The emergence of streaming services such as Netflix It made people speculate about the bleak future of TV channels. While the new generation may not watch TV anymore, TV channels are not old fashioned yet.
Many streaming services such as Hulu And Hotstar includes TV channels in its offering. TV channels also use live broadcasting to broadcast their content to viewers on the Internet.
Another way to watch live TV is to use IPTV. There are a number of TV channels available via IPTV so that viewers can use the internet to watch live broadcasts. Some channels are available for free while some may require a subscription.
There used to be a few applications on Linux to watch IPTV channels but most of them are discontinued. Linux Mint Team announce They are working on a new application that will allow you to watch TV channels via IPTV on your Linux system.
Hypnotix: A new IPTV application is in development
hypnosis It is an IPTV streaming application that supports live TV, movies, and series. It supports IPTV Providers that use M3U URL, Xtream API or Local M3U Playlist.
If none of the above makes sense to you, don’t worry. Hypnotix comes with a pre-configured FreeIPTV service. FreeIPTV is a project that contains M3U of more than 2000 legally free to watch TV channels.
Which means that you can get a huge list of TV channels available for free from all over the world.
You can click on the country or region of your choice. You will see the list of channels in the left sidebar. Clicking on the channel will start the content playing in the right sidebar.
You can also go to full screen mode with the keyboard shortcut F or F11 or use the button in the application.
There is also a provision for handling the VOD (Video On Demand) library but I haven’t been able to figure out a way to use it.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Your viewing experience depends on your internet speed and TV channel servers.
- Some TV channels may not work even if they are listed in the app.
- You can go back a few seconds or minutes, but it depends on the cache.
- You can also pause the live stream and it will keep a cache so you can resume it later. I don’t know the cache size.
- There is no way to control the quality of streaming video as you do on YouTube and other video streaming sites.
- You will not get the driver details in the launcher.
- This is broadcast television so you can watch the same advertisements that air during program breaks.
Install Hypnotix on Linux
Hypnotix is still in beta development. A beta .deb file is available for testing. On Ubuntu and Debian-based distributions, you can install it from a DEB file.
As a reader has been notified, Hypnotix is now available in the AUR for Arch Linux users.
Please note that it requires Python 3 packages which may not be available on Ubuntu 18.04 and Mint 19 versions due to dependency issues. If you have Python 3 installed on your system, you can download the dependency package from the link below.
More features to come
The Linux Mint development team plans to add more features in the future:
- EPG (Live TV Show) support
- PVR: Pause, time shift, recording, etc.
- Custom Categories: Lists the channels in the appropriate categories
- Favorites: So you don’t have to search for your favorite channels all the time.
- Hide unused content
I love the Linux Mint team. Unlike many other distributions, it is not just bundles of Ubuntu or Arch with different themes and wallpapers. They have put effort into developing not only the distribution but also apps like Hypnotix, Warpinator, etc. for their users. Other distribution maintainers should learn from the Mint team.
Hypnotix provides a way to watch IPTV channels with a simple and easy to use interface. Personally, I don’t watch TV but I know a lot of people do. Are you one of them? If yes, are you looking forward to using it? Do share your views in the comments section.