Converting an OTA signal to a live stream

[Dave72 0]

Hello, I'm doing research for a client. 

He has a TV station in Atlanta. This is an over-the-air signal. We want this station to also be available on his Roku channel and other OTT platforms. For that we need an HLS stream. How is this typically done?

Should we somehow capture the OTA signal on a computer and then convert to the feed we need to send to a streaming service like Dacast? Or is this done at the programming software level? This is so not my area of expertise so I'm a little lost. 

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[TVLurker 198]

isn't a transmitter transmitting from a master feed? if so you can take that, pipe it into ffmpeg and bam a HLS stream.

 

I only know the basics though, for subtitles it's going to be way harder to get that to work.

[Adam MadMan 285]

Stanford University has been running a research project about this sort of thing called Puffer. It's open source, though I'd probably ask first before using any of their code. These sorts of things can be legally complicated especially if they're going to be used commercially like you're implying.

[DirtyHarry 727]

What does the cost of something like this run? I would imagine you need hosting and some kind of a server? Do you get any kind of viewership this way or just a few people watching? Wouldn't it be better to be on a service like Local BTV? This low power Christian station in Marion Ohio is on there. So I figure if they can afford it and it's legal, anybody can.  

 

How does this work technically? I would imagine that they send you chunks of the program at a time, along with other programming chunks that include the advertising. It seems like you would need some kind of a server to manage all of that.