ADBTuner: A "channel tuning" application for networked Google TV / Android TV devices

[Fofer]

Just wanted to say, I remain astounded at how seamlessly ADBTuner is managing to integrate these channels, back into my Guide. I've had no issues in weeks, and I've got two of those funky old FMuser encoders in place. When channel surfing now, the speed of HDMI tuning is almost indistiguishable from TVE or even OTA. I'm having no issues, really. Knowing what's happening behind the scenes in order to connect these dots, I'm just really impressed and wanted to share gratitude.

@turtletank, do you have a Patreon, Github sponsorship, buymeacoffee.com account, PayPal, or even just a favorite charity to which I can donate? This is awesome work you are sharing and I wish to show appreciation beyond mere words in this thread.

[rpaulmerrell]

I'm a visually impaired user who uses Channels DVR to watch many different channels.
ADB tuner has allowed for the use of the Hulu and Philo app without navigating the apps themselves.
I love going from ASX TV ro MLB baseball quick and swift action.
I would rather choose my program on my Phone and let Channels know where and what to play from the guide.
Keep up the great work!

[cyoungers]

I'm going to agree and echo what @Fofer says about ADBTuner. I have had zero problems after using it with for quite awhile now. I have a 4 channel encoder and a mix of Android devices and they tune flawlessly. The only issue I have had, and it has only happened a few times, was the need to reauthorize USB access. But since I have 4 channels, I've never lost a recording.

I also would like to toss some appreciation to you @turtletank if you set something up. You have crafted a really slick and useful addon to Channels. Thanks!

[rpaulmerrell]

I have my two tuners and at one point I did have to re-authorize access to USB.
I just kept checking the box and pressing allow on the remote.
I'm going to probably replace my J-tech encoder with another Ex-vist encoder.
The encoder runs a lot cooler and i think it is a little bit more user-friendly. I'm not making it a top priority.

[Fofer]

@Fofer

I'd love to see more information displayed here, if possible, like what channel's stream is playing, i.e. what the device was last tuned into? That would help with troubleshooting multiple tuners, to be able to see which encoder/device is streaming what.

Just thinking about future features and interface requests, I envision a bubble when the cursor hovers over the blue "In Use" section, and it would reveal what the channel last tuned by adb was:

The reason this is important for me, with multiple tuners, is that sometimes I use a remote control to navigate something live on-screen that is being tuned via ADBTuner, and when both tuners are engaged, I don't know which one to try first, and the experiment sometimes interrupts a recording in progress on the other one. I hope that made sense

[turtletank]

Thank you everyone for your kind words. No donations or anything are necessary, I did this for fun and I’m glad some of you found it useful!

Thank you all for the feedback, suggestions, log files, and everything else. Wouldn’t haven been able to get things where they are today without. It’s been fun.

[Anvil_DVR]

I have a suggestion..
Is there a way to add a tvg time shift from within the ADBtuner application for a particular channel?
I can edit the m3u and add one, but it is easier to just give channels the m3u url.
Not a huge deal, it seems like I'm constantly changing things, this would make it easier to manage.
TCM west does not have guide data, So we need to shift the east schedule +3 for the west feed.
There may be other uses for this, but that is where I use it.

[Gregg_K]

I finally got my chromecast today. On the plus side, OMG it works with DRM.
On the negative side, I'm still not able to tune to two of the lower channels, channel 03 and 05. Here is how it shows up on the chromecast side.

It looks like it tries to tune it, but it just hangs there. All other channels are fine I think. I just got the chromecast a few hours ago, so I haven't input all the channels in yet.

[Fofer]

How does it work with DRM? Currently, when I try it on one of the two DRM’ed ATSC 3.0 channels in my area, I get the same message from the HDHomeRun: “Unable to play channel: content protection required.” The other two ATSC 3.0 channels in my area playback fine. I was under the impression that we are waiting for the HDHomeRun unit to get DRM certification for playback. Is that not the case?

[Edwin_Perez]

Only works with DRM Prime Cable Channels. Which you can play on Google Certified devices.

[Gregg_K]

Yes, what Edwin said. I have a HDHR prime, and it is working now with the DRM channels that I used to not get with my firestick.

[Gregg_K]

Update. I had the same configuration for the chromecast as I did for the firestick. For the firestick I had it on compatibility mode, so I decided to take it off compatibility mode and VOILA, it's able to tune to both channel 3 and channel 5 now.

[Edwin_Perez]

@Gregg_K

Update. I had the same configuration for the chromecast as I did for the firestick. For the firestick I had it on compatibility mode, so I decided to take it off compatibility mode and VOILA, it's able to tune to both channel 3 and channel 5 now.

Yeah that is why mine worked I never did turn on Compatibility mode on my Chromecast.

[runithome]

Connects to Onn Android TV device, but is not able to open the application and change to stream

I have a new Onn device connected over wireless. The ADBTuner is running as docker on Unraid server. The Onn is in developer mode. I have approved the debug requests on the Onn when the ADBTuner app sends commands to open the stream. The ADBTuner application recognizes the Onn as an AndroidTv device and successfully connects to the steaming endpoint.

However, when I try to preview the Fubo TV channel on the Onn, I do not see any video. And the stream does not open on the Onn device.

Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.

Here are the logs:

2023-08-28 14:28:48.344 - server - Released tuner 1
2023-08-28 14:28:48.344 - lib.adb - ADB: Stopping media playback.
2023-08-28 14:28:48.345 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - input keyevent KEYCODE_MEDIA_STOP
2023-08-28 14:28:48.418 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - input keyevent KEYCODE_MEDIA_PAUSE
2023-08-28 14:28:48.444 - server - Reserved tuner 1
2023-08-28 14:28:48.444 - server - Using tuner id: 1
2023-08-28 14:28:48.444 - uvicorn.access - 192.168.1.83:61235 - "GET /stream/1 HTTP/1.1" 307
2023-08-28 14:28:48.453 - server - Tuner: Tuning to USA on Onn1
2023-08-28 14:28:48.455 - lib.adb - ADB: Connecting to device (attempt 1).
2023-08-28 14:28:48.518 - lib.adb - ADB: Connected.
2023-08-28 14:28:48.518 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - dumpsys display
2023-08-28 14:28:48.575 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - getprop ro.build.version.release
2023-08-28 14:28:48.620 - lib.adb - ADB: Android Version: 12.0.
2023-08-28 14:28:48.620 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - pm list packages -3
2023-08-28 14:28:48.693 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - pidof com.fubo.firetv.screen
2023-08-28 14:28:48.752 - lib.adb - ADB: Stopping media playback.
2023-08-28 14:28:48.752 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - input keyevent KEYCODE_MEDIA_STOP
2023-08-28 14:28:48.833 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "https://www.fubo.tv/watch?channelId=12444" com.fubo.firetv.screen
2023-08-28 14:28:50.511 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:28:52.797 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:28:55.077 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:28:57.387 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:28:59.646 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:01.907 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:04.193 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:06.460 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:08.709 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:10.987 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:13.244 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:15.512 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:17.781 - server - Tuner: Waiting for playback start. Status: unknown
2023-08-28 14:29:18.478 - server - Tuner: Could not detect playback state. Giving up after 30.03 seconds. Display was on, application (com.fubo.firetv.screen) was running.
2023-08-28 14:29:18.478 - server - Released tuner 1
2023-08-28 14:29:18.478 - lib.adb - ADB: Stopping media playback.
2023-08-28 14:29:18.478 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - input keyevent KEYCODE_MEDIA_STOP
2023-08-28 14:29:18.551 - lib.adb - ADB: 192.168.1.215 - input keyevent KEYCODE_MEDIA_PAUSE
2023-08-28 14:29:18.617 - uvicorn.access - 192.168.1.83:61235 - "GET /stream/1/1 HTTP/1.1" 404

[turtletank]

Make sure you have “compatibility mode” enabled for channels using that provider.

[Anvil_DVR]

Looks like something at Fubo has changed.
Getting stuck at the who is watching prompt everytime.

[Fofer]

@Fofer

I envision a bubble when the cursor hovers over the blue "In Use" section, and it would reveal what the channel last tuned by adb was:

@turtletank

Thank you all for the feedback, suggestions, log files, and everything else.

Thank YOU! This is even better than I'd envisioned. This is beautiful

[Fofer]

@Absenm

Of course since Haystack is an on-the-fly news video aggregator there is no station-id to supply, which also means no nice graphical logo to go in to your ChannelsDVR listings. Maybe eventually ADBTuner will be able to pass along custom fields to ChannelsDVR like tvg-logo="https://www.logo-designer.co/storage/2020/06/2020-Haystack-TV-Rebrands-Haystack-News-Logo-Design.jpg"

Along these lines, I'm also hoping ADBTuner could one day include support for other tags, like tvc-guide-genres and tvc-guide-categories, so channels integrated into CDVR can work with features like Automatic Channel Collections and the new Sports and News sections.

[Ryboflavins]

@Anvil_DVR

Looks like something at Fubo has changed.
Getting stuck at the who is watching prompt everytime.

Can confirm, seeing this too.

[bnhf]

Has anybody here had success recording 4K TV content, including verifying the resulting recording is in-fact 4K? I'm not seeing that any of these encoders are HDCP 2.2 compliant (only HDCP 1.4 or no HDCP), and I have a suspicion this is going to cause issues with 4K.

If you've had success, any details regarding encoder and Android streaming device used would be appreciated.