Better and Cheaper Than IPTV

Smart TVs won't cast arbitrary web video, and screen mirroring is laggy and drops resolution. Castor casts the real stream instead, at full quality, from your terminal.

I built it because I couldn't cast web video from my laptop to my TV: no Chromecast, no AirPlay.

Point it at any web page and Castor finds the video, extracts the stream, transcodes it for your TV, and casts in real time. It also takes a direct stream URL or an IMDB/TMDB id, and can burn in auto-generated subtitles.

_{Run castor cast to browse and search titles, inspect posters and metadata, then cast, without leaving the terminal.}

Installation

The recommended way to run Castor is the native binary. It runs directly on your machine, so it shares your TV's network, which device discovery needs. It requires Chrome/Chromium (headless extraction), ffmpeg (transcoding), and ffprobe (format detection) on your PATH. Docker is an optional alternative that bundles all three, but only works from a Linux host.

Homebrew (macOS)

brew install --cask stupside/tap/castor

See Quick start to create the one-time config.yaml (which TV, which sources). After that, casting is a single command, no URL, just an IMDB/TMDB id:

castor cast movie tt12300742

From source

Needs Go 1.26+ and cmake (the whisper.cpp bindings are cgo and link a locally built libwhisper.a):

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/stupside/castor.git
cd castor
make          # builds libwhisper.a, then the castor binary

go install won't work: the vendored whisper.cpp bindings come in through a local replace and need that prebuilt static lib.

Docker (optional)

On a Linux box or NAS on the same network as the TV, the prebuilt ghcr.io/stupside/castor image bundles Chrome, ffmpeg and ffprobe so you don't install them by hand:

# Discover devices (no config required)
docker run --rm --network host ghcr.io/stupside/castor:latest scan
# Cast a movie by id, mounting config.yaml and a persistent model cache
docker run --rm --network host \
  -v "$PWD/config.yaml:/config.yaml" \
  -v castor-cache:/root/.cache \
  ghcr.io/stupside/castor:latest \
  cast movie tt12300742

The -v "$PWD/config.yaml:/config.yaml" mount is what makes this work: the container reads your device and sources from config.yaml at /config.yaml, so run every command from the directory holding it. The castor-cache volume keeps the auto-downloaded whisper models (~75 MB) between runs; swap :latest for any release tag to pin a version.

Supported devices

DLNA / UPnP

Any TV implementing the DLNA/UPnP MediaRenderer:1 profile works, which covers virtually every smart TV sold in the last decade: Samsung (tested), LG, Sony Bravia, Panasonic Viera, Philips, Hisense, TCL, VIZIO, Sharp. Networked players like Kodi, VLC, and Plex also work.

Run castor scan to discover devices on your network.

Chromecast

Quick start

Castor requires a config.yaml in the current directory (or pass --config). Everything mechanical ships with working defaults, so a minimal file only has to say which device to cast to and which sources to cast from. A TMDB API key is optional, needed only for the interactive browser.

# 1. Find your TV's exact name
castor scan

Create config.yaml with that name:

device:
  name: "Living Room TV"   # exact name from `castor scan`
  type: dlna
sources:
  - proxies: ["https://vidsrc-embed.ru"]
    templates:
      movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}"
      episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}-{episode}"
# tmdb:
#   api_key: "<KEY>"   # optional, only for the `castor cast` browser; free from https://www.themoviedb.org/settings/api

That's all you need to cast by id, the quickest path with no TMDB key:

# 2. Cast a movie straight from an IMDB/TMDB id, resolved through your sources
castor cast movie tt12300742

Prefer to browse? Add a tmdb.api_key and run castor cast for an interactive TUI. It first asks which device to cast to: every DLNA/UPnP renderer on your network, discovered on the fly and with your configured device pre-selected:

Then it opens a TMDB-backed browser: filter by genre, search, inspect posters and metadata, drill into a series' episodes, and cast the one you pick.

Usage

# Interactive TMDB browser: search, pick a movie/episode, cast (needs tmdb.api_key)
castor cast
# Cast whatever video is playing on a web page
castor cast player https://example.com/watch/some-video
# Cast by IMDB/TMDB id, using the sources in your config
castor cast movie   tt33028778
castor cast episode tt2699128 --season 1 --episode 3
# Cast a raw stream URL directly
castor cast url https://example.com/stream.m3u8
# Useful flags
castor cast movie --dry-run tt33028778   # print found URLs without casting
castor --debug cast player https://...   # verbose logging
castor scan                              # discover devices on the network
castor info                              # version / build info

Configuration

Quick start covers the required keys. Beyond those, everything mechanical (timeouts, probing, capture, transcoding, Chrome discovery) ships with working defaults. Override any of it in config.yaml, point at a different file with --config, drop secrets like your TMDB key into a git-ignored sibling config.local.yaml (it overlays config.yaml), or set CASTOR_SECTION__FIELD environment variables.

The one opt-in worth calling out is auto-generated subtitles, burned into the video:

whisper:
  enable: true             # off by default
  # language: "fr"         # default: English
  # model_path: ""         # default: ggml-tiny.en (~75 MB, auto-downloaded)

Disclaimer

Castor hosts no video and ships no content of its own. It's a general tool for casting a stream to your TV, not tied to any particular website. The sources in the example config.yaml are just that, examples; which sites you point it at, and staying within the law and their terms of use, is your responsibility. Only cast content you have the right to access.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.