every.channel/docs/ARCHITECTURE.md

Architecture

Layers

1. Capture

• Hardware: ATSC antennas -> HDHomeRun or Linux IPTV capture devices.
• Output: MPEG-TS or ATSC 3.0 streams.

2. Normalize

• Demux and normalize timestamps.
• Select program IDs and identify audio/video tracks.

3. Deterministic transcode

• Encode with a fixed profile (codec, GOP, bitrate, keyframe cadence).
• Emit fixed-duration chunks with stable ordering.
• Hash chunks to produce content identifiers.

4. MoQ publish

• Map each channel to a track namespace.
• Each chunk becomes a MoQ object in a group.
• Objects are named and addressed deterministically.

5. Relay mesh

• Relays cache objects and announce tracks.
• iroh provides programmable topology and peer routing.
• Multiple relays can serve identical objects.

6. Playback

• Desktop: Tauri app that subscribes to tracks.
• CLI: debugging, inspection, and headless clients.
• Web: static site that connects to a relay gateway.

Roles

• Runner: owns capture + transcode + publish.
• Chopper: executes deterministic chunking profiles.
• Relay: stores and forwards MoQ objects.
• Manager: configures nodes and applies policy.
• Provisioner: bootstraps nodes and manages deployment.

Determinism

• The same input with the same profile should yield identical chunks.
• Chunk hashes are the primitive for availability and de-duplication.
• Deterministic names allow relays to converge without coordination.

Time synchronization

• Chunk boundaries are derived from PCR and, when available, broadcast UTC (ATSC STT / DVB TDT/TOT).
• Unsynced sources remain source-scoped until broadcast time is present.
• Discontinuities force a new chunk group boundary.