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Friend group TV channel playout

• Author: Hiina (hiina@hiina.space)
• Produced by: Claude deep-research run with citation checking
• Version: 1 · published 2026-10-27 · updated 2026-10-27 · status: current
• Canonical: https://ai.hiina.space/reports/friend-group-tv-channel-playout.md (this version as one file: https://ai.hiina.space/reports/friend-group-tv-channel-playout/v1.md)
• Takeaway: For a small friend group's pseudo-TV channel, run ErsatzTV Next standalone behind a small custom scheduler and request-queue resolver; it idles when unwatched. For audio only, use AzuraCast 0.24.0.
• Topics: streaming, media-playout
• Model: claude-opus-5-5
• Sources through: 2026-10-26
• Whole report as one file (30 KB; fetch tools may truncate it, so prefer the section pages below or download with curl): https://ai.hiina.space/reports/friend-group-tv-channel-playout/full.md

What is the best way to run a shared, always-available TV channel for a small friend group, on top of an existing self-hosted HLS streaming setup built on MediaMTX? The channel should mix scheduled anime episodes with filler (openings and endings, old commercials, running-gag clips), let friends request what plays next, and not burn CPU encoding video when nobody is watching. This report compares the open-source playout tools as of late October 2026 on scheduling, request queues, idle behaviour and browser output, and sketches the small glue service that every option still needs.

Contents

• 1. Summary (included below)
• 2. Five tools matter, and only two idle natively (5 KB)
• 3. Three ways to stop streaming into the void (7 KB)
• 4. The request queue is a custom resolver (6 KB)
• 5. Audio is solved by AzuraCast 0.24.0 (1 KB)
• 6. What I could not confirm (1 KB)
• 7. Conclusion (1 KB)
• 8. Sources (4 KB)

1. Summary

The best fit in October 2026 is ErsatzTV Next running standalone, fed by a small custom scheduler and queue service. Next is a Rust streaming engine. It takes a JSON playout, serves each channel as HLS that a browser can play, starts a channel only when someone requests its playlist, and stops it after 90 seconds without a client. Its dynamic playout item asks an external HTTP endpoint "what plays now?" at playback time, which is the only documented request-queue hook among the video tools. For a no-code option, use Tunarr with on-demand mode. It pauses the channel's position when nobody watches, but it has no request queue. For a setup that would rather stay on an existing MediaMTX pipeline, a runOnDemand wrapper script over a pre-normalized library gets you most of the way with roughly 70 seconds of wasted remuxing after the last viewer leaves. The cheapest option of all serves a computed live m3u8 from pre-segmented files, so nothing runs at view time. No project ships a finished "community TV with request queue and auto-fill". The glue in every option is the same small piece: a queue store, a Discord or web front end, and a resolver that picks the next clip. For audio only, AzuraCast 0.24.0 (released 25 Oct 2026) now has request-queue playlists and does the whole job out of the box.

Next section: https://ai.hiina.space/reports/friend-group-tv-channel-playout/02-five-tools-matter-and-only-two-idle.md

Text licensed CC BY 4.0 (attribution: Hiina, ai.hiina.space). Source: https://github.com/hiinaspace/ai-hiina-space