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Show HN: Channel Surfer – Watch YouTube like it’s cable TV (channelsurfer.tv)

604 points by kilroy123 ↗ HN
I know, it's a very first-world problem. But in my house, we have a hard time deciding what to watch. Too many options!

So I made this to recreate Cable TV for YouTube. I made it so it runs in the browser. Quickly import your subscriptions in the browser via a bookmarklet. No accounts, no sign-ins. Just quickly import your data locally.

97 comments

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pwr1
Love it, but when I clicked another show in the guide, nothing happened.
downsplat
Why would you want to do that? I'm so happy I can search exactly what I want among heaps of long tail stuff, I would never want to go back to a "live tv" interaction model.
zerd
I just watched 20 minutes on the gardening channel and learned a bunch that I never would have seen with the YouTube algorithm, and wouldn’t have thought of to search for.
epiccoleman
This is super cool, I love the aesthetic. The biggest thing I want out of something like this is curation (and it seems like there's at least some degree of that happening here among the various categories).
thebiblelover7
I like the idea of everyone getting fed the same content. But I also especially love being able to discover new videos and channels that are hopefully curated by humans.

It might be better to just turn this on when I'm wanting to watch something than open YouTube and look at my homepage.

spudlyo
It just so happens I'm right in the middle of trying to change how I watch YouTube at my computer. Despite my best efforts, I find myself getting sucked into shorts, so I'm starting investigate if I can take advantage of YouTube RSS syndication. I recently build yt-dlp and got all the dependencies sorted out, so I can bring videos to my machine locally. I'm also checking out elfeed[0] which is an Emacs based RSS reader, and elfeed-tube[1] which further customizes the elfeed experience for YouTube as well as adding an mpv integration that lets you control video playback directly from Emacs.

[0]: https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed

[1]: https://github.com/karthink/elfeed-tube

sky2224
fwiw regarding getting sucked into youtube shorts: if you turn off your watch history youtube refuses to let shorts work. It will literally say, "turn on your watch history to continue with shorts".
antfarm
Try the UnTrap extension. It lets you configure away the things that distract you.

https://untrap.app/

It used to be one time purchase, looks like they turned it into a subscription.

Minor49er
This reminds me of a similar project called Hypertext.tv, but instead of YouTube videos, it shows websites. It's an interesting take on channel surfing since each airing is interactive

http://hypertext.tv

moduspol
This is the kind of thing I used to tell myself that I needed to exist before I'd be able to drop cable. The ability to just mindlessly turn on the TV and drop yourself right into the middle of something and leave it on throughout the day was... habit-forming, I guess.

Though ultimately it was not that difficult of a habit to drop.

alejoar
Ha, this is amazing. We need a version for Android TV!
mpeg
A similar site used to exist that had really high quality curated content called neverthink, it was acquired in 2021 and eventually killed but I always thought it was a great idea.
bityard
Ah, it's interesting but if you really want the cable TV experience, there is pluto.tv which works in a browser, and is generally installed on most streaming boxes/sticks/TVs.

Does this avoid YouTube ads or pass them through? I somewhat wonder if this kind of thing is the reason that YouTube wants to progressively lock down their platform. (They don't want users avoiding their algorithms and their ads.)

elbac
I love how 'Music 80s' is channel 29, which was MTV on cable when I was growing up in the tri-state area in the 80s ;)
naxtsass
This is a really interesting idea.
Contortion
Reminds me of https://ytch.tv/ which I really like for its simplicity.
personalityson
I can't phantom they haven't made an app for Android TV yet
rendaw
I checked that out... IIRC there was a channel showing videos of custom-architected millionaire houses, mostly in california. They were all gorgeous, with huge, open, window-filled designs showing great CA vistas, garages filled with sports cars, unlike any house I'd ever seen before yet somehow all felt the same. It was like all the millionaires had identical lives, just shifted onto some other CA hill. It was very strange.
Barbing
When yesterday I wondered the best approach to keeping slop off elderly seniors' feeds, I suppose the universe heard me. Thank you!
ElijahLynn
My first impulse was when pressing the channels that it wasn't working. I then realized I had to hold down my thumb for it to then give me a prompt to tune to the channel. That user experience needs to be improved.

Other than that, this totally fits the nostalgia of old school cable channel surfing!

Well done!

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cedws
I really like this. Often I just want to watch something but YouTube insidiously steers me towards doom videos, even after clearing cookies. I like that this bypasses the algorithm and lets me just watch stuff, and if there's nothing interesting playing, I can just go do something more productive.
mavhc
1. subscribe to channels you like 2. only use the subscription tab
godshatter
Or take it one step further:

  1. curate a list of creators you like on a local html page
  2. follow a link into YT
  3. refuse to log in to avoid Google keeping even more data on you
  4. run uBlock Origin on Firefox to avoid ads
You still get recommendations and shorts, so you can still fall down rabbit holes, but they can also be used to find new creators to add to your list.
cryptozeus
this is so good ! Great idea, not going to use it a lot but great concept
jader201
I wonder how cool it would be to have a live ephemeral chat for each channel?

One thing I love(d) about live TV (or even live radio) was the community around knowing other people were watching the exact same thing I was watching (and then the watercooler chat around it afterwards).

If there was live chat attached to each of these "stations", it could spark some interesting chatter/community.

I know this already exists OOTB with YouTube Live, FB Live, etc.

But this would be for things that were simply uploaded, and now streamed live like you're doing here.

Obviously, that only works if there's enough viewership/participation.