Broadcastarr: Stream web content through your Jellyfin instance
66 points
2 days ago
| 5 comments
| github.com
| HN
leshokunin
2 days ago
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So I’m familiar with what their other apps do. I read the readme many times. I still wonder what “web content“ means. Apparently it’s media. Maybe it’s a headless browser that can capture inputs and stream them?

Re reading the readme and trying to figure out what each discrete part does made me realize it feels like if ChatGPT had designed a generic, non descript product, and made a readme. It’s got a file that tells me there are things in it. The code does stuff. This is definitely what a product looks like to a human.

Philip K Dick described that to see information is to be consumed by it. This feels exactly that way. Presented with something that has just enough meaning to feel “figure out able“.

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danpalmer
2 days ago
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A common issue in this space is that things are either actually illegal, or they break terms of service. Many of these things are at constant risk of being DMCA’d.

My guess is this is a deliberate attempt to not get taken down from GitHub after Netflix find out people are streaming content through different systems.

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ramon156
2 days ago
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As much as I understand people need to feed their family, i hate how media access has all become paywalled. Why can't I choose which media to support? Why can't I pay 10 bucks to a Studio because I think they did a good job?
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tadfisher
1 day ago
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Because the costs are insane. You're not making Game of Thrones on a Patreon budget; the early seasons were $50 million each, and the series as a whole cost $1.5 billion. The media companies are essentially giant VC firms that assume crazy amounts of risk in the hopes that a few hits will outweigh losses from the bombs.

This is why they paywall everything; subscriber revenue is steady revenue, kind of like government bonds in an investment portfolio. This is also why so many IPs are remakes, reboots, or franchises, because those are much less risky to bankroll.

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notatoad
2 days ago
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i think the main purpose of this is to pull in illegal streams of copyright content, so the readme probably has to be intentionally obtuse to avoid summoning law enforcement.
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sneak
2 days ago
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This is like saying that the purpose of a gun is to commit murder. It’s a tool. You can use it for any purpose, including simply reading the code to inspire you to write other software or learn how software is designed.

Especially for media playback tools, to say its main purpose is for crime is as silly as to say a monitor’s main purpose is for looking at Facebook.

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vineyardmike
2 days ago
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You had to pick the most controversial example that also is poorly defensible? Guns don’t exactly have many uses besides shooting, compared to your monitor example.

Similarly, I’d assume most people who use Jellyfin/Plex/etc acquire their content through questionably legal sources. There simply aren’t many legal avenues left to acquire DRM free media. Especially not where you’re rebroadcasting from a webpage. The “arr” suffix on this software is especially flagging - there is a popular suite of software associated with piracy and they all use the “arr” suffix.

Reading source code is nice and all, but come on, that’s not the main purpose of most open source code.

> Broadcastarr is a service that allows you to broadcast media content retrieved from web pages.

That’s the purpose.

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ndriscoll
2 days ago
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Two obvious sources of legal media for jellyfin are home movies and university lectures (which are generally creative commons licensed), both of which I serve on my family's instance. I believe recording broadcast television is also perfectly legal in the US, and there are still commercial products to do it.

The *arr software by contrast are pretty explicit about what they're for. e.g. radarr says it will upgrade a movie you have from dvd to bluray quality via torrent or usenet, which is almost certainly illegal. It does look like they don't distribute executables though, so their repositories contain only a detailed description of the knowledge of how to perform illegal activities.

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close04
2 days ago
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I think the most obvious sources of legal media are bargain bin DVDs/BRs which you are allowed to rip for personal usage and backup. This would justify all the discussions about episode numbering and so on. I have a small mountain of discs in boxes in the basement, which I bought almost for free (looking at you 17 EUR DVD box set of Friends) and will never see the light of day because they're all comfortably copied on a NAS too.

Same for games, I have titles like RDR which I bought from a bargain bin while it was still very much in vogue for ~2 EUR. I can't use it as a copy but the supermarket bargain bin can be an eternal Black Friday for your media consumption.

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sneak
2 days ago
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Yes, shooting isn’t illegal. But if you think a gun’s primary purpose is to shoot people, you misunderstand why they exist.

Thermonuclear weapons weren’t built to destroy the world, either.

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mort96
2 days ago
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Am I taking crazy pills or are you making no sense?

Shooting a gun is, in most places, super illegal. Even if you don't hit anyone, firing your pistol anywhere where there's people is sure to attract attention from law enforcement, unless at a specially designated area like a gun range.

And what the hell are guns made for if not to shoot?? That's literally the only thing they do!

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close04
2 days ago
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GP mistakenly imagines that a gun's purpose can also be deterrent even when not shooting. In reality the deterrent ultimately comes from the threat of violence, the shooting. Everything else is a side effect derived from that one. Same goes for nukes.

The best proof is that a gun which obviously cannot shoot (is visibly unloaded, disabled, etc.) doesn't act as a deterrent despite still being a gun.

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sneak
2 days ago
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Do you believe that the people who manufactured the citykiller thermonuclear fusion bombs that exist presently today did so with the express intent that they be detonated and thereby kill millions of innocent people, or do you recognize that perhaps in constructing them they might serve a different purpose than to be detonated?

Guns are the reason police don’t get punched in the face or attacked with sticks. They serve this purpose even while remaining holstered.

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close04
2 days ago
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Why not answer to what I already said above: is a gun that's guaranteed to not harm you still a deterrent? Is a handgun a deterrent if you are in full-body heavy armor, in an armored vehicle, or just too far away? It's the same gun with the same bullets and the same power, nothing about it changed and lo and behold, the deterrent is gone just because it can no longer kill you.

That deterrent cannot exist without the threat, but the threat can exist without deterrent. A gun or a bomb which cannot kill you will not deter you. The object is worthless, the promise that it can harm or kill you is the only thing that matters. So the only point of the gun and the bomb is to kill. Everything else is a consequence that derives from that.

To answer your points:

Yes, the bombs were built with the single reason to be able to destroy cities and kill millions. Weapon specs don't list and quantify "deterrent" because that's not a characteristic of the weapon. If you build a guaranteed missile shield around you country then that exact "city killer" bomb is no longer a deterrent.

No, the authority is why police doesn't get punched in the face. The authority is backed mainly by law which gives them the right to fine or arrest. Taking away your money or freedom are the the real deterrents (as evidenced by judicial systems relying solely on this in most countries). In most of the world you can punch a police agent in the face and not get shot and people know that so they still do it.

You can lead a horse to water, and all that.

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HeatrayEnjoyer
2 days ago
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Guns aren't made for shooting people?

Did GPT-2 write this?

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blooalien
1 day ago
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> "Guns aren't made for shooting people?"

Guns are made for shooting ...

Who or what is shot at is entirely on the end-user of the tool in hand.

Some folks have never once in their entire life ever shot at a person (or even thought to), while having shot many animals to feed themselves or their families. Some folks have never once even shot at a living thing. Some just shoot for "target practice" or for "fun".

If you shoot at people you'd better have a really valid reason or expect consequences to follow.

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doctorpangloss
2 days ago
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This is an interesting thought. But you are being ridiculous, this stuff is absolutely overwhelmingly used for piracy.
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denhaus
2 days ago
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i agree. in principle this is totally fine. in reality, highly paid lawyers throw the law around to accomplish whatever their objectives are. if they’re paid by a media company, and the media company’s objective is to reduce “illegal” reproduction of their content, principle is less important than winning.
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savant2
2 days ago
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This code seems to be aimed at pirates selling access to Jellyfin instances. It allows them to restream video feeds through Jellyfin with a control plane over a Discord bot.
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recursive
2 days ago
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Who are "they"? This account has like a half a dozen repos, but I doubt any of them are what you're talking about.
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recursive
2 days ago
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I don't understand what this does. It says it "broadcasts media content retrieved from web pages".

What does broadcast mean? Like what if the media is a PDF or a PNG? Is it a static file proxy server?

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293984j29384
2 days ago
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I hope your sitting down as this might come as a bit of a shock but lots of live content is streamed via "web pages", like sports for example.
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recursive
2 days ago
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I'm aware of that. This would make a little more sense if it was specifically about video, or maybe audio. Is... that what it is?
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illwrks
2 days ago
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It says "Grabs the broadcast stream", I think it's suggesting using Jellyfin as a redistribution node for a piece of licenced content (sports games, films etc)
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ls612
2 days ago
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How long have the *arr family of apps been developed? It amazes me that nobody has tried to pull a Nintendo against them yet given their obvious use cases.
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freeone3000
2 days ago
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“Pulling a nintendo” worked when there was a small, identifiable group of people who ran a patreon. Yuzu forks have not gone away in the slightest.
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ls612
2 days ago
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Ryujinx got taken out too and they were not behaving like yuzu. Nintendo has a plan to wipe out emulation and it looks like it is working. :(
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LelouBil
2 days ago
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Well, ryujinx didn't really get taken down from what I heard.

Nintendo just contacted the repo owner and basically paid them to stop everything and remove the repo, I think.

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ilrwbwrkhv
2 days ago
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Well, I know at least seven different people who are using Yuzu and a different fork still ekulating like crazy.
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ls612
2 days ago
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Well yeah you can still use yuzu (if you can find it) but over time software rot will take its toll with no development. Perhaps Torzu or similar will be able to at least keep it maintained to run on current systems even if they make no real progress.
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atomicnumber3
2 days ago
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Yeah running the patreon was stupid, but I am pretty sure what really fucked them was ADVERTISING !!!PAID!!! EARLY ACCESS TO FIRST PARTY NINTENDO TITLES BY PLAYING LEAKED ROM DUMPS.

Like holy Jesus fucking Christ!!! It's like they were trying to play Nintendo suicide bingo!

Sorry, I don't usually swear on HM, but holy crap. I'm still in utter awe.

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WithinReason
2 days ago
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it didn't matter, ryujinx got taken down without it.
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sneak
2 days ago
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Turns out that we actually do mostly have freedom of expression in the west as long as you don’t pull an Assange. It’s not great but it could be a lot worse.

Permitting legal source code to be banned because wealthy rightsholders don’t like it is a good canary for how widespread censorship has become. We’re fortunately not there yet.

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asacrowflies
2 days ago
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I think they do a pretty good job of not crossing any legal lines.
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doctorpangloss
2 days ago
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There are so many problems in every aspect of video. It's a total crisis.
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stevage
2 days ago
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What's the use case?
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whynotmaybe
2 days ago
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I have a Roku and jellyfin.

Some companies don't have a Roku app but you can watch videos on their website.

I guess that through this app, I could stream the videos from the website to jellyfin then to my Roku.

Similar to casting my phone content to my Roku but with the strength of jellyfin's libraries.

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ethagnawl
2 days ago
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So, hypothetically, if someone had a projector running Android TV/Media Center/Whatever that couldn't run the WebClicks app but could run the Jellyfin app, they could use something like this to proxy their own WebClicks subscription through Jellyfin to their projector?
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