A dozen channels, and one of them is yours.
Residents want a short, familiar list on the television that is already in the room. Castmux delivers it as DVB-C on the coax you have, alongside a channel of your own for activities, menus and services. Nobody on site has to learn anything.
The problem
The television is one of the few things a resident controls.
Which is why it needs to work the same way every day.
- Residents want a short, familiar list of channels in the order they expect, not two hundred in whatever order the scan found them.
- Notices are printed, go out of date within a week, and end up taped to the wall by the lift.
- Staff cannot walk into every room to change a setting, and should not have to.
- The televisions are a mixed estate. Some of them are old, and none of them are going to be replaced this year.
- There is no IT department on site, and no budget to create one.
What Castmux does about it
Fit it once, change it from a browser, never enter a room again.
A short, curated list
You choose which twelve or fifteen services go out, with the names residents recognise, and assign them by dragging. Fixed channel numbering through LCN isroadmap; today the order comes from the set's own scan, and a short list keeps that predictable.
The house channel is the point
roadmap An information channel generated on the appliance: today's activities, the menu, mealtimes, birthdays, church services, the minibus, the garden camera. See the honest limits below for what exists today.
Works with the televisions you have
DVB-C on the coax is what those sets were built to receive. No box, no HDMI input to select, no second remote control, and nothing new for a resident to learn.
Nobody on site has to understand it
One appliance, one web page, no fans and no disk. Once it is commissioned, day-to-day care staff never touch it. There is nothing on it to break by clicking the wrong thing.
Remote support
The same web interface, the per-channel logs and the browser preview are what your installer uses to diagnose a problem. Most questions are answered without driving over.
Adds to what is already there
Castmux can put its multiplexes onto the existing cable alongside the line-up the home already receives. It does not have to replace anything to add your channel.
A typical installation
Which box, for which home.
| Property size | Channels | Recommended hardware | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single home, up to 60 beds | 12–15 | IPTV / HDMI Box — €150, or the Pro Box if the coax is being used | UDP multicast to smart TVs, or DVB-C on the coax. |
| Larger home, or a group site | Up to 100 | Cable TV / IPTV Pro Box — €1,899 | DVB-C on the existing coax across 16 frequencies, plus UDP multicast on the LAN. |
Most homes need the smaller box. The Pro Box is the one to specify when the distribution is coax and the sets are to be left exactly as they are.
What you get
Small enough to forget about.
- One web page — every setting, light or dark, from any browser on site
- Browser preview — check a channel from the office without going to a room
- Per-channel logs — what your installer needs before they get in the car
- Live viewer counts — on the IPTV output, so you know what is watched
- Fanless and diskless — silent, low power, nothing to service
- Runs offline — it does not need the internet to keep the pictures on
- One price per appliance — not per bed, per room or per viewer
Our sister project tvheadend.io carries over 2,000 licensed television and radio services over HLS and SRT, which are the two source types Castmux ingests natively, including radio for the lounges. Take a channel package and the Castmux licence costs nothing. See what is available or read thepricing. Rights differ by property type — a care home is not licensed the same way as a hotel or a private dwelling — so tell us what the building is and we will quote the right package.
Honest limits
What Castmux does not do for a care home.
The house channel is the reason most homes ask, so be clear about it before you order.
- The in-house information channel generator is roadmap, not shipping. Castmux cannot yet build the activities and menu screens for you.
- No resident-facing app or on-screen menu. The resident's interface is the television's own remote control.
- No video on demand and no catch-up. Live services only.
- No per-bed control, no room-level settings, no wake-up alarms, no nurse call.
- No fixed channel numbering yet. LCN is roadmap; today the numbers come from each set's scan.
- No transcoding, no conditional access, no DVB-T.
Castmux can carry your channel as long as something else produces the picture. Any HLS, SRT or RTMP source becomes a channel in the line-up — a signage player with an encoder, a camera encoder for the garden, or a feed you already have. What is not available yet is Castmux composing those screens itself. If the house channel is the whole reason for the purchase, say so on the demo call and we will tell you honestly where it sits.
Other solutions
Same appliance, different building.
See it running on your own feeds.
Twenty minutes, screen-shared. Bring one stream URL and we will put it on a multicast group while you watch. If it is not right for you, we will say so on the call.