
Streama – A self-hosted streaming application with your own media library - GutenYe
https://github.com/dularion/streama
======
Terretta
Hello world video hub could be the new hello world blog!

But one has only to review the (very frequent) release notes for Plex to see
the devil is in the edge cases, not the basics.

In the meantime, Plex has a native server app for almost everything, including
NAS boxes, and native players shipping with TVs and in game console app
stores. It does a good job on both playback and admin UI across a fleet of
media hosts for a household of users, and the latest release unlocks hardware
encoding across an array of operating systems.

There's even a portable HDD + WiFI hub from Western Digital, to take Plex
Server and 4TB of media on the go w/ 10 hrs battery life, in the size of a
Sony Discman.

~~~
speedkills
Plex is great EXCEPT they don't care about your data. They have refused to
provide backup and restore capability for years. Been using Plex for a while
and like it so much you want to buy a dedicated device to put Plex on? Say
goodbye to your watched shows and movie history.

~~~
soundwave106
The bulk of the _user_ data (your movies, paths, what you watched) seems to be
stored in a com.plexapp.plugins.library.db SQLite file (that you find in Plug-
in Support\Databases on the Plex Media Server data storage folder, on Windows
it is %LocalAppData%\Plex Media Server and someone linked to a support
question with the rest).

So I imagine you can get a pretty solid backup just by using SQLite tools on
that one file (though backing up the entire Plex Media Server folder might
also be nice to do every now and then to save other things such as plug-in
data).

The DB, although obviously undocumented, is also an interesting place to poke
around for looking at the data for your own purposes. For instance, it looks
like the statistics_media table stores your watched show history.

------
gdulli
What I want that Plex doesn't already to is to be able to define TV-like
channels.

I have 6 Resident Evil movies or 100 episodes of Futurama and I want them to
play in a loop on their respective channels, and when I tune in whichever one
happens to be "on" is what I watch, even though it's the middle of an
episode/movie. DVR-like functionality where I could "rewind" back to the start
of a 30-minute buffer would be good. Pandora-like skipping would be good. But
those features wouldn't be essential, compared to creating the programming
grid.

I still want what Plex does and what Streama does, to navigate to a specific
movie or episode and start it manually. Sometimes I watch media because I want
to watch one specific thing. But often I just want my favorite media on in the
background while I work or do other things. I don't want to navigate through a
library of 200+ titles to pick just the right one or a pseudo-"random" one.

Is there anything that would let me do this?

~~~
_dax
I actually implemented exactly this a few days ago. It essentially
procedurally generates channels from your library that you can flip through.
Working on Chromecast support before I open source it

~~~
marcfowler
I'd be really, really interested in this, especially with Chromecast support.
What are you writing it in? Perhaps I could help a little. Would appreciate if
you could shoot me a message when you're ready!

------
planetjones
I recently installed Plex on my Synology NAS.

\+ awesome web GUI

\+ awesome iOS app

\+ excellent app for PS4

\+ streaming support for TVS e.g. Samsung via DLNA

\- synology does not seem to hibernate much now Plex is on (may not be Plex's
fault)

\- needs premium pass to sync stuff to your mobile app (I paid for a lifetime
subscription though, as it's a very good product)

\- Plex cannot use the hardware transcoder of my NAS, only the native Synology
Apps can

\- Does not remember playback position of audio on mobile app (this is a big
negative, as I listen to a lot of mixes which are a single audio file)

Given a very good product already exists in the marketplace, which can stream
to multiple channels, I am not sure what this project aims to achieve? I am
all for people building new stuff, but I would like to see some gap analysis
of existing products first so I know what the USP is.

~~~
benologist
Synology's DS Video apps just got updated yesterday to be quite a bit better
on Android TV and Android.

Plex is pretty intrusive. Phones home constantly, for reasons that seem
contrived considering all the media is on your hardware, the software is
running on your hardware, and the 3rd party APIs they use for meta info can be
used directly without routing through their website. Disaster waiting to
happen when the MPAA gets involved. Or hackers, again.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I like plex. It works, but would love an alternative so I could have separate
users without having to have a plex pass. Not that I'm opposed to paying; I
just want everything local to my machine.

~~~
prplhaz4
Emby has this capability and it seems pretty flexible...good for the "kids
have their own library" use case...

[https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Users](https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Users)

------
abhianet
It's like Netflix, but distributed!
[https://popcorntime.sh/en](https://popcorntime.sh/en)

Snarkiness aside, this is beautiful!

~~~
che_shirecat
Biggest library of shows/movies too - they must have such great relationships
with the mega media corps ! !

~~~
geoka9
Either that or no relationships at all ;)

------
djvdorp
Good to have more alternatives for Plex and Emby, but without having native
apps for almost all architectures in use, mobile apps and Chromecast support
it has quite a long way to go. But I love FOSS alternatives so keep it up!

~~~
mistermann
No Chromecast support? Damn.

~~~
finnn
It's an open issue:
[https://github.com/dularion/streama/issues/4](https://github.com/dularion/streama/issues/4)

------
sandGorgon
there is [http://getvideostream.com](http://getvideostream.com) which does
playback of local videos on chromecast through a chrome plugin. works
brilliantly.

~~~
michaelmior
Awesome! Thanks for the pointer. I ended up hacking together a few scripts to
do the same since I don't want to run a full-blown media centre, but this look
much easier.

~~~
sandGorgon
the developers are really cool people. The support happens at /r/videostream

Buy the premium version if you can.

------
hising
My guess is that this software would have been highly praised if some of the
wonder boys of software had came up with it. All this negativity is one of the
reason I really have a hard time enjoying reading the comments at HN.

~~~
djsumdog
Plex was the first thing I though of when looking at it, even though I haven't
used it in years (haven't had a TV since 2012; just watch stuff on my
desktop/laptop with mpv).

Still, we should love open source projects and alternatives. I was hoping for
more "this could grow to be a Plex alternative" vs "Why don't you just use
Plex."

I don't think it has to do with the submitter not being a "wonderboy" does it?
Do people look at usernames (I'll admit I don't).

------
the8472
browser-based players are not really that great if your collection contains
10bit video, flac audio, ASS subtitles and other stuff that browsers can't
handle without transcoding.

~~~
callahad
The next release of Firefox (in two weeks) has native support for FLAC, and in
the near future (by the end of March) I'm optimistic that WebAssembly will
allow for efficient third party implementations of codecs. We'll get there...

~~~
the8472
How does webassembly help with pushing 10bit or rec2020 content to the
graphics buffer? or rendering at > 60fps?

Browsers will always lag behind players which address the output devices more
directly.

Also webassembly may not be sufficient for some software-decoding on weak
devices, it would need GPGPU-acceleration. But as far as I can tell WebCL is
dead.

~~~
callahad
It's true that the Web can't do everything yet, but bringing in gpgpu is
moving the goalposts. For media, ORBX.js was able to hit 1080p60 with 12bpp on
smartphones three years ago, using a codec hand-written in portable
JavaScript. So it's entirely possible today, WASM just provides a sane path
from existing C implementations to the Web.

~~~
the8472
> but bringing in gpgpu is moving the goalposts

My reference point is playback with madVR + xysubfilter. madVR uses various
high-quality algorithms for scaling and post-processing that are generally too
taxing for CPUs to do in realtime, especially at high resolutions or
framerates.

Similarly rendering complex subtitles containing vector graphics in realtime
onto a high resolution target is also quite demanding. It works on an i7, but
I would be skeptical about more anemic devices. So that's where gpu
acceleration would help too.

> For media, ORBX.js was able to hit 1080p60 with 12bpp on smartphones three
> years ago

I have not heard about that one before. It seems to be an encoder geared
towards realtime streaming. Codecs in realtime configuration generally make
some tradeoffs to sacrifice quality and compression to meet their throughput
targets. So it's hardly comparable to encoding for archival purposes (h.265
high profile has _horrendous_ encoding times) or high quality _playback_.

> It's true that the Web can't do everything yet

But new features hit the market every few years. Native players can address
them within months of the new interfaces hitting consumer hardware. Browsers
and software running in them are hampered by their need for consensus, having
to develop new abstraction layers on top of native features and slow rollout
of new features.

------
Insanity
Looks interesting, but in the comments here I found out that it is similar to
other software that already exists.

I'm happy with my 90s like setup. Films and series in a folder, VLC to play
them. I did give Netflix a try but did not like that it only has a browser
player and on top of that annoying restrictions.

~~~
stu2010
If you were using the Netflix browser player, you were missing out on high
quality audio and video, which are only available from within the Windows 8 or
10 "app". If you were using the browser player on a non-Windows platform, you
likely were stuck at the lowest quality 480p grainy video, as I am on the
Ubuntu device I'm typing this on.

For better or for worse, legal content distribution has been avoiding PCs as a
target platform because of how easy it is to copy and redistribute anything
that goes through a PC. If they keep it to more limited set-top boxes like
Rokus or SmartTVs themselves, the management will feel like piracy is being
prevented.

~~~
fastball
What? I almost always get 1080p on my laptop when watching Netflix in a
browser.

~~~
stu2010
So you're using IE or Edge? Netflix explicitly only supports 1080p or higher
in Microsoft or Apple browsers, Chrome and Firefox get 720p at best.

If you want 5.1 audio, no browser is an option and the Windows store app the
only solution.

[https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742)

~~~
fastball
Neither IE nor Edge. Usually watch Netflix in Safari.

720p on Chrome and Firefox is also better than your initial claim of "you're
probably only getting 480p".

------
freshyill
The beauty of Netflix and, to a lesser extent, Plex is that I can view my
content just about anywhere and on any device.

Free and I pen source is certainly preferable, but I want to watch movies on
my Apple TV in my living room. That's the problem I need solved. I suspect
it's similar for most people.

~~~
shoggoth
Plex has an ATV app

~~~
freshyill
I know. This does not.

------
amq
People praise Plex, but I constantly find myself trying it and going back to
Serviio.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
The reasons I stay with plex:

1) Headless server setup. I run it on my server in a container and my media is
available to it via a SMB share. Easy and simple setup.

2) Native apps for iOS, Android, Amazon Fire Stick.

3) Simple UI.

I would move to something else if it had 1 and 2 above as well as support for
multiple users[0].

[0] I am fully aware plex has support for multiple users. I just would prefer
to not have everyone have a myplex account.

------
tbirrell
This looks really cool, but honestly, if I have everything on a hard drive,
why would I upload it and re-stream it?

~~~
fastball
So that you can watch your films on your tablet, laptop, whatever.

~~~
tbirrell
Fair point, I can't plug the hard drive into my tablet.

------
tn890
How is this better than Plex?

~~~
TrisMcC
Or Emby? [https://emby.media/](https://emby.media/)

It's open source and has most of the features that plex has.

~~~
peatmoss
Last time I tried Plex and Emby, neither supported gapless playback of music,
which makes any listening of classical music excruciating / a non-starter. Is
anyone aware of a self-hosted option that does support gapless playback?

~~~
ryanl-ee
I use Madsonic with the Dsub Android app.

~~~
throwanem
Same, with iSub for iOS and streaming transcode from FLAC to 320Kbps MP3. I
find gapless playback only breaks in cases where the content isn't precached
and the network is so slow and/or badly affected by latency that the next
track hasn't had a chance to start caching before the current one finishes.

------
bhouston
We use Plex and while I used to love it, I get constant stalls when playing on
Chromecast or Apple TV for months now. It requires me to disconnect and
reconnect Plex.

Tried different Plex versions, different network topologies in the house - but
nothing seems to fix it. Netflix of course works perfectly.

Wish I could figure this issue out.

~~~
barrystaes
Chromecast 1? I had that too, try disabling encryption in Plex. In my case it
wasnt the wifi signal quality, but rather all the decrypting the Chromecast
had to do. And i found that using Ethernet also helps.

I've seen Wifi AP's act up when using TKIP vs AES when streaming a video.
Conclusion was it could not handle that load.

~~~
haikuginger
^yep. The original Chromecast can't handle decrypting a high-bitrate stream
realtime. It's kind of unfortunate.

------
franciscop
This would be really useful 1-5 years back when HDD were big and cluncky;
however nowadays I just sync everything on my 1TB Samsung T3, which is tiny
and really resilient and I take that everywhere. So now for me the benefit of
this would be marginal.

I did use Popcorn Time for a while, and that has the benefit that it auto-
downloads the shows and movies. Something that logically [1] Streama didn't
seem to want to get their hands dirty with.

[1] [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/its-not-time-for-
popcorn...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/its-not-time-for-popcorn-time-
and-it-never-will-be/)

~~~
fastball
Also Popcorn Time is piracy...

~~~
franciscop
That'd depend on the country (;

~~~
fastball
Not really. Even if it's not illegal in your country, it's still piracy...

------
ake1
I've tried a lot of these and I really want to like them (plex/kodi) but the
gui is way too hard to use, I feel like I'm in a straitjacket and always
revert to the command line. Mount your content, be able to sort it through
with ls/grep/find...queue up files...whatever. If I'm watching a series I'll
just fire up ranger for one-button next functionality.

------
ntrp
Off topic, but I'm curious why a lot of people on HN, of all places, has such
a negative attitude towards any new product, especially such small & open
source ones...

Well, at least nobody posted XKCD 927 yet.

~~~
hukxchen
I think what comes across as a negative attitude might be mostly healthy
skepticism. I think engineering-minded people all pretty much hate solving the
same problem any more times than is absolutely necessary. New products are
therefore always met with the questions of, "What does this add?", "Is it
redundant?", "Why is the necessary?". If it can stand up to this scrutiny,
then it deserves its place/seen as worth the effort.

------
Giorgi
Either I am blind or this has nothing to do with Plex.

Godspeed. Looks really nice.

~~~
chirau
It actually doesn't have anything to do with Plex. They are not even that
similar. Somehow the Plex conversation has dictated this thread.

------
mrmondo
Nice to see an open source approach to this, disappointed to see it relies on
MySQL though. Plex is a fantastic application for a similar purpose.

------
amelius
This is great.

It would also be nice if you could share media files (over bittorrent perhaps)
with a small group of people (e.g., family or friends).

------
captn3m0
I'd tried setting this up recently for a light weight streaming solution, but
found it lacking.

------
Demcox
So it's an alternative to Plex? Looks interesting.

------
basdp
So you just rebuild Plex?

~~~
phyushin
I was just about to say the same

