Show HN: hacking our set-top box

15 pointsjuliennakache14y ago15 comments

We're 2 hackers out of NYC and we had tons of fun building Zapkast.com, our take on Social TV.

We played with: - c/c++ for hacking our set top boxes, - ruby/rails for the rest api, - eventmachine/node/erlang for the xmpp api/real time backend, - ios/cocoa for the iPhone app, - redis & mysql for the datastores.

We did everything ourselves, even the logo and UI :) Tell us what you think! http://zapkast.com

15 pointsjuliennakache14y ago15 comments

We're 2 hackers out of NYC and we had tons of fun building Zapkast.com, our take on Social TV.

We did everything ourselves, even the logo and UI :) Tell us what you think! http://zapkast.com

15 comments

14 comments · 8 top-level

vkdelta14y ago· 4 in thread

Would you please explain STB component of the app? I don't see any.

dahawi14y ago

Basically we have a server connected to STBs running C++ scripts that rotate over every channel (the STBs are operated with an IR blaster) to capture snapshots which are then uploaded to S3 (with a little node.js component) that are fed to the client app via XMPP.

hughesdan14y ago

I'm curious, how are you handling the time-zone issue? For example, MTV runs an East and West Cost feed. Usually those are just time-shifted mirror images (but not always). Fox often runs eight or more national feeds breaking the country into arbitrary sections (think NFL Sunday). Are you planning to scatter your set-top boxes in different regions of the country?

vkdelta14y ago

Excellent! Thx for response. Just curious how many STBs you have. Why can't pull EPG data and use that as a source? But yes, won't get screenshots that way.

dahawi14y ago

Thanks for the suggestion ! We'll have to look into the EPG, for now we get the TV listings data in another way ;) Right now we only have 2 STBs, and their input is captured by 2 video cards (http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/). We picked this one because it has a very nice C++ SDK. Ideally though, we'd have as many STBs as we can to get more screenshots !

1 more reply

mickeyben14y ago· 2 in thread

too bad it's limited to the US store

dahawi14y ago

well, it's not like a lot of people are going to watch live american TV from abroad ;)

juliennakacheOP14y ago

Let us install a set-top box at your place and you should be good to go ! :)

mickeyben14y ago

clickable: http://zapkast.com

isalmon14y ago

Very nice idea guys, going to use that.

lordarf14y ago