HDMI for Channels

Playground Hardware
#1522

Thank you for this. I am still using your first way, but added some maintenance scripts so that the tuners don't just continously stream. I shut them down with a full restart of the app after a period of time.

I will do some testing with your second way. I thought I tried everyone, but never thought of that. I think it will be a cleaner solution overall. I do like the almost instantaneous tuning when they are left running. though it does cost some power and bandwidth.

I guess this path will always require some level of attention to keep it working. But given that it is based on the capability to tune with Siri, will likely be workable for the foreseeable future. It does make me appreciate the Channels guys and all the energy it takes to keep TVE going!

#1523

For anyone working with channel-number m3u tags, I just added support for editing this tag in the ah4c m3u editor!

2 Likes
AndroidHDMI for Channels (ah4c): A virtual channel tuner using HDMI Encoder(s) + streaming stick(s)
#1524

For those interested, this will be incorporated into the ah4c Docker build later today or tomorrow.

4 Likes
#1525

FWIW, this page has a handy list of all the keycodes. All Android Key Events for usage with adb shell · GitHub

1 Like
#1526

The format I've used for the scripts in the ah4c project are more similar to this list:

Note that neither list contains the KEYCODE_LIVE_TV keyevent I was looking for last August. I'm really not sure there's an exhaustive list anywhere. Plus, there seem to be several different styles to the way the keycodes are formatted. Either of the easily readable approaches seem good to me -- using keyevent numbers, not so much.

#1527

One of the things I noticed right away is that adb itself doesn't know anything about the keyevent stuff. It'll send whatever nonsense you tell it. I don't know if there is a way to directly tell if it worked or failed. ($? is 0 for both good and bad cases.)

#1528

OT: Who doesn't like a fun story? I've been using an ONN 2K stick for my experiments. I've had it for a couple of years but never plugged it in until the last few days. I bought it used because the ONN devices have a much better remote than the Chromecast devices (which seems odd to me, but true). I had to redeploy the ONN remote to navigate far enough to pair the simpler Chromecast remote with the ONN stick as an additional remote. Then I unpaired the original ONN remote. Now, after every ONN reboot, I am greeted with this screen:

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image1433×907 86.6 KB

It was a head-scratcher for a while, but by trial and error I figured out that I can get out of there by hitting the Chromecast remote back button (or adb shell input keyevent KEYCODE_BACK)

To celebrate my reaching the end of reading this thread, here is the most amusing thing to me in this whole subject area: The hostname on my ONN 2K stick was "Steve". Much cooler than the hostname on my Tivo Stream 4k, which is "SEI400TV"; boring!

#1529

You can definitely pass devices into a docker container, but there is a gotcha to watch out for. For the sorts of devices (on the host) that just get sequentially assigned names, they can sometimes change to a different number on a reboot just due to quirks of timing. So, if you try to map /dev/video2 into your docker container, it will work, but the same device might be /dev/video0 or /dev/video4 or whatever after a reboot. You can do some udev tricks to solve the naming problem. This article ([SOLVED] docker, udev, USB naming | WJCarpenter | Hackaday.io) is about USB ports, but something similar should work for video devices.

1 Like
#1530

Hey mate I’m kinda new to the game did you end up getting a m3u for Foxtel cheers bro

1 Like
#1531

Is this the main thread for the HDMI tuner. I know bnhf has been doing most of the legwork.

#1532

I'd suggest starting here:

#1533

Do any of these encoder boxes support 5.1 channel sound?

#1534

None that I've ever seen.

#1535

Nope, it's the biggest limitation. I guess it's because they don't want to license dolby.

But I have an ancient receiver and it does a decent job of muxing stereo PCM into 5.1.

#1536

The Magewell Ultra Encode does 5.1 https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1800741-REG/magewell_531500000_ultra_encode_hdmi_plus.html

I grabbed one just to experiment. Works great, and I was able to encode and play 5.1 Audio. (I think it supports up to 8 channels)

BUT
Even ignoring the high price, I had two issues using it in practice in my setup:

  1. HDCP - Could not get it to work at 4K without attaching an HDCP compliant TV. 1080p worked well, but I use Apple TVs as tuners in my setup and it would only work with older models. Even if I set to 1080p output only, could not get past HDCP on the latest 4K Apple TV.
  2. Availability of 5.1 Audio - I use Spectrum app for content. As of now, they only support stereo.

So it remains in a box until such time as Spectrum supports it, or I switch to a different service provider that support it. Until then, as a replacement for TVE that also only supports stereo audio, my 4-tuner setup is fast, reliable, and the video quality is superb. All with far more reasonably priced equipment.

2 Likes
#1537

@bnhf @GTFan @chasut Big Thanx! And a special callout to @chasut. :1st_place_medal: :grin:

Ya, I'm in the city, have Spectrum, and experience with its app, and others, parallels yours. I was thinking more regarding a FireTV Stick or Echo box / Google Chromecast dongle / Apple TV box. But I think you're saying, the apps installed on those devices are only 2-ch too. So ya, I stand corrected.

Almost bought a URayCoder 4 port box yesterday for $500. Rethinking that. A visit to the B&H or Adorama (much closer to me) store may be in my future. But the utility of it is reduced for all the reasons you note.

Thanx again.

EDIT: But ya know... I just watched the NY1 "In The Papers" segment on both my Samsung 4K combo Computer monitor / Smart TV's app, as well as on my 2K regular HD Sony TV being fed a really old cable box's HDMI output, both at the same time. Looking back and forth, unless the Newspaper story was zoomed in to so text was large, it's was a completely stomped on and an unreadable garbled mess via the streaming app, whereas even a full newspaper page with tiny text was completely readable from the cable box.

Long way of saying, I don't think I'll be looking to capture my Spectrum stream. I'll stick with, when I think I need it, capturing a stream from the Cable Box > Slingbox > Slinger Server > manual ffmpeg capture to disk with stream fix-up adding critical attributes the Slinger stream omits. It gives an amazing picture. I just hate its 96K audio that seems to be stepped on and degraded more than the movies and TV I tape having 96K audio from every other IPTV source.

#1538

Yeah that's another problem, some of these apps don't even output 5.1 anyway.

#1539

You might have a bit more luck if you able to load a custom EDID on your magewell box. I am able to both DD (5.1 ) and DD+ (2.0), although with an internal m.2 magewell card at 1080p. I can do this only after I use the magewell2ts application to load a custom EDID.

I am also able to get ffmpeg to do bistreaming from the magewell with the following, after loading the EDID:

ffmpeg -f alsa -i hw:CARD=M2_2,DEV=0 -f wav -map 0:a:0 -c copy - | ffmpeg -f wav -i - -f v4l2 -i /dev/video2 -c:v h264_qsv -c:a copy  cap.ts

If the EDID is not loaded the card defaults to 2.0 audio when playing from YTT and HBO Max app.

#1540

Thank you, I will look into that further. I tried copying in a custom EDID with no luck, although how that all works is beyond me. Will need to learn more.
Although it would run fine on an older ATV @1080p and would pass all 6 channels from HBO Max app (that is what I used to test). I verified in the Magewell webpage, in channels, and on my receiver. The issue that I could not figure a way around was that the newer ATV4K would just get a blank/garbled screen, even when running at 1080p. I suspected EDID issue but couldn't figure it out.

It has been a few months so don't remember the details. But your info may get me over that hump at some point.

#1541

The fact that these kinds of things exists are are so manipulatable via software boggles my mind. hahaha