Channels DVR + Xteve / Telly

Playground Hacks
#287

Hey, thanks for posting about vu+ app on tvOS! This is brilliant I never encountered that in my search.
Although I'm unemployed dev (I know how it sounds) supposedly to have lot of free time, it's not easy task for single man to develop something great in short time.

I tried to contact few distributors in Poland to get some tuners for testing but no response, and cost of them can be huge (altough I found Zgemma Combo for 420PLN and thinking about it). I'm saying that because I wanted to create IPTV client that could rival TVMate on Android and also could cooperate with Channels DVR engine.

As for Channels it supports various sources that STREAMS. Difference is Channels is a software while Enigma tuner is a hardware that has own CPU, board, socket and contains own low level apps to interact with access modules, CI/CI+ transmission etc. And because such tuners can convert signal to stream CHannels could support them that way if they write proper algorithms to at least discover tuner over the network, a bit challenging but definitely worth pursuing :slight_smile: Such tuners can decrypt encrypted DVB-C channels as well so you can have later your recordings on disk decoded and stream without problems.

For satelite sources as Freesat it is difficult to receive in Poland,in my city it probably requires 120cm dish as these are broadcasted in british beam. Two polish crap satelite platforms utilises Hot Bird 13E, and if someone is capable of doing two-sat installation it rathers choose Astra 19.2E instread of british Astra :frowning: Not to mention challenges with creating satelite access network inside blocks with many apartments.

#288

Hi everyone ...
great to read that there is more international interest in sat>ip ... for the last couple month I have been trying to figure this out ... I am living in the US and want to have a stable connection to my Astra 19.2E sat>ip server in germany in the house of my brother and integrate it all with channels dvr ... for now I have tvheadend setup in germany on a synology and telly feeds the streams into my local channels DVR server ... it works relatively stable but EPG data, that I receive from epg.best and feed into telly is not read reliably by channels DVR, if I manually check the xml files everything is good ... all not very convenient ... Well I will keep playing around and hope for stability updates in the xmltv implementation in Channels ...

#289

As a side note - VU+ account on YouTube was removed :expressionless:

#290

I've created my own M3U file and have it stored locally, so I placed the M3U file in my wwwroot folder and I have the M3U set in the telly.config.toml file as "h t t p ://127.0.0.1:80/myM3Ufile.m3u". I'm able to add the Telly tuner to Channels and it sees the streams I've put into M3U. But, when I go to any of the streams in Channels it tells me the stream is unavailable. When I enter the same stream url directly into VLC, it plays without a problem.

I think the issue revolves around the fact that the stream urls do not have an extension in the filename. The stream url is something like this:
h t t p ://mystreams.net:1010/user/pass/12345
And the original M3U file (where I got the individual streams) was something like this:
h t t p ://mystreams.net:1010/get.php?username=user&password=pass&type=m3u_plus&output=ts

(The reason I don't use the provided M3U and I created my own is that I only want a few of the streams and the EPG that comes with it is rarely correct. I use zap2xml to scrape EPG data and created my own EPG xml file for the specific streams I do want.)

Assuming this is the problem, what syntax do I need to use on my (local) M3U in order to get Channels to understand the proper extension? I've tried adding .ts to the stream url (i.e. h t t p ://mystreams.net:1010/user/pass/12345.ts), but that doesn't work either.

#291

The extension doesn't matter. Maybe you don't have ffmpeg installed, Telly needs to use that to access the streams. You should look at the Telly logs and Channels logs for the actual error.

#292

6 posts were split to a new topic: Telly streams broken since 2.1.26

#293

Apologies if this has been asked before.

Is there a way of getting subtitles/closed captions working through Telly into Channels?

1 Like
#294

I had ffmpeg installed, but it seems that adding it to the Windows path made a difference. For reference for others, I followed these instructions:

This program is a game changer in cordcutting...definitely going to transition from the free trial to paid subscriber!

1 Like
#295

Hey guys im considering giving this a shot. is it working reliably enough for most ?

#296

Ok, here's how I'm doing it so that I have IPTV channels supplementing my local cable card and OTA HDHomerun Sources. It's a bit more complex than it needs to be, but, my IP channels play well in Channels and I'm getting the right guide data for them.

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I use xTeVe with the M3U from my IPTV provider and an XMLTV file I generate with zap2xml. (I also have my HDHomeruns registered with xTeVe because I like to use a player like xciptv on some of my clients to allow me to watch multiple streams at once on one tv and for that purpose I just connect directly to xciptv.

For channels, I tried first running a second instance of xTeVe (on a different port) where I filtered down the IPTV channels a good bit. Both via this second instance, or directly from the first instance, Channels happily picked up the URL as if it was an HD Homerun and allowed me to assign a guide to all of the channels. I thought I was in business but when I went to play these channels, I got the Channels "Playback failed" message.

That led me to Telly (which also allows me to filter to specific m3u groups) which handles the redirect calls properly and the streams work properly in Channels (really, really well actually!). The issue I ran into here is that Telly will not parse the XMLTV file that xTeVe produces - it complains about any null tags for programs, so, my Telly instance had no guide. I tried to click the pencil after registering the Telly instance with Channels, and was able to pick my zip code and provider to map the channels, but like many have explained, this doesn't "stick" - Channels simply is expecting this source to have it's own EPG source.

So the result there is the Telly channels show up in Channels, they play in Channels clients, but they won't grab guide data so they just show up blank in the guide.

Then I went ahead and added BOTH the telly source AND the xTeVe source to Channels. I put telly as a higher priority device. This works because Channels lets you map channels to the xTeVe source, and will pull their guide data. Unless you try to use more tuners than are supported by the Telly source, you don't end up actually trying to call the xTeVe source (which will fail).

So, have this workaround right now - sure would be easier if you could just map channels to a Telly source, or, if Channels could just handle the way xTeVe redirects.

1 Like
#297

Actually, while this is working for Live TV - I can't seem to record properly from Telly channels.

They all show as "interrupted" in Channels and while recording, an empty log file is created, and a mpeg increasing in size by a few kilobytes a second is generated, but it isn't valid.

While live TV requests show in Telly's info level logging, when a recording starts, telly's logs are silent - it's like Channels is not actually requesting the stream.

Does anyone else see this?

#298

Does anyone know about using multiple telly tuners with ffmpeg?

I have created a 2nd telly instance on another port, added to Channels and mapped. They seem to overlap ok in the guide however I can’t seem to properly watch 2 channels at once.

I have added a 2nd ffmpeg environment variable but I am not sure if that’s correct.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

#299

perhaps try iptveditor? they have a epg service with a couple different packages. One of them is an XMLTV epg the others are not. Maybe something would work out for you so you can map your channels?
I am just getting ready to tack the Telly/XTEVE project/ any tips or useful guides you know of would be appreciated. I heard its quite an undertaking

#300

@Tv4Daisy
It's not that difficult, but you do need to spend some time on it. I suggest trying with a very simple M3U file (just a few lines). I use Telly (not Xteve) with the Channels internal guide data (not an external source). If you are in an area (like the US), where Channels has native guide date, I think this is good option since all the searching and similar functions in Channels will work for you. This is especially good if you are using OTA and a TVE providers in addition to IPTV. Everything will be combined together into a clean, consistent guide.

My main tips with Telly are:

  1. Make sure to set a filter in the Telly config file Filter = otherwise Telly will not show any channels. Use the default file shown in this string to start.

  2. Before trying it in Channels, test your Telly setup by going to this page on the machine once Telly is running 127.0.0.1:6077/lineup.json. This will show you what Telly is going to "show" to Channels.

  3. Channels DVR will map guide data using Channel #'s. If you let Telly assign them, using Starting-Channel = , make sure to set this # outside the range of OTA or TVE (if you are using them or going to be using them).

  4. If you are letting Telly assign channel numbers then you need to make sure that entries in your M3U file always stay in the same order or your mapping in Channels DVR will be incorrect. You could spend an hour or two getting everything mapped the way you want and then you delete or add a channel to your M3U and your mapping will no longer be correct.

  5. Use a 3rd party program/service to manage your M3U files (so the order stays the same as in #4) OR you can set your own channel numbers by adding tvg-chno= #### to your M3U file. I prefer setting my own channel numbers as I group channels by type. For example, movie channels will start at 7100, news at 7200. I use a table in XLS to map a field in the M3U file to a channel number that I have set and add this to each M3U line via a macro. This took some time, but it also worked fine by opening the M3U in Excel and doing it there.

  6. Make sure you are on the most current version of Channels DVR (on the server). The Dev’s continually improve the product.

  7. Once you get a Telly source in Channels, click the pencil symbol to start editing/mapping. This will be a trial and error process. Select a guide source and zip code. Sometimes Channels seems to find the channel you want easily and other times it can be challenging. I’ve found that downloading the channel numbers/names for a particular guide source (such as Dish) and using the # instead of name to search works better but you may need to go through several guide types to get everything mapped.

  8. When you exit the edit window, click the update (double arrow icon next to the pencil). If you don’t do this and re-open the edit window, your mappings will sometime disappear. Also, when you go back into edit, you will NOT see the guide source you use listed. However, the mappings you made should still show and they will persist.

  9. If you have OTA, TVE, and IPTV sources, you may need to “tweak” the naming used in your M3U file if you want Channels Name Sorting and Channel Priority functions to work. They seem hit or miss to me and I’ve had to rename and/or change capitalization in the M3U file to get this work properly but it’s still not 100%. The workaround is simply to hide duplicates and then favorite them if you TVE sources changes.

I hope this helps someone a little.

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#301

Does it need to be a m3uplus file as it says in the wiki.
I am using this as the source m3u: https://github.com/Free-IPTV/Countries/blob/master/09_Australia_Newseeland.m3u
I am getting an 'unable to parse' error

Also should I automatically see Telly as a source in Channels or do I need to map it ?
Ok so I mapped the telly service but I seem to be getting a 'malformed error' while parsing the file. I have ensured it is utf8

#302

May I ask you how you extracted the HLS streams from the YouTube live links. thanks

#303

OMG I got YouTube live streams working. Now for Foxtel :wink:

#304

How !?

#305

Any know if its possible to run telly or docker on an androidtv box.

#306

I tried Telly and since this is never updated I switched over to Xteve (much better); and ran everything through Emby. Wish I could use Xteve with Channels as it is a much more polished and user friendly product. Telly is too outdated, slow and cumbersome.