TSDuck: Open-source toolkit for MPEG-TS analysis and manipulation
tsduck.ioI've also used TSReader for things like this as well, and found it easier to use. The original developer sadly passed away, but they open sourced the project https://github.com/TSReader/TSReader
This is amazing. I have absolutely no use for it personally, but it's still seriously impressive what all it can do. Whoever works on this is obviously deeply involved with television broadcasting professionally... just having access to all the expensive standards necessary to implement these things is a feat all by itself.
Getting access to standards is easier than it seems. ETSI (DVB), ATSC and SCTE standards are fully free and open. ARIB (ISDB) standards are free, except the latest version and previous versions are usually enough. ISO/IEC (MPEG) standards are behind expensive paywalls but most MPEG standards have ITU equivalent (strictly identical, except the title page) and all ITU standards are free and open. For the few remaining standards, there is always some user who needs the feature, has the standard but no programming skills. So, it's a deal...
Unfortunately some of the SMPTE standards do cost money if one is not a member.
Good old MPEG-TS (together with its cousing MPEG-PS)
If anyone is not familiar with it, the rabbit hole goes deep
Way back in a former life working with MPEG2-TS streams, the go to tool was MP2TSME from Manzanita. My understanding is that it is no longer available, but that’s left me wondering what do people use now. There’s always chatter about abandonware being released as OSS, but this is the one app that I know and felt would have been a perfect candidate for that route.
I miss the quaint DVB SI (ETSI EN 300 468) Content Descriptors with values that lumped together arbitrary categories (someone's subjective opinion) like: "serious music/classical music", or "popular culture/traditional arts". I thought they seemed strange in the context of a formal standard.
If it's opposites and multiple choice, you could drive a crude recommendation engine with that.
In my copious free time, I've wanted to go looking at FTA satellites to see if there's data in the TS that I can't ascribe to any known programming. This seems like an ideal tool to start with.