AndroidHDMI for Channels (ah4c): A virtual channel tuner using HDMI Encoder(s) + streaming stick(s)

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#1454

I don't mean to sound like I'm being argumentative, but the whole point of this outage wasn't what you saw that it was on a blank screen. For many people, it was repeating the same commercial over and over again. In some cases, it was like playing only part of a TV show from hours earlier and repeating it. Like, DirecTV was totally broken. This is like a complete edge case. And I personally am not going to write the code to implement this sort of functionality. It's not worth my energy. I'm already a little burnt out from the last two big pushes. Also, for some people, some channels did work. Such as locals.

What I did do, which might help, is I threw a button on the activity page to power cycle every single box in your fleet, which is actually, I think, very useful. Just one click reboot. So that would have freed everything up once Direct TV came back.

#1455

I'm also in the process of migrating from Claude Code to Hermes, backed up by ChatGPT Pro.

But I'm using a self-hosted instance of Hermes as the harness. So, hopefully, my code quality either improves, but hopefully, it doesn't decline. Regardless, Hermes is pretty incredible.

#1456

What's weird now is that it can't find the m3u. It shows up on the Channels M3Us page, but when I click on it I get this error message;
Error opening file: open ./m3u/Directv_Los_Angeles.m3u: no such file or directory

#1457

This is very simple. It goes in the bind mount. ah4c/m3u/yourfile.m3u.
In channels your IP_ADDRESS:7654/m3u/yourm3u.m3u

#1458

Used that button myself to reboot during the outage. Unfortunately, the reboot didn’t help the outage. Sure was easier than getting up and going get the remote with the added benefit of my coffee not going cold.

Two additional buttons that I would like to see:
ADB reauthorization:

  • Revoke authorization, restart, automatic authorization

Closed captions from Osprey:

  • Enable Osprey CC thru any available Osprey device

I recently reset one of my Osprey's (the one rarely tuned to) using the LinkPi viewer and the remote. I've only had to reauthorize once or twice in the last year and a half. The steps were to revoke authorization, restart, and then reauthorization. What I noticed was that the ADB authorization box came up immediately after the restart. It will still require the remote for that final reauthorization. I see this as a one button push on the ah4c interface followed by a couple of remote pushes on the remote all while monitoring the tuner on the interface. This is more of a "Dream Wish" than a reality wish.

Re CC:
This may be an edge case. Have a toggle to turn the Osprey (or stick?) CC on/off without affecting the current device. This would require an available tuner. I’ve been using your latest CC and it's a great addition but I find it's better on recordings than live (on my lower powered system). On recordings, the CC works good but is about 4-5 seconds behind. On live, it seems like I'm 9-10 sec behind so this is where I'd like to use the device CC.

#1459

Wait, I think I'm confused with the closed captioning question.

They're not enabled through an Osprey device. They're AI generated, and you enable them in the channels DVR client like you would with an HD home run. They're 4 to 5 seconds behind because of honestly, possibly the hardware you're running on.

It's just the model can't keep up with your hardware, and you might be able to even see it in the logs. I can probably include a smaller model, but it will compromise on quality possibly.

#1460

That's the strange thing, the file was already there. I renamed it and it showed up again. Thanks.

#1461

I realize where your CC are coming from. What I'm asking is a toggle to turn the Osprey Device CC on or off. It's keystrokes. On Live viewing, the AI generated CC are too far behind or missing so I go get the remote and turn the Osprey CC on.
The keystrokes are Home>Setting>Preferences>Closed Captioning>On/Off (from an unused tuner). Different keystrokes from a utilized tuner.

#1462

Have you tried moving ah4c to your mac-mini-m4 yet?

#1463

This seems like it would get messy very quickly, given all the different apps people use, and each app (or Osprey) has a different method to turn Closed Captions on (and potentially a different series of keystrokes to turn them off).

Part of the whole idea of @mackid1993's project is to not need to do what you're proposing. Yes, it requires a bit of horsepower on the system you're running ah4c on, but it seems worth it to me to have a universal approach to dealing with Closed Captions.

#1464

Not yet, but it will occur and probably fix my issue with CC. I'm waiting for a new monitor as the old one is too tough for my old eyes with the wavy lines crossing the screen. I'm still learning the macOS system as this is my first Mac.

Will use brew to install Docker Desktop, create Portainer persistent volume, then Portainer. After that I'll figure my host directory and switch ah4c container to the Mac. Will also install OT & P1C but will probably use set manually since I have all my Env Variables.

#1465

Look into colima. It's a nice, easy way of running Docker on macOS. https://colima.run

#1466

As an aside, do we have a lot of Mac users? Is there any interest in maybe compiling a Mac OS build and instead of environment variables, we use the environment variable web page to configure ah4c? I have an Apple developer account and can notarize it, and maybe just make it a menu bar app that opens up a web UI.
If I can do that, it should be the same thing to create an InnoSetup-based Windows version. I would just create a GitHub repository that would do a checkout of upstream and just compile on CI. I don't know if this is heathenistic, but it's certainly better than running in Docker on those systems. Maybe bare metal would be better for Windows and Mac.

#1467

Personally, I enjoy Docker-based projects -- but have limited enthusiasm for "native" builds. To me, it just increases the support requirements, with modest additional functional value.

#1468

I kind of agree. I just wanted to see if it would be helpful to people.
Personally, I'm 100% in on Docker. What I can do that might be helpful is include a smaller model for closed captioning that might help with weaker systems, or even weaker systems rather.
@jagrim What kind of CPU are you running on right now? I can look into a different model for that type of hardware that might improve things.

#1469

Thanks for the tip. I'll look into it and decide before I install. Since this will be a fresh install on a M4 with only Prismcast installed, I prefer to install only one.

On my Synology, I started with Docker, then Synology changed it to Container Manager, then I added Portainer (TY @bnhf ) and manage everything thru Portainer except for (1) container that I use Container Manager for. As I migrate all containers to the M4, my intent is to use Portainer to manage containers. I'll have to decide before I start whether to use Colima or Docker Desktop.

#1470

Im on an M4 mac mini with docker desktop, running mac os Sequoia. Docker desktop

I have been seeing some of the delays you have been reporting. Im interested when you migrate whether your delays improve.

I have been both burning in the broadcast closed captions (for some shows) as well as leaving the ah4c model ALWAYS ON.

#1471

Synology DS220+
INTEL Celeron J4025. 2 GHz

Currently using the Parakeet TDT-CTC 110M model with iGPU (Vulcan). Have tried CPU but iGPU seems to work better. If I use the CPU, it's up to 97-98% CPU utilization. With the iGPU, the CPU is in the 40-60% range until Channels decides to reprocess a video or redetect commercials then pegs out.
I wouldn’t want you to spend a lot of time for me since I'm moving the container to the M4 and that will probably fix my issue.

#1472

Yeah, I mean, you're no offense using a very weak CPU that really shouldn't be running ASR models to begin with. I'm sorry.

We can't account for every single hardware configuration. I would just move to the M4 and move on. Just keep in mind you're going to be running on CPU, which is perfectly fine with an M4.

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#1473

It's weak but has done everything that I want for several years until now.

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