THE NEW STREAM PLAYER IS BELOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS

Hello sweet friends — we’re testing a new streaming service and need YOU to test it out on all your devices to see where any issues might be. Please use the chat box to let us know your successes and troubles.

First test - BROWSER

There should be something playing in the new player below, like a normal show. How’s it looking? Is it relatively in sync? How’s it look if you make it full screen.

Second test - CASTING/AIRPLAY

If you normally cast the show to your TV, can you get that to work? If you open this page in Safari, the airplay icon will appear when you hover over the player and it should work nicely. How does one chromecast or other types of casting? Maybe you know and can tell us if that works.

If you have an iPhone and open this in safari, the player will have an airplay option there too, see if that works. How do other phones do things? Please let us know if you succeed with an android device and what you did to make that work.

Third test - ROKU/Apple TV apps + iPhone app

This is a big one and I hope these instructions are easy to follow, because once you set it up, you’ll be able to just click a button to watch the live show on your TV. No casting, no browsers.

Apple TV - download the OWNCASTS app from the tvOS app store. Open the app and go to the top nav bar to Settings. In settings, click Add server. Enter stream.museumofhomevideo.com then click Add Server button to save. This should bring you back to the main Settings page. Click the “Saved servers are the first row” option to ON. Scroll up to the top menu and then click the far left Owncasts logo icon to get back to the home screen. The top row thumbnail should be the live Museum stream. Click to open.

Just now I had an issue typing into my apple tv app where after I typed it, I wasn’t able to hit the Add Server button. Instead of typing with the apple remote, I tried again using my iphone to type — and hitting the Enter key on my phone after entering the text made the Add Server button work. Hopefully that’s just a me problem, but if this happens to you, try that - but let us know either way. We’re testing to find these quirks.

ROKU - very similar to the above, but your app is different & easier. The main screen you see when you open the app has a big Add Owncast Live Stream option — looks like a computer connecting to a cloud. Click that and add https://stream.museumofhomevideo.com (you MUST enter https:// or it WILL NOT WORK). After you add it and go back to the home screen, you should see the museum stream thumbnail. Click to open.

How does it look? In sync? Quality okay? Next time you want to watch the show, all you need to do is open Owncast and then click on our live thumbnail. Slightly wonky to set up but then it should just work.

iPhone app - Owncasts has an iPhone app (no android app, sadly). Download and on the home screen, click the upper left gear icon to open Settings. Add server. Enter stream.museumofhomevideo.com then the Add Server button to save. You can swipe down the settings page to get back to the home page. The live stream should be right there under the Saved tab.

The fun thing about the app is that when you’re watching the stream, if you click in the upper right corner Owncasts logo, there’s a menu option to “Get notified when live” if that’s something you would like your phone to do whenever the stream starts.

The app can also airplay nicely to your tv from your phone.

TRY AS MANY OF THESE THINGS AS YOU CAN and please let us know what’s working and what’s weird! Thanks so much for helping us test! The viewers will appreciate the smoothed out instructions you help create!

xo IVOR