Show HN: VidGrid – A large-screen news channel viewer with simple audio control

Hi HN!

When I was at university (early 2010s) I worked a lot on student media, and got really into what the future of news would look like. Around the same time Microsoft backed a company called LiveStation which has since closed down, but had a nice feature that allowed you to open multiple streams from different news channels at the same time.

When I went into professional media, and the offices of The Times, the BBC, The Guardian and the like, this format is common on large screens in the central newsgathering areas: you need to see several feeds at once. But there wasn't a system that I know of that you can have on your workstation, especially one that allows you to switch your audio feed as simply as a click.

So I built VidGrid over the last couple of weekends to make this experience accessible to all my colleagues around the world working at home through these challenging circumstances.

It gives you easy access to news channels that offer a free open-access playlist file (or you can paste your own). Those that are protected (sensibly) by CORs or some other DRM technology it obviously can't load.

It's built in React with a heavy dependency on the fantastic multi-source React-Player, and it's my first 'significant' (in my terms) project, though I've spent a lot more time in the last few weeks coding than I did in the office.

I hope it can be of use to some of you, or if any of you have colleagues or friends in newsrooms you can pass it on.

Thanks :)

Great job! The professional term is multiview(er), you might be better off in search results etc. by including that.