DistroTV proxy - KineticMan docker

Playground Custom Channels
#1

hey i wrote up a little proxy that uses your ideas. not sure if it's necessary given your work in PLM, but just thought i'd share

What it does:

  • Serves a live M3U playlist + XMLTV EPG from DistroTV's full channel lineup
  • Handles all the MediaTailor/SSAI URL resolution automatically
  • Admin UI to monitor channel health and toggle channels in/out of your playlist
  • Auto-refreshes the channel list daily and EPG hourly

Setup is just a Docker one-liner:

docker run -d \
  --name distrotv-proxy \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 8787:8787 \
  -v distrotv-data:/data \
  ghcr.io/kineticman/distrotv-proxy:latest

Admin page is:

http://YOUR_SERVER_IP:8787/admin

Then point Channels DVR at:

M3U: http://your-ip:8787/playlist.m3u
EPG: http://your-ip:8787/epg.xml

GitHub: GitHub - kineticman/distrotv-proxy: DistroTV HLS proxy for Channels DVR and VLC · GitHub

thanks to @miibeez whose original project inspired this, and to @babsonnexus for ideas borrowed from SLM.

2 Likes
DistroTV
#2

Can I ask how many channels are currnetly loading for you for distro on U.S i.p

It appears they lost a heap channels since i last did my own scrape

#3

301 working channels just scraped

#4

Thanks that matches what i got and 255 for CA

#5

@KineticMan I just deployed your proxy. Thanks it's cool man!

Heap is an understatement, like 250 channels nuked.
lost my one and only station on Distro that I was using, out of all those distro channels I was point to only one stream wired2fish TV. (lol)

Gone nuked, sunk with my boat and fishing tackle. (lol)

@Apsattv thanks for all you folks do.

#6

Looks like it's available on some other services - I'll take a search tonight to see if I can hook you up.

in the meantime, Kaloopy is a good channel on DistroTV ... IYKYK

#7

Not sure what is happening to my instance...
I have a lot of channel errors...

image
image1635Ă—193 24.7 KB

Also a lot of this message in the logs...
2026-03-04 11:36:08,945 [WARNING] state save failed: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/data/channel_state.json.tmp'
I checked the local folder and I have the data folder but it's empty...
Any suggestions?

#8

Sloppy on my part. Will fix tonight

#9

try updating container. should work now

#10

This is from FreeLiveSports.tv ... add this as a custom source to add wired2fish.

https://b0530716d58747539cefbb49fbcf833c.mediatailor.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v1/master/ba62fe743df0fe93366eba3a257d792884136c7f/LINEAR-80-WIRED2FISH-SPORTSTRIBALTV/mt/sportstribaltv/80/hls/master/playlist.m3u8
1 Like
#11

Unfortunately, I pulled the latest image but still having the errors in the log:

#12

Follow up... Due to the permissions problem earlier, I had chmod the data folder and then I also added UID/GID to the environment...
I thought maybe something got screwed up, so I deleted the container and started over from scratch...
Same issue
2026-03-04 16:07:09,715 [WARNING] state save failed: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/data/channel_state.json.tmp'
If you want, I can post my yaml file...

Just logged into the container... /data is not correct...

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image1380Ă—225 41.9 KB

#13

odd.. How did you build the container?

#14

How are you creating the container?
Docker run statement or compose statement.
If you use his example compose statement

services:
  distrotv-proxy:
    image: ghcr.io/kineticman/distrotv-proxy:latest
    container_name: distrotv-proxy
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8787:8787"
    volumes:
      - distrotv-data:/data

volumes:
  distrotv-data:

It creates a docker volume named distrotv-data and volume maps it to the container directory /data.

If you use his example docker run statement

docker run -d \
  --name distrotv-proxy \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 8787:8787 \
  -v distrotv-data:/data \
  ghcr.io/kineticman/distrotv-proxy:latest

It uses a bind mount to a directory on your host OS named distrotv-data
But since that's a relative path, you should change it to an absolute path.
-v /path/on/host:/path/in/container

#15

copied your yaml and paste it into dockge... made a couple of edit for my environment and started it..
I just noticed that you have an additional statement that was not there before... so I'm adding it to see if it helps... this line:

  • STATE_FILE=/data/channel_state.json

Nope... same thing:
2026-03-04 16:36:31,903 [WARNING] state save failed: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/data/channel_state.json.tmp'
should I create that .tmp file in my side of the /data?

#16 
  distrotv:
    container_name: distrotv
    image: ghcr.io/kineticman/distrotv-proxy:latest
    environment:
      - TZ=Pacific/Honolulu
      - STATE_FILE=/data/channel_state.json
    volumes:
      - ./distrotv/data:/data
    ports:
      - 8787:8787
    networks:
      - iptv_default
    restart: unless-stopped
networks:
  iptv_default:
    external: true

It's one app in a container with several iptv apps... that's why the services: is missing from the top...

logged into container... unable to chmod 777 on /data

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image1460Ă—965 193 KB

I believe this is what you are doing?

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image1510Ă—507 103 KB

#17

humor me - try this and report back. i made a small change to the Dockerfile and main app.py

docker pull ghcr.io/kineticman/distrotv-proxy:latest
docker compose down && docker compose up -d
#18

OK, got it solved... I hope...
I had to chmod 777 my side of the /data folder...
The json file is now listed and no more of the json.tmp errors...

#19

I guess it's related to the admin console? Now I only have error...

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image1842Ă—510 53.2 KB

#20

That json it saves is just a “channel state” to save on API queries. Think of it like a cache. It’s honestly not necessary.

Output looks good now. Just add the m3u/epg to a new custom source and you should be in business.