In a world of on-demand content, I have been longing for some nostalgia, so I decided to turn my Plex server into a TV station.Accessible on my local network, and even remotely, I can now "tune in" to a custom-curated TV station, commercials and all.Here's how I did it.
Plex is great and all, but it just doesn't scratch that nostalgic itch Choosing whatever you want to watch is fun until it isn't Close I absolutely love my Plex server.It's light-years better (for me) than having to fish through a bunch of DVDs and Blu-rays to find something to watch.The problem is, it's not all that nostalgic at all.
Sure, it's fun to pick whatever you want to watch whenever you want to watch it.And binging TV series or movies is also great fun.But, sometimes, I want something that's a little slower-paced.
Sometimes, I miss the days of having a commercial break and running to the bathroom before the next thing starts, unable to pause the content to wait for people to return.While I know cable TV still exists, it's not the same.The content being shown isn't the same, the commercials aren't the same, nothing about it is the same.
Thankfully, with Plex and some homelab magic, I can recreate the nostalgic experience that I used to hate as a kid, but now long for as an adult.Tunarr lets you create custom TV channels based on your Plex media You can even add your own commercials Close There are a number of projects out there to create your own TV channels, but the container I've chosen for my set up is Tunarr.It's based on dizquetv, which is based on pseudotv.
Tunarr is just the most up-to-date version that I've found, and it's actively maintained.Tunarr is fairly easy to set up, but configuration can take quite a bit.I used Codex to help me get the nitty gritty set up, but you can definitely set up Tunarr yourself.
It's fairly simple.Start by naming the channel, assigning a channel number, and uploading a logo if you want one.Once you have that determined, then you can start adding the media that you want.
This will create a channel that simply plays a show one after the other.You can add pre- and post-roll "filler" content though, which allows you to add some commercials before or after a show.The only problem with a flex channel is that things don't run on a normal time schedule.
This means that your TV channels will get out of sync with each other quite easily since episodes and movies vary in length drastically.However, there's another option, and that's to add specific time slots with "flex fillers" to fill the time gap.Essentially, this works just like real TV does.
I have mine set up to insert up to 90 seconds of retro, nostalgic commercials mid-way through the content, and then it plays another commercial at the beginning or end of a program in order to fill up however big that specific time slot is.You can find your commercials anywhere, but I found a few YouTube videos that worked for me, though dizquetv has a nice list of potential commercial sources for you to browse through, and RetroCommercials is also another great source to check out.With the right setup, your Plex server can feel like TV used to feel.
However, it's entirely configurable.You can setup Tunarr to have no commercials at all, and you can even set it up in "DVR" mode where you can pause and rewind the "live" TV, but I have all that disabled as I want it to resemble the older content that I used to watch.With Tunarr, you can finally offload the decision of picking what to watch You just watch what's "on" right now! Honestly, the thing I'm most excited about with Tunarr is removing decisions from what my wife and I are going to watch on any given day.
We still often pick from the on-demand content Plex offers from the server.But, as I build out more channels, we're going to use them more frequently for just sitting down to watch something quickly.I love the fact that we could just sit down on a Friday night and "tune in" to see what movie is on because I can program Tunarr to put a new movie on every Friday night at 7PM.
If we miss the 7PM start, and tune in at 7:15, we've missed the first 15 minutes of the movie.Since I have my Tunarr set up with commercials, I have it set up to insert between 90 to 120 seconds of commercials every 25 minutes of a movie.Something that this does that I never realized is get you up and walking around during a movie, instead of just sitting there for two hours.
Tunarr really is a fantastic container that I absolutely love using in my homelab.Plus, it's accessible from anywhere.Since Tunarr connects to Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby, as well as supporting most other IPTV clients, it's accessible from basically any web browser that can access your media server.
The more I think about nostalgic things, the more I realize they were good for us When I was a kid, I hated commercials.Now that I have a life with no commercials, I'm actively looking for ways to add them back.I used to hate scheduled programming, and wish for a life where everything was on-demand.
Now, I'm building a scheduled programming list.The more I look back, the more I realize that it was actually good for us.Commercial breaks gave us natural pauses in a movie to get up, go to the restroom, get a drink refill, or even just chat.
Now, nobody wants to pause a movie because it'll "ruin the experience," so we sit in one place on a couch for hours on end.We binge shows non-stop for four or six hours without getting up, when there used to be natural 90 to 120 second breaks every 15 minutes, with longer breaks on the hour, giving us natural times to get up, stretch, and make us think about pausing.I'm not saying those other things aren't good, but sometimes the older things really were better than what we have now in some ways.
I'll still keep watching my on-demand Plex content whenever I want, but I do love having the slower-paced option of a local TV channel with commercial breaks that I curate now.
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