Just one button press or the turn of a tuner dial and you're outta there and into a new thing. And there is no algorithm telling you what to tune into or which channels you see. Heck, if you want you could tune your radio in-between the station and listen to the static of the atmosphere for an hour.
As a programmer with UI experience (for both physical and graphical UIs) I am aware that nothing stops us from deploying similar paradigms in the digital domain and this is yet another example to make the point, that it is possible.
Sadly few companies nowadays have any incentive to make their interfaces so neutral, egalitarian and simple. It seems to take a special kind of radicalism to commit to limited controls and not slap open ended navigational structures, menus and so on onto a touchscreen. Car interfaces come to my mind.
Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
- There is no backend, just html, css, and js - yes channels are based on categories(science, travel, documentaries, etc.) - yes there is a schedule, each video is scheduled to play at a certain time, so everyone is watching the same exact thing.
I love that this is a small amount of plain html and js, as I think the instinct for a lot of folks these days in creating this would have been to invest a lot of time in using the frameworks du jour.
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Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are these tools? That sounds super useful for the most annoying YouTube flaws I run into
* https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv * https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp * https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink * https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock * https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/ * https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe Did I miss any, chat?
https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube Is great for chromecasts and other google tv boxes. Basically newpipe, but in a tv format.
Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#446This is something I always wonder... Something that I really miss from TV on internet content (YouTube, movie streamings and so on) is turn it on and watching what's being transmitted without thinking about what I wanna see. Three reasons: 1. Picking something to watch takes time. Sometimes I only want to see something in the 15 minutes that I'm dining alone. My meal gets cold before I start the video 2. Choosing som…
How strange, I’m the complete opposite. I’d never go back to letting corporates dictate how I engage with content; I even avoid recommender algorithms for the same reason. Being able to choose is so valuable to me.
I think there's merit in both. One thing that is lost from choosing what you want to watch is that you don't get surprised anymore unless you want to be surprised, whereas with traditional TV you'd encounter things you didn't expect, or come across a movie you never heard of before. I think there's space for both.
Or to make another analogy, if you go out and sit at a bench, who knows what will pass by?
Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#447Channel 1: Science and Technology Channel 2: Travel and Events Channel 3: Food Channel 4: Architecture Channel 5: Film and Animation Channel 6: Documentaries Channel 7: Comedy Channel 8: Music Channel 9: Autos and Vehicles Channel 10: News and Politics Channel 11: UFC Channel 12: Podcasts/Interviews/Talk Shows
Great. Can you elaborate a little on how channels are populated? Do you search YT for tags and order by most recent videos first? Or do you do some manual curation?
I'm curious here too, I only flipped through your channels for a minute, but found something interesting immediately.
I go to youtube and seem to run out of quality quickly. I even went as far as crawling the HN frontpage for videos - see hacker news TV - https://xiliary.com/bck/hn-tv.html
Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#448This is something I always wonder... Something that I really miss from TV on internet content (YouTube, movie streamings and so on) is turn it on and watching what's being transmitted without thinking about what I wanna see. Three reasons: 1. Picking something to watch takes time. Sometimes I only want to see something in the 15 minutes that I'm dining alone. My meal gets cold before I start the video 2. Choosing som…
What I am really missing is a "Play random episode" or "Randomize episodes" button on TV shows. I want to just flip on Seinfeld or Family Guy and watch random episodes, not in order. Such a missed opportunity for Netflix, etc.
Part of that is because of the trend from the past few years (ever since Lost I believe but there's probably previous like soap operas) that TV shows are continuous. But even the 90's TV shows would have some continuity, referencing previous events. That said, I've been rewatching Star Trek DS9 (and may do so with Stargate as well) and the main overarching plot beats often happen at the start and end of a season, the episodes in between can often be randomised.
Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#449This is something I always wonder... Something that I really miss from TV on internet content (YouTube, movie streamings and so on) is turn it on and watching what's being transmitted without thinking about what I wanna see. Three reasons: 1. Picking something to watch takes time. Sometimes I only want to see something in the 15 minutes that I'm dining alone. My meal gets cold before I start the video 2. Choosing som…
I miss channel surfing (a little). But from when the cable box was a dumb pipe and the picture would switch near instantaneously. The 3 seconds between channels in the last couple of decades was super obnoxious to me.
Yeah, digital TV feels like a step back in that regard, but on the other hand it makes you reconsider switching / browsing channels. And of course the advantage is higher image quality and more channels.
Re: Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels
#450I'll never understood why Netflix, Hulu and others haven't done something similar to this. It's a much more natural way of "finding out" what you want to see. Create a bunch of channels based on existing tags or categories, have thing playing on a schedule, and allow me to zap through. Bonus points if you allow me to zap as efficiently as I was able to back when we had analog TVs and cable. I was the master zapper, z…
I think this is the reason why "shorts" , or tiktok style videos work. I think YT shorts does this in a way, where you get a snippet of a long video as a shorts