2026-03-16
the idea for tltv has been around since 2015 when a beach restaurant asked me to set up a 24/7 channel of surf videos playing on a loop in all of their restaurants. naturally i didn’t want to drive to each restaurant with a thumb drive so i started the basic research and couldn’t find an easy solution. i dropped it but the challenge scratched an itch i haven’t felt since the days of my weekly high school news show.
fast forward to 2020. i found myself with a lot of time on my hands. started doing some real research with ffmpeg and gstreamer. always got frustrated trying to turn ffmpeg into a server and making gstreamer as easy as ffmpeg.
went through 8 different iterations over the years. it wasn’t until 2026 when it finally clicked.
start with the protocol.
i poured all my notes into the spec and didn’t look back. once i had the spec, it was easy to create the apps.
so here it is. generate a key, start a stream, get an address. that’s your channel. no signup, no platform. other nodes on the network can relay your channel without asking. signatures keep everything verifiable.
“there you are — electronic television.”
— pfarnsworth