Add To Schedule

On this page, you can add a program to my personal TV network. Submit the URL of a video that is downloadable over the web, and I'll put it in the RSS feed for this site. Using the feed, you, I, or anyone else can watch shows from the network on their enclosure-enabled aggregator. I have one attached to my TV. More...

The media URL must have one of these extensions: .mpeg .mpg .avi .torrent. All other fields are optional. The Internet Achive's Moving Images section is a great source of liberally licensed content.

A personal tv network is what it sounds like. It's a TV network that could in principle be run by a single person.

Though I will do some of the content programming and maybe even a little content creation, this particular network is mostly a bootstrap because I'm inviting you to help with the programming and expect to rely heavily on content created by others, such as can be found at the Internet Archive. Now that the ideas and technologies are gelling, other networks can easily form where individuals or small groups undertake all aspects of the network.

We're starting to see more network-connected video devices coming on to the market. These are little boxes that sit in the entertainment center or stereo rack, and look a lot like the DVD and VHS boxes that came before, but with an important difference: they have a network adapter inside.

The network adapter makes a whole new kind of thing possible. Any content that can find its way onto the Internet can now find its way into your living room. Why shouldn't we be able to mix and match tradional news sources with StrongBad and our friend Steve making toast?

Of course all of this can be done with just a PC. Personally I don't much like watching video at the computer. I want to sit down on a couch, flip on the television, surf through a list of choices and hit the Play button on the IR remote. Just like with a Tivo. The experience should include none of the following: booting up, noisy computer fans, typing, download progress bars.

That's all possible now, and not very expensive. Here's how it works on my system [pardon the ascii art]:

    Someone adds a media URL 
             |
             V
 It goes live on the RSS feed
 some time in the next few days
 (current rate: one new item is
  added to the feed each day)
             |
             V
 My enclosure-aware aggregator
     downloads the feed and
       records the new item
             |
             V
 The aggregator downloads the media into
 C:\Program Files\Radio Userland\enclosures\YYYY-MM-DD
             |
             V
 The connected DVD player performs a "scheduled scan"
   of the enclosures folder and notices the
       new media file
             |
             V
 The media object is now visible from the video player
 menu, in an "album" named after today's date,
 YYYY-MM-DD.

Why can't I add a QuickTime or Windows Media clip?

This is hopefully a temporary limitation. I want to watch this network from my couch, and in 2004 my player can only handle MPEG and AVI. C'est la vie. The format list will grow when the player software gets updated to handle more formats (or when somebody buys me a media center PC :-)).

There's two issues here. First, we're dealing in large files that take time to download and also disk space. Because the network is public there needs to be some kind of throttle to prevent peoples' networks and disks from filling up (not to mention their free time). Second, building in a delay will give me a chance to review the additions and delete anything problematic. Let's try to keep things open.

Will you be hosting any content?

Zero to none. This network will consist mostly of pointers and metadata.

I found a .torrent for last week's episode of 'The West Wing'. Can I post that?

Unless you've gotten permission from the copyright holders, please don't. I reserve the right to delete pointers to unpermissioned content and pretty much anything else I don't want to point to.

Won't my disks fill up eventually?

Only if you refrain from deleting them after watching. IMO the smart money's on better-designed aggregators that automatically delete old content.