I think I got it going. At least just on a test channel. I think it's more that I want to know how I could organize all 4 parts (b, bg, t, tg) to put into a playout and not duplicate. Ie. some channels will have certain blocks that could be used elsewhere.

I won't have time anytime soon to mess with it more but thanks for at least prompting me to look into it more. I do think I'd like at least a couple channels on a defined schedule like old school TV. Reminds me I should donate to this project- I use it a lot more nowadays.

Haha, fair enough! :) It is labyrinthine. I’m not sure how I got it working, and I still don’t know how it works (I don’t know what I have).

I’m happy to share what I have if there’s a section you’d like to see. Though I imagine it’s the relationships between the parts that we’re both missing.

At this point I might ask you for directions, ha. I am only maybe today getting around to messing with it more. I think a redesign could make it easier (and I'm not sure why it has so many things- blocks, block groups, templates, template groups, etc.) Very customizable I suppose but a bit tough to get going.

Glad to see you got it mostly going though.

Thank you very much

Anker 5-port to USB C, it’s got two USB A, two USB C, and HDMI. Works for flash drives and keyboards and mice well enough.

Good luck!

Options look to be very limited for this phone. The USB-C port is 2.0, allowing for things like flash drives, but not hubs and no video out. I’m assuming your *.eu instance means you are based in Europe. Looks like a replacement screen can be had for ~€20-30. If the data is that important, if you can get the phone disassembled enough to plug in the new screen, you could get the data off of it that way. If you feel confident, you could get the mobile working again. Beware that aftermarket screens may be more fragile than OEM.

Thank you, that is still valuable data. What kind of hub do you have? Considering i have a OnePlus, not a Samsung, this might just work.

OnePlus 6

Thanks, will try (although I'd rather have a USB-C, as A is already in short supply on my laptop)

Oneplus, have to ask for the model

Well a hub would allow me to connect a mouse and display right? Sadly they don't have a google account, i believe. Yeah, i might try a display, but those are more expensive and less useful than a hub.

Thanks again, I've given that a try. Two minutes before my show is scheduled, I heard the disks spinning up, but nothing showed at the m3u link http://localhost:8409/iptv/channels.m3u

I didn't make a new playout, but I did refresh it. I'll try with a new playout and if that doesn't work I'll just wait until yourself or someone else figures it out.

Part of the problem is definitely settings not being properly saved at times, but at this stage I think I can rule that out.

Edit: oh, the episode at 7:30 played and startled me 😄

Now I just need to get this to happen on the correct days.

You want to blindly enable file transfer protocol with a keyboard, is that it? Sounds tricky.

You would get an OTG cable (USB-C male to USB-A female). Then you get any normal USB hub and connect it with the OTG cable.

Make and model?

I think you just plug it in. I'll have to check to see if it can be used with a monitor. I have an HDMI to Thunderbolt cord plugged into my TV, though since OS 27, streaming from macOS to tvOS has gotten much better, almost no lag. (I'm primarily an Apple guy.)

I do have a Galaxy S10 and a hub. I'll plug the HDMI cable into the hub and see if it works. It does generally depend on what kind of Android phone you have, though. Galaxy and Pixel have established ways of doing things, and the others... it's really anyone's guess how they'll react. But, generally, Android uses the Linux kernel. In my experience, it'll just take a keyboard or mouse if you can plug one in. Apple made a big deal about supporting game controllers, but Android more or less always has AFAIK. Fun fact: back in the day (I'm talking Android Gingerbread, so like 15+ years ago) I connected a keyboard, did CTRL+ALT+DEL, and the phone rebooted. It's funny because Android uses the Linux kernel and CTRL+ALT+DEL is a Windows thing. It's not a thing on Linux (or macOS). CTRL+⌘+DEL and CTRL+OPT+DEL don't do a damn thing on my Mac (we don't have Alt keys). Not sure what they do on Linux, but I assume "not a damn thing".

...And I couldn't get it to work. If I connected the phone directly to the TV, it would mirror it, but I had to click a bunch of things on the screen to make it happen, it wasn't automatic. Going through the hub was a no-go. The hub also has an HDMI port on it, so I unplugged my Xbox and plugged its HDMI cord into the hub, and switched to the input. Still nothing.

Did some Googling around and found out that Samsung doesn't allow you to easily change the USB settings. I couldn't make it work well on mine without tapping a bunch of stuff

I don't understand what a hub would buy you, aside from letting you connect multiple devices and maybe power concurrently. You can just use a USB-C cable and connect the phone to a laptop and have the same effect. If you can't do input to the phone, though, and it isn't already set up for data transfer, I don't think that a USB-C connection to a PC is going to help.

I don't use Google or Apple accounts myself, but my understanding is that if they have one and the phone is linked to it, there's some level of backup to the cloud that can occur. If that's happened, it might be that linking another phone to the account will work. I've no experience here, but might be something to look into.

Some phones can use an external USB-C display. I don't know whether you might be able to plug a USB-C touch display into the phone, authenticate, and enable developer mode or use a file transfer app or whatever with that.

If you get around to it, great. In the mean-time I’ll try your suggestion. Thanks, I appreciate the help!

It’s so easy in a calendar application to set up recurring events. I think the UI could definitely be rethought - at least for my use case.

Ahh. I've never used blocks- just the classic scheduling. I think me not understanding it probably steered me away.

I could tell you how I have classic scheduling. I set it up, add "schedule items" and while mine are dynamic time and in multiples of two, you can select fixed time. So you could add star trek TNG to start at 730 and play X amount of episodes.

Really it just gets hairy if you really want to start at clean intervals I think. I agree it's very convoluted.

Edit- didn't see your day requirements. It won't work then I don't think. Once I get some free time maybe this weekend I'll try playing around with it. Id honestly prefer one or two channels of my own to be more defined like this.

Further edit- near as I can tell you...

• add your blocks
• make a template group (channel 344 maybe)
• make templates underneath that with blocks
• make a new play out attached to your channel
• add template group items under that with your days/times

I think...

Thanks for asking. Here are a few screenshots. Actually ... it looks like a lot of nearly all the info I remember entering is not present ... I did save religiously.

I'm adding the entries again. I see there is no save button for the playout. When I jump to another tab within ErsatzTV and come back the Playout list is empty again. Okay, I've figured that out. Pressing "add playout" a second time saves my entries. I set an episode of a TV show to start just now and nothing happened on the player.

ErsatzTV Legacy Version v26.11.3-osx-arm64

What's your schedule look like for it? I think that's where the problem would be.

Thank you so much for getting back to me on this! :D Since then, I have tried several other tapes that had no noise whatsoever, so am leaning towards it being faulty tapes. But then again, as said in Edit 3, putting a minimal amount tension on that arm that controls the amount of tension exerted on the tape did alleviate some of the noise, so maybe:

• my VCR has seen better days, but if the tape played is in good condition, it can still work with it
• if the tape played already has too much slack, indentations or other damage, my VCR is not able to compensate for it

Your Edit 4 caught my attention. The fact that the counter stops right when the picture gets noisy might actually be a pretty useful clue.

From what I found, VCRs use a separate control track on the tape to help keep everything synchronized. If the deck loses that signal, it could explain both the counter stopping and the picture going haywire.

I'd be curious what happens if you play the same tape in another VCR. If the problem follows the tape, that tells you something. If it only happens in your LG, I'd start looking at the pinch roller or tape path.

Not saying that's definitely the issue, but it seems worth checking before replacing anything.

I did some AI-assisted research on this, so take it as a troubleshooting lead rather than a diagnosis.

I wasn't sure. But web says this...

As electronic devices become smaller and lighter in weight, the component mounting density increases, with the result that heat dissipation performance decreases, causing the device temperature to rise easily. In particular, heat generation from the power output circuit elements greatly affects the temperature rise of devices. However, in applications (switching power supply smoothing, high-frequency power amplifier output coupling, etc.) where large currents also flow in capacitors, the power consumption due to the loss component of the capacitors can increase to the point that heat generation by the capacitors cannot be ignored. Therefore, the temperature rise of capacitors must be suppressed to the range that does not affect the capacitor reliability. An ideal capacitor has only a capacitance component, but an actual capacitor also has an electrode resistance component, dielectric loss, and an electrode inductance component

I actually don't know much about electronics, but I have a speaker system where capacitors are known to get hot then the sound starts to crackle after about 5 hours.

Here's some info from the web though...

As electronic devices become smaller and lighter in weight, the component mounting density increases, with the result that heat dissipation performance decreases, causing the device temperature to rise easily. In particular, heat generation from the power output circuit elements greatly affects the temperature rise of devices. However, in applications (switching power supply smoothing, high-frequency power amplifier output coupling, etc.) where large currents also flow in capacitors, the power consumption due to the loss component of the capacitors can increase to the point that heat generation by the capacitors cannot be ignored. Therefore, the temperature rise of capacitors must be suppressed to the range that does not affect the capacitor reliability. An ideal capacitor has only a capacitance component, but an actual capacitor also has an electrode resistance component, dielectric loss, and an electrode inductance component