[Idea] Chrome + Cast for Channels

[sunflower-st]

So I've been playing around some of the awesome projects around here lately, and the Chrome / web-based ones like Chrome Capture for Channels got me thinking...

It might be interesting for custom channels to be able to go to a video URL and instead of capturing (or streaming to an encoding device), I wonder if it would be possible to automatically initiate a cast session to a target device. Automating the URL + cast action from a single click in Channels I assume would be the hard part, but I do know there are command line tools to initiate content to cast to a device. Finding an elegant way to identify the target device would probably be funky as well.

Because it's just doing a hand-off of the video playback from the target computer to a TV, in theory this should work well on even low end hardware (I believe Airplay relies on the originating device more but I could be wrong). It also would alleviate the need for dedicated encoder hardware, provide a "clean" stream straight from the source to an android TV setup, etc.

I'm not smart enough to fork CC4C and do this myself, but wanted to just throw it out there in case anyone might have explored this an option.

[babsonnexus]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying that when selecting a station from the guide on your client, it will initiate a function that will launch a corresponding app on your streaming client? If so, you can already do this with Stream Links in the Guide:

Experimental: Stream Links from the Guide via Custom Channels

We are developing a new feature which allows the use of Stream Links directly from the guide. You can create a new Custom Channel of type STRMLNK, which will populate your Guide in the Channels app with EPG. When you click on the current EPG entry and select Watch, the stream link will be followed to open the external app where that live stream is available. For example: #EXTM3U #EXTINF:-1 channel-id="nbc" tvg-chno="6000" tvc-guide-stationid="10991",NBC nbctve://live/nbc #EXTINF:-1 channel-…

If you are talking about capturing streams from webpages and redirecting them, the problem, as always is DRM. Capturing a video stream and redirecting directly into something consumable by Channels isn't that difficult from a technical perspective, but once there is DRM it is currently and for the foreseeable future a dead end. CC4C, AH4C, and the like are all just to capture the "screen" or "tab" and not the video to get around DRM.

[sunflower-st]

Appreciate the response and totally hear you on the DRM point babsonnexus. I'm realizing I ham-fisted the description of what I was proposing, so let me take a second stab at this. Probably still a pipe dream though lol.

A lot of these streaming sites (Sling, YTTV, Disney+, etc) natively support casting from the desktop version of Chrome while watching content. That's the thrust of what I'm trying to take advantage of versus app deeplinking a la stream links.

The general setup from a workflow perspective would look something like this:

• TV + nvidia shield (for example) with Channels DVR client installed
• A "server" in the same sense as CC4C, something that supports the desktop version of Chrome.

The user experience would look something like this:

1. User clicks on content from the Channels client on the shield
2. The "server" receives that input, loads the target URL in Chrome
3. A script kicks off that initiates the casting of that content to the shield
4. The user then sees the Channels app replaced with the chrome video content being directly casted to the shield.

For the actual casting piece, I know there's tools out there like chromecast-cli, but I assume that would run into the authentication and DRM issues babsonnexus raised. Alternatively, trying to custom script click events (e.g. selenium) to hit that cast button on a site-by-site basis is going to be a mess.

My hope is that there are Chrome APIs to natively trigger a casting session after a URL loads, but this is the wing and a prayer part of the design.

[Fofer]

Interesting idea but unless that “castability” includes compatibility with tvOS targets / clients too, it unfortunately feels like a non-starter for Channels DVR.