Been working on these 2 projects and they actually sort of work together in a cool way, basically imagine a BBS chat room where it can tune a station, broadcasted by someone with whatever they want to stream, live, with automatic closed captioning, is being rendered using ANSI glyphs in true color synced across users with no drift. I think of it as a virtual BBS couch.

There's a bit more to the update below, but in short the projects are here and there if you want to try or look for the bite sized details: https://github.com/hmderdoc/telnetvision and https://github.com/hmderdoc/avatar_chat_universal

Besides telnetvision integration Avatar Chat has been updated with bridging chat networks in mind, with included bridges for irc, discord, telegram, matrix and slack. Last but not least there is a forked version of Moebius that can connect and send ANSI's to avatar chat and interact on that network - sending ANSI's has always been possible but all editors were on my domains, the moebius fork at least brings that functionality available to other servers.

If you do somehow manage to get your own telnetvision broadcast going, you can tune an avatar chat room channel to a broadcaster by typing (using my domain as an example) `/tvtuner futureland.today 7601 cam` - the params being server-url, port, and channel-name.

If you install the new avatar chat and want to see the tv feature in action, just type `/join #tv` something should be broadcasting.

\ >== HM Derdoc ==< /
/ @futureland.today \

\ >== HM Derdoc ==< /
/ @futureland.today \
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: telnet://futureland.today https://blockbra.in (1337:3/222)

Been working on these 2 projects and they actually sort of work together in a cool way, basically imagine a BBS chat room where it can tune a station, broadcasted by someone with whatever they want to stream, live, with automatic closed captioning, is being rendered using ANSI glyphs in true color synced across users with no drift. I think of it as a
virtual BBS couch.

https://github.com/hmderdoc/telnetvision and https://github.com/hmderdoc/avatar_chat_universal

Really cool - can we see both on the Future Land BBS?

or futureland.today??



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (1337:3/129)

Yeah, it's running on futureland.today - you can see the telnetvision door running before login and also afterwards by navigating to Apps -> Telnetvision. The chat app is under Demos -> AC_Universal, a little hard to discover, it's in that section on my board for now not because of the working state but just because it sort of competes with the pre-existing BBS shell chat integration (which now kinda sucks in comparison to this new version, no TV support), so check out AC_Universal in the demo section and "/join #tv" - I'm streaming live network TV right now, to change the channel, say "Derdoc change the channel and I'll flip it manually if I see it," Remote-control is something that can be built it just would probably depend on what you're streaming and how, but you can pretty much stream anything live with a little effort - TV is a little tricky (DRM) and good to show latency across clients; the other option was live streaming myself and doing silly tricks on cue.

but you don't even have to logon to BBS or install as a door to get in on the couch experience, it runs in standalone mode from CLI and should have futureland.today as a default server but i'd make sure you're passing it a username so it doesn't just pick it up from your system username, just glance at the .ini file

if one were to play around with the broadcaster in an attempt to create their own channel/relay it can work cross domain and be sticky to a chat room, so like if you were to get the broadcaster / relay setup with ports open on 20forbeers.com on a channel called 'pauliecast' - you could make a room on futureland.today #20forbeers and type `/tvtuner 20forbeers.com 7601 pauliecast` it'd essentially be like a chat room topic you can change, and whenever people joined the room it would tune to that station. so in an ideal world there'd be more options than my current silly stream. movie nights, tv marathons, gaming streams, webcams, experiments it'd be cool to just hop chat rooms and have that old school synchronized media experience if someone shows up.

\ >== HM Derdoc ==< /
/ @futureland.today \
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: telnet://futureland.today https://blockbra.in (1337:3/222)

Re: Re: Telnetvision (new) + AvatarChat (updated to 0.2.x) = insanity
By: Hm Derdoc to paulie420 on Wed May 27 2026 19:58:05

...movie nights, tv marathons, gaming streams, webcams, experiments.

Interesting. However, there are legal considerations when it comes to rebroadcasting commercial programming you might want to consider.
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (1:124/5016)

Re: Re: Telnetvision (new) + AvatarChat (updated to 0.2.x) = insanity
By: Mortar to Hm Derdoc on Thu May 28 2026 10:02 am

Interesting. However, there are legal considerations when it comes to rebroadcasting commercial programming you might
want to consider.

For sure - What I'm doing right now rebroadcasting stuff that anyone with antenna could get is a lot less problematic for
me to defend despite being a gray area than doing something like streaming some new movie release. The former is ad
supported, ads are being delivered intact and one might be able to say that the net-effect is good for the broadcaster
assuming the person viewing wouldn't watch otherwise, more eyeballs for ads. The latter example is much more problematic
because it's easy to make a case that harm occurred to the copyright holder; the user who decides to watch a movie via
"Telnetvision" instead of at the theatre has caused damages of at least the value of a movie ticket --- there may be more
shades of gray though, like if you stream netflix and everyone in that channel is a netflix subscriber in reality there's
not much reason for Netflix to care legally from a damages standpoint. There's also an argument to be made that
syndication in text-mode isn't much of a 1:1 substitute.

None of my counterpoints mean I think I'm in the clear, definitely consider risk, that's why I'm broadcasting local NBC
versus something that is subsidized by cable subscriptions like ESPN, which is sketchier. Good advice - always consider
risk... The other argument is that no one will ever find out because it's on a BBS and hardly anyone uses BBS's. If
Hollywood were paying attention to them, at least that means new eyeballs on bbs's in beverly hills - that is one success
metric I guess. I'll probably not broadcast TV long term on my channel, maybe sometimes but I could just as easily stream
a bird feeder camera or anything else,TV's a good demo of latency related stuff for now if people have TV's that can show
the true signal it sort of demonstrates the encoding speed.

cheers

\ >== HM Derdoc ==< /
/ @futureland.today \
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: telnet://futureland.today https://blockbra.in (1337:3/222)

Yeah, it's running on futureland.today - you can see the telnetvision
door running before login and also afterwards by navigating to Apps -> Telnetvision.

Love it - super impressive over a terminal soft. Thanks for sharing, and its cool that you put the source up on git. NiCE!!

if one were to play around with the broadcaster in an attempt to create their own channel/relay it can work cross domain and be sticky to a chat room, so like if you were to get the broadcaster / relay setup with
ports open on 20forbeers.com on a channel called 'pauliecast' - you
could make a room on futureland.today

This is sick - maybe I'll have to spin a channel up!!

Also, I'm super impressed w/ futureland.today BBS - very cool creation, Hm - I made a post about it on 2oFB so others know... these gems of BBSes need to be talked about so other users know about the impressive ones. Great w0rk!!



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
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--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (1337:3/129)

None of my counterpoints mean I think I'm in the clear, definitely consider risk, that's why I'm broadcasting local NBC
versus something that is subsidized by cable subscriptions like ESPN, which is sketchier. Good advice - always consider
risk...

Oh gosh, I wouldn't be w0rried about that - stream whatever the heck you like!



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (1337:3/129)

Interesting. However, there are legal considerations when it comes to rebroadcasting commercial programming you might want to consider.

It's only illegal if you get caught! :) Besides, who's going to know about it but a small group of old hackers?

But in all seriousness, I am wondering if it could be really considered a "rebroadcast". a) it's a small target and b) it isn't a faithful reproduction by any measure. I suppose if a copyright holder wanted to raise a stink about it they could, but it seems something like this could be covered under fair use or derivative works. I wouldn't spend the money to defend it in court though.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (1337:3/129)

Been working on these 2 projects and they actually sort of work together in a cool way, basically imagine a BBS chat room where it can tune
a station, broadcasted by someone with whatever they want to stream,
live, with automatic closed captioning, is being rendered using
ANSI glyphs in true color synced across users with no drift. I think
of it as a virtual BBS couch.

There's a bit more to the update below, but in short the projects are here and there if you want to try or look for the bite sized details: https://github.com/hmderdoc/telnetvision and https://github.com/hmderdoc/avatar_chat_universal

Any chance of a Win32 version?

--
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*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
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* Origin: Shurato's Heavenly Sphere telnet://shsbbs.net (1337:3/185)

l33tz0r wrote to Mortar <=-

Interesting. However, there are legal considerations when it comes to rebroadcasting commercial programming you might want to consider.

It's only illegal if you get caught! :) Besides, who's going to know about it but a small group of old hackers?

I wonder if the provisions in the Copyright Act allowing fair use for
converting media for use in unsupported systems would apply? I'm
thinking of the "analog hole" that made copying a DVD to cassette
applicable when you didn't have a DVD player in your car.

One could argue that it'd be different than rebroadcasting TV
programming for viewing on a TV.




... Give way to your worst impulse
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (1337:3/178)

Love it - super impressive over a terminal soft. Thanks for sharing, and its cool that you put the source up on git. NiCE!!

This is sick - maybe I'll have to spin a channel up!!

Thanks! Definitely give broadcasting a try, the more channels the better the "TV network" becomes, I also have a relay service running so if anyone wants to connect to that, instead of setting up a relay on their BBS, LMK, just need to have a channel name and shared secret to broadcast. I try to put all my BBS source code online, even the stuff that isn't for people to download and re-run like my shell and website code - ultimately my BBS and most software is probably 99.9% tricks from various places melted into a collage and if people want to examine internals of stuff to build new things that blow my mind, I'm here for that.

Also, I'm super impressed w/ futureland.today BBS - very cool creation, Hm - I made a post about it on 2oFB so others know... these gems of BBSes need to be talked about so other users know about the impressive ones. Great w0rk!!

Thanks again - I've been on a BBS bender the last 9 months, this is probably the 3rd incarnation of futureland.today, the last one sucked kinda hard although it was truly custom / written from scratch. Before that I ran synchronet for a number of years with other custom UI's - in 2014 I think I was lucky to stumble across boards like: fatcatsbbs.com, bbs.electronicchicken.com, and thebrokenbubble.com where the UI's got crafted more with javascript code than loading a series of menu files. Those guys used to have a group / network called "center of awareness" (centerofawareness.net), you needed a modded out BBS to join, eventually futureland v1 was let in as probably the worst of the group. Now futureland v3 is back, but CoA is dead, looks like phenom is dead and araknet too... maybe I just don't where to look or maybe the void is real but I agree not only for the sake of my BBS, if I hadn't figured out how to route to those BBS's mentioned above many years back without getting bogged down in the muck my life would be different, I may have never starting slinging javascript around which turned into a career after cutting my teeth in the relatively low stakes world of BBS mods

cheers,

\ >== HM Derdoc ==< /
/ @futureland.today \
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: telnet://futureland.today https://blockbra.in (1337:3/222)

Oh gosh, I wouldn't be w0rried about that - stream whatever the heck you like!

Yeah, I don't think anyone will find out or care unless you did something really bold like take pay per view television and broadcast it - but I'd say only if you advertise and put it in front of your login (which I'm doing with my mod right now). I think if someone has to go through the effort login and launch a door the chance drops to zilch unless some user wants to be vindictive - but even then I don't think it's very high risk, there are defenses and government has better things to do

\ >== HM Derdoc ==< /
/ @futureland.today \
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: telnet://futureland.today https://blockbra.in (1337:3/222)

Any chance of a Win32 version?

There is a windows32 of avatar chat I believe but maybe not the telnetvision code (relay / door). The broadcaster portion of telnetvision uses python so long as your machine can run that you can broadcast. If you email me, I can send you a key if you want to connect to my relay. But I'll also look into windows32 compatibility now, the relay being the main priority because AvatarChat universal should run on windows 32 last I checked and hopefully can tune to TV. I'll ping you when I have some new builds, hopefully not too long here.


\ >== HM Derdoc ==< /
/ @futureland.today \
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: telnet://futureland.today https://blockbra.in (1337:3/222)

Ok - it's ready, I probably should have just done it and then responded given how long it took.

https://github.com/hmderdoc/telnetvision/releases/tag/v0.1.1

\ >== HM Derdoc ==< /
/ @futureland.today \
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: telnet://futureland.today https://blockbra.in (1337:3/222)

* In a message originally to Shurato, Hm Derdoc said:

Any chance of a Win32 version?

There is a windows32 of avatar chat I believe but maybe not the
telnetvision code (relay / door). The broadcaster portion of
telnetvision uses python so long as your machine can run that you
can broadcast. If you email me, I can send you a key if you want
to connect to my relay. But I'll also look into windows32
compatibility now, the relay being the main priority because
AvatarChat universal should run on windows 32 last I checked and hopefully can tune to TV. I'll ping you when I have some new builds, hopefully
not too long here.

I can run python, but didn't have any luck using producer.py, it gave me nothing but errors. I'm using python 3.13.13. I can run telnetvision (and
am) on my sbbs game server, which is fine for now. I just can't figure out
how to connect to a url with it.

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---
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* In a message originally to Shurato, Hm Derdoc said:

Ok - it's ready, I probably should have just done it and then responded given how long it took.

https://github.com/hmderdoc/telnetvision/releases/tag/v0.1.1

Ok, got it. I still have no clue how to use the python.

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Ok - it's ready, I probably should have just done it and then responded given how long it took.

https://github.com/hmderdoc/telnetvision/releases/tag/v0.1.1

Here is the error producer.py gives me:

C:\ele\telnetv>python producer.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\ele\telnetv\producer.py", line 23, in <module>
import termios
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'termios'


I'd love to get this working, but either it or I need some serious help...

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*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
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