odd, my source channel listing shows the new fancy names. I tried one of yours too:
maybe some sort of caching issue somewhere??? sounds lame but i'd give it a day.
or maybe create a new Source just for testing for a minute-- use the same URL (but different channel-numbers).... if they all show up right on your testing Source then it's just caching something somewhere and will probably auto-fix.
Yep, I didn't change anything, but when my m3u update ran it looks like it got some new names:
However, note the one at the bottom. Looks like the Live Stream went down at some point so it returned a "field", I guess?
My first test worked beautifully!
I put in one stream with an hourly guide, a name override, a guide title override, and a locally uploaded logo:
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?v=@KittenAcademy,ph=3600,tvg-name=It's%20a%20Kitty%20Test,tvc-guide-title=Kitty%20Guide%20Test,tvg-logo=%2Fdvr%2Fuploads%2F102%2Fcontent
Everything came out exactly as expected and the station played normally:
I'll do some more messing around later and get things set up with a bunch of streams; I'll let you know if I run into any issues. So far, though, couldn't be happier!
As you can see, I didn't really try this, but I'm the type of coder who prefers long names, anyway. If there any limit to the tags that can be used?
Okay, I did some more testing and had a blast getting things looking good. I ran into no issues whatsoever and even made my life a lot easier by creating a spreadsheet to put together the entire link for me.
Click here to download an Excel spreadsheet to generate your own massively long Kister link...
I made a bug while making code to account for the tvg-name being blank. heh. fixed.
no specific limits but there are two issues with all the data, #1 is eventually the url will be too long for the webserver to understand. #2 is adding too many &v= parameters will make Channels time out getting the data because my code takes too long to answer. but then a retry will work.
That's pretty cool. You scripted my script to script.
Do you know how many characters that is? I could do something in the Excel to cut off and create a second link if that is the case. Also, I suppose I should get over myself and use the shortened tags if I want to limit the number of characters! 
Do you know how many that is, as well? I could do something about that, too.
I have come to realize I have been waaaaay overthinking this!
I took a look at the m3u8 your website generated and I realized I could just put the same text directly in Channels. For instance, this is now my Custom Station lineup (mixing Kister/YouTube and other streaming stations):
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="Cust80000" tvg-chno="80000" tvg-id="" tvg-name="" tvg-language="" tvg-logo="/dvr/uploads/102/content" tvg-country="US" tvg-url="" group-title="Animals",Providence Peregrine Live Stream
https://asori-hls.streamguys1.com/asori/live-500/chunks.m3u8
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="Kister81000" channel-number="81000" tvc-guide-art="/dvr/uploads/103/content" tvc-guide-description="Enjoy the antics of rescued southern sea otters as they romp, tumble and wrestle live (7 a.m.-7 p.m. Pacific time) from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Sea Otter Exhibit. Watch them participate in fun enrichment activities with artificial kelp, ice and other toys—it all helps keep them healthy and stimu" tvc-guide-placeholders="7200" tvc-guide-title="Live Sea Otter Cam - Monterey Bay Aquarium" tvg-logo="/dvr/uploads/103/content" tvg-name="Live Sea Otter Cam - Monterey Bay Aquarium",Live Sea Otter Cam - Monterey Bay Aquarium
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?w=hHbp9hG61CQ
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="Kister81001" channel-number="81001" tvc-guide-art="/dvr/uploads/107/content" tvc-guide-description="Discord: https://discord.gg/dragonballai -- (OPEN A TICKET ON DISCORD AFTER YOUR DONATION) -- Donations: https://streamlabs.com/dragonball_ai/tip -- Tiktok: Tiktok.com/@dragonball_ai -- AI generated Dragonball series. Topics through discord." tvc-guide-placeholders="7200" tvc-guide-title="AI Stream - Dragon Ball" tvg-logo="/dvr/uploads/107/content" tvg-name="AI Stream - Dragon Ball",AI Stream - Dragon Ball
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?w=@dragonball_ai
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="Kister81002" channel-number="81002" tvc-guide-art="/dvr/uploads/108/content" tvc-guide-description="" tvc-guide-placeholders="7200" tvc-guide-title="AI Stream - Family Guy" tvg-logo="/dvr/uploads/108/content" tvg-name="AI Stream - Family Guy",AI Stream - Family Guy
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?w=@ai-peter
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="Kister81003" channel-number="81003" tvc-guide-art="/dvr/uploads/111/content" tvc-guide-description="If there is nothing going on, you can rewind the stream up to 12 hours to see action. -- -- Is there something we should know about? Do you have a question for us? Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @kitten_academy. If you want to chat with us and the other viewers, there's a 24/7 chat" tvc-guide-placeholders="7200" tvc-guide-title="Kitten Academy" tvg-logo="/dvr/uploads/111/content" tvg-name="Kitten Academy",Kitten Academy
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?w=@KittenAcademy
I think I was just missing the obvious that I could do a Kister link with the ?w= instead of the ?v= to get the video stream directly. With that in mind, I can just use that and put in all the m3u tags that I desire directly in Channels without having to burden your website or worry about character lengths and timeouts.
Thanks for doing all that, though; it helped me figure out what was going on and how to do it myself!
hey @jkister thank you so much for this super awesome tool.
there's something weird going on with encodings on some videos with East Asian language titles and descriptions, shows up as gibberish in the output m3u. for example v=tD_a03trUvE
could be that the title and description are some non-unicode encoding, in this. instance maybe Big5? I wonder if there's an easy fix?
also some videos like this one have extremely long descriptions with rich text and hypertext that likely won't render well in channels app even if the encoding were fixed, is there a way to skip generating tvc-guide-description?
normally I'd just write the m3u myself and use your "w" argument, but I found a way to export YouTube playlists as csv, with a bit of processing I was hoping to use that in combination with your tool to generate very long m3us complete with titles, from YouTube playlists like this one which would be pretty cool.
The script just grabs whatever youtube has -- if there're funky characters, it just relays them to Channels. There have been other characters that don't show up quite right, we/i never put much effort figuring it out.
the script does chop it down to the first ~300 characters by default. but yeah that one's a garbled mess.
well, no description will be printed if you add the tgd=0 parameter. like
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?v=tD_a03trUvE,tgd=0
tgd being shorthand for the full tvc-guide-description.
YMMV with very long URLs. Channels won't wait forever for my side to generate all the data, and the maximum length is 8177 characters. If it works once, it'll likely be fine.
thanks, good to know about the tgd=0 parameter. I'm just using the long url once to generate the m3u, then pasting it into channels with Source=Text.
interestingly, adding tgd=0 fixed the decoding issue in the tvc-guide-title! so I'm golden, thanks again
This works fantastic for me. Thanks so much for this.
I just learned there's no more 24/7 livestream from TWiT.tv, apparently it's now only going live now when they are actually recording a new show. 
Kister Method should still work for recordings in Channels DVR though, right?
Since the stream is "offline" the icon is no longer showing. Instead we get a ALERT! icon. Can this be changed?
I'll probably just end up removing this from the Channel Collection entirely. Replace it with a Virtual Channel of my own? Or just watch these recordings "on demand" from my library instead. Regardless, I have a feeling this means I'll ultimately be watchibg less TWiT.tv content...
Details here: Looking for Live Content?
Due to costs associated with hardware and software used to provide the TWiT live stream 24/7 to multiple streaming providers, TWiT has made the difficult decision to end its always-on live stream.
As of November 13, 2023, we will no longer stream re-runs while not doing live production. We will strive to stream on YouTube as often as possible during live production of some of our shows. If you wish to watch any pre-show setup and post-show discussions, these will now be exclusive to full Club TWiT members via our Club TWiT Discord server. (Discord access is not available with any discounted single-show subscriptions.) Hosts who choose to participate with chat will now do so via Discord.
Where does this icon come from? Since there is an option in Custom Channels to "Prefer channel logos from Guide Data" I thought maybe I could manipulate the XMLTV Guide Data file to add a custom logo. Since this XMLTV file is generated from GitHub - tmm1/ical-to-xmltv: Converts a iCal/Google Calendar Feed to an XMLTV File (to load into TVHeadend/other EPG Reader), I thought I could just add a logo to that file. Knowing virtually nothing about XMLTV, I tried to add an icon source line to the basic.xml (XMLTV) file like so and pointed it to a logo that I had TWiT-logo-square.png":
<tv xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="resources/xmltv.xsd">
<channel id="TWiT.tv">
<display-name>Twit Live Schedule</display-name>
<icon src="/volume1/web/TWiT/TWiT-logo-square.png" />
</channel>
This did nothing. I tried reloading the M3U and redownloading the XMLTV but that did not add the icon to the guide.
Quite the bummer about TWiT. It's beyond my know-how, but I'd keep it in my guide if there were away to make it show as "Off air" instead of blank when there is nothing streaming.
Yeah, it'll still be able to view the stream when it's live.
yeah the code looks at the icon that's set by the channel owner. if the stream is offline during the times that it checks, it gets an error back that no stream exists -- and it displays that error logo.
you can specify the icon so it doesn't try to auto-detect, append tl=logo.png to the end of the URL, like: https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8.mpl?v=@twit,tl=https%3A%2F%2Ftwit.tv%2FTWiT-iOS-1024x1024.png. that one in particular isn't a great logo but it works.
@jkister FYI it looks like there may be an issue with your process.
2024/04/03 21:07:13.296627 [ERR] Failed to parse m3u for HLSTUBE: malformed M3U provided
I verified that the youtube link that I am using is good:
here is my link for channels:
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?v=CG2XDTgvZPo
Try using https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?w=@CBNnewsonline
These are the settings I'm using, gets guide data using tvc-guide-stationid="109977"
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="CBNnewsonline" channel-number="3779" tvg-chno="3779" tvg-id="CBNnewsonline" tvc-guide-stationid="109977" tvg-logo="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CG2XDTgvZPo/maxresdefault.jpg?v=6255aa76" tvg-name="CBN News" tvc-guide-title="LIVE NOW: CBN News - Because Truth Matters" tvc-guide-description="CBN News. Because Truth Matters",CBN News
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?w=@CBNnewsonline
Fixed. I think I broke it yesterday while dealing with an unexpected volume of traffic due to an app developer and another group who distribute a large list of channels started using this method in their stuff. I built this thing with Channels in mind, never really considered people finding this thread from googling and using it on their own.. Nothing was broke, but i had to go and tinker with it.
Sorry about that.
Thanks! This remains such a great tool, I'm so grateful to you for it.
Well now you've got me curious which app or group is this? I'd love to follow those discussions too.
IPTV and M3U community is big. The m3us Matt Huisman maintains are mentioned on EVERY iptv community. Only a matter of time until they found yours.
You should be proud. You came up with a method to make YT playlist very easy. Lots of people enjoy it. Thats how my son watched Mrs. Rachel on CDVR
@jkister youbdid a GRRRRREAT! Job accordingbto Tony The Tiger