mrcatmann.space
Catcast :: mrcatmann.space

Catcast

[catcast.tv]

A streaming platform created by me.

What it can do:

  • live broadcasts
  • radio (Icecast)
  • scheduled broadcasts
  • uploading and storage of video/audio
  • communication with viewers (chat rooms, news, comments)
  • and much more.

Project history

There once was a project called yatv.ru - the first Russian platform for online broadcasts. Basically, Justin.TV, but for russian auditory. And there was a group of friends who tried to create their own "Internet TV" channels - with live streams, talk shows, pre-recorded programs and even news. We called it TV because there was practically no such concept as "streaming" in the russian internet, and most of us were fans of old Russian television from 90s and 00s (before it became a 24/7 propaganda shitshow). It was a cringey thing, perhaps because most of the “TV people” were 14-16 years old.. :D
In 2014, YaTV was closed due to unprofitability - no one in the Russia then wanted to place advertisements in content created by ordinary users (literally a year and a half later, a streaming and blogging boom started).
All the regular inhabitants of the site went to different platforms, losing their audience in the process. There were talks about creating our own platform, which, however, did not end in anything.

In the spring of 2016, out of boredom, I got a saved YaTV HTML and CSS from the Web archive and coded a simple engine in PHP, and... strangely enough, the idea worked - in the first days more than 100 channels from former YaTV users were registered on the site.
Initially I expected it to be a narrowly focused project for a small group of my long-time friends, but even in the first days the site attracted users I didn't know personally. Moreover, in a few months of the former YaTV developers wrote to me, and a few years later I joined his team on a new project...but that's another story :)


Version 3.0 (catcast.tv)

Release date: July 2019

Stack: Laravel, Nuxt

The current iteration of the site, made on modern technologies. The UI is based on my own set of Vue components (input fields, selectors, buttons, etc.). The backend was rewritten in Laravel.


  • Now, in addition to TV, you can also create radio stations! (with the help of Icecast and Liquidsoap).
  • You can broadcast directly from the browser, with effects and overlays applied. Canvas + WebAudio + MediaRecorder + WS + FFmpeg = magic :)
  • The user role system has been rewritten for more flexible configuration of access to each section.
  • Notifications can be received by email, VK or Telegram.

Version 2.0 (myowntv.org)

Release date: November 2016

Stack: a simple MVC engine in PHP, jQuery

I didn't want to use someone else's stolen design forever, and new users started coming to the site - word of mouth worked. By that time I had already learned the basics of web development and created a simple MVC-engine, and also added more interactivity and PJAX. Some pages were even rewritten in VueJS.


Features

  • Autopilot - linear broadcasting based on playlists (“like on TV”)
  • Watching and downloading videos
  • Admin panel for channels
  • Real-time data update via WS

Version 1.0 (moeitv.ru)

Release date: April 2016

The first version of the site, written in PHP shitcode, in which SQL queries could coexist with CSS, etc.

The design was stolen from yatv.ru (the reasons are above).

Oddly enough, this thing worked and even managed to withstand some loads when the site was suddenly flooded with new users.


Features

  • Live broadcasts
  • Chat
  • Recording broadcasts
  • Customizing channel pages