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

[JT-DFW]

I've been using a web browser, going to YTTV and live TV then playing the channel and copying the URL from there - it works for me and hasn't changed in 3-4 weeks since I've been doing ABTuner / HDMI for Channels - is there another way to get the links? Can you elaborate about the developer tools?

[rpaulmerrell]

I know i would sure appreciate a little more information here.
Getting this stuff going makes me want to consider going back to YTTV.

[cyberskier]

I've been tuning via an HDMI encoder since the start of June, and the channel links haven't stopped working yet. Interestingly, in going into my setup to grab you some examples, and comparing that to a channel link from a web browser (a channel link I copied when navigating to a channel in my browser after going to tv.YouTube.com) it looks like some of the links are different for me than they were when I started last month. But the old ones still seem to work, so fingers crossed they don't break at some point.

I don't know how to use the developer tools, either, or what that even means. Somewhere earlier in this thread, or over in the HDMI for Channels thread, there was a discussion on what part to extract out of the link you copy from the address bar in your web browser (such as Chrome or Safari). I'm pretty sure if this is the link copied from your web browser:

https://tv.youtube.com/watch/ivNHpkPjP74?vp=0gEEEgIwAQ%3D%3D

that you can just take the part before the "?" as the link to use in this project, so it would be:

https://tv.youtube.com/watch/ivNHpkPjP74

You can test it by using the shorter one in your web browser, and seeing if the correct channel loads.

[hiperwall]

no matter what I do, my channel icons are wrong. I have tried preferring from m3u, as well as guide date. not sure what is going on. any ideas?

[kingpinjimi12345]

Will this pass things like DD5.1 audio and 4k to Channels?

[krazijoe]

@kingpinjimi12345

Will this pass things like DD5.1 audio and 4k to Channels?

I believe it passes whatever the screen is capturing.

[rpaulmerrell]

@kingpinjimi12345

Will this pass things like DD5.1 audio and 4k to Channels?

The functionality will depend on device and configuration.

[hiperwall]

@hiperwall

no matter what I do, my channel icons are wrong. I have tried preferring from m3u, as well as guide date. not sure what is going on. any ideas?

I fixed it by changing the channel #'s. There must have been some conflict. The .json file I used started at 101, I moved it to start at 4101.

[hiperwall]

One more stupid question...as new releases are...um...released...does Docker (running on a Ubuntu VM) auto update, and if not, what command do I run to update the ADBTuner app?

[rpaulmerrell]

@hiperwall

One more stupid question...as new releases are...um...released...does Docker (running on a Ubuntu VM) auto update, and if not, what command do I run to update the ADBTuner app?

You will normally run the pull comand in your shell using the proper docker command
From what i'm seeing in Synology, I can stop the docker and pull the latest image.
I can then restart the docker.
Container manager is what i believe they are calling it in DSM 7
if the update shows as available, i can apply the update from within container manager in the images section.

[cyberskier]

I’m not on Ubuntu, but if it helps, I run the commands from this post in Terminal in the Mac every time there is an update: ADBTuner: An "channel tuning" application for networked Google TV / Android TV devices - #44 by turtletank

It’s worked so far.

[turtletank]

I’ve seen this a few times in the DVR when channel numbers get switched around. Deleting the m3u source entirely from the DVR and re-adding usually fixes this as well.

@cyberskier when you have a chance, can you let me know if you still see that stutter on the first stream when loading a second?

[cyberskier]

@turtletank

@cyberskier when you have a chance, can you let me know if you still see that stutter on the first stream when loading a second?

Good timing for this question. I was recording a movie last night, and avoided loading an ADBTuner channel on a second device to make sure my recording didn't get the stutter.

I just tried it via the Channels app on an Apple TV for the first channel, and my iPhone for the second, and then again with the Channels app on an Onn 4k box for the first channel, and my iPhone for the second. I tried 3 or 4 times each. Definitely an improvement - there were times where there was no stutter. But maybe 1 or 2 times, I did get the stutter on the first device (Apple TV or Onn device) as a channel loaded on the second. And there was one time where I didn't get the stutter on the first device when loading a channel on the second device, but got stutter on the first device when pressing "Done" to exit the channel on the second device. And about half the time, the channel on the second device would come in and then go out, with the message of "The connection to the tuner was lost. Please press play to try again." Pressing play would always load the channel. No idea if this is related.

[GTFan]

@krazijoe

@kingpinjimi12345

Will this pass things like DD5.1 audio and 4k to Channels?

I believe it passes whatever the screen is capturing.

None of these devices (that I know of) pass DD5.1, maybe because of licensing issues. With TVE that's usually not an issue because they don't send DD 5.1 anyway.

[hiperwall]

I noticed on my Ubuntu VM (22.04 LTS) that the Docker container wasn't auto starting if I rebooted. Normally this won't be an issue on a VM, howerver, if I ran updates, it could be a problem (since I would reboot!!). So I created a service that launches the adbtuner container on reboot.

First, create the service file:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/ADBTuner.service

Then put this inside the service file:

[Unit]
Description=ADBTuner container
Requires=docker.service
After=docker.service

[Service]
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker start -a adbtuner
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop -t 2 adbtuner
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

The activate the service with:
sudo systemctl enable ADBTuner.service

That should be it. I'm not an expert on Docker, so I used this Stack Overfow post as a guide.

[EDIT]: In order to update the docker image, the service needs to be stopped:

sudo systemctl stop ADBTuner.service

Update the container, then start the service again:

sudo systemctl start ADBTuner.service

[krazijoe]

@turtletank

Example Channel Data
Save as adbtuner_export.json and import into your own ADBTuner instance for testing purposes.

[{
    "provider_name": "YouTube TV",
    "number": 9000,
    "name": "ESPN",
    "url": "https://tv.youtube.com/watch/k-KlMzmHTAo",
    "package_name": "com.google.android.youtube.tvunplugged",
    "alternate_package_name": "com.amazon.firetv.youtube.tv",
    "component": "com.google.android.apps.youtube.tvunplugged.activity.MainActivity",
    "compatibility_mode": false,
    "tvc_guide_stationid": "10179"
}, {
    "provider_name": "Hulu",
    "number": 9002,
    "name": "The Weather Channel",
    "url": "https://www.hulu.com/watch/the-weather-channel-f75ab9a3-c9bf-41e0-bde0-70fbf3165133",
    "package_name": "com.hulu.livingroomplus",
    "alternate_package_name": null,
    "component": ".WKFactivity",
    "compatibility_mode": false,
    "tvc_guide_stationid": "11187"
}, {
    "provider_name": "NBC App",
    "number": 15000,
    "name": "MSNBC",
    "url": "nbctve://live/msnbc",
    "package_name": "com.nbcuni.nbc.androidtv",
    "alternate_package_name": null,
    "component": "com.nbc.nbctvapp.ui.main.view.MainActivity",
    "compatibility_mode": true,
    "tvc_guide_stationid": "16300"
}]

How do you find the Package name & Component? Is there a listing somewhere?

[turtletank]

I pushed an update that includes the following changes:

• Eliminated the whole component/activity/explicit intent configuration. Android 12 devices now work without having to specify anything other than the application package name.

• Added an optional dropdown menu for selecting a package name. The list of application packages is generated from the list of applications installed on the connected Android devices. Credit for this idea goes to @tmm1.

[JT-DFW]

After exclusively using this docker (and previously the HDMI go program) with YTTV, I finally got the NBC app to come up on the Onn box after fixing some network DNS settings (it doesn't like Adguard/DNS blockers) - I authenticated it and was able to watch a channel for a while (had to use compatibility mode) - I was able to tune it and watch multiple times from my PC via web browser and 1 TV, but now it wants me to re-authorize - is this a common problem with the NBC app? Or will it eventually stop asking to authenticate? Also, has anyone else noticed that it has to be run in compatibility mode with ADBTuner?

[turtletank]

I have seen the "Not Authorized" thing from time to time in the NBC app as well. I haven't really looked into a cause, hopefully we can find a fix.

The NBC app is basically a web browser that loads the nbc.com page. It doesn't use the normal video playback methods so unfortunately it does have to run in compatibility mode.

[krazijoe]

The URL links in the browser are to specific episodes. I don't see how it can record a series or something different unless we know the specific URL of each episode.
Anyone have any insight on Hulu with Live TV?