HDMI for Channels

Easy to set up

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Isn't this something that could just be natively included in the Channels DVR software?

@boukmandutty this works for me:

adb shell am start -a "android.search.action.GLOBAL_SEARCH" --es query "play\ USA\ on\ YouTube\ TV"

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It could, but since this is in the "playground" section of the site, and it's still very much prototypey (sic?) it likely won't be. I think @tmm1 is "sharing is caring" as it gets further explored / fleshed out by the Channels community (looking at @boukmandutty here!)

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adb is a core tool for Android development, so it’s not going to go away. I’m with you on the price, though. Very steep.

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I got both of mine used.

There is always a youtuber or other streamer of some type who has either given up or is upgrading hardware.

Get ‘em while they are hot….

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Everything stays within your home anyway with Channels DVR. All the traffic passes through it.

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Yes, of course. My point though was that without YTTV’s 4K Plus add-on, concurrent streams would be restricted to 3 regardless. Subscribers only get 4+ concurrent streams, on their LAN, with the 4K Plus add-on.

Ah, what the heck, I love a fun AV project. I’m in for 2. Thanks!

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Was working on something like this for my Foxtel iQ5 (Australian cable/sky box).

Got a Chinese hdmi encoder that claims to do 4K 60 h265 (seems to work so far) as the Foxtel box streams AFL, cricket and F1 in 4k50.

Haven’t gotten around to it yet as I haven’t had the time but my idea was to set up home-assistant and monitor the ChannelsDVR activity for specific numbers (eg fox footy is 504).

And then once home-assistant detects a change in the channel, send an IR command to the Foxtel box via a harmony hub.

Atm I’ve got my channels guide pretty much set up and the Foxtel stream to channels is really good, just need home-assistant to gel it all together and make it automated.

@tmm1 does this sound like an easy enough way for you? Or am I missing an easier way?

I always hoped there would be a server api to specifically say the channel number tuned - but I can still get that info in a round about way for now:)

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You can use the code I posted above and issue commands to the harmony instead of calling adb

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Awesome! I’ll give it a good over the weekend if I get a chance!

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Are you using linux for your channelsDVR server? Also is this an andriod box where you would have to launch to live tv app?

If it is an andriod box you could use the pretunebmi.sh script to launch your live tv app with the relevant command.

The ir signal could be sent when the androidhdmi-for-channels program tunes a channel. So the bmitune.sh section would be something like:

#!/bin/bash

#fox footy
if [ $1 = "504" ];then
insert ir command or path to ir script here 
fi

And the Custom Channel something like:

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="foxfooty",FOXFOTTY
http://localhost:7654/play/tuner/504
adb shell am start -a "android.search.action.GLOBAL_SEARCH" --es query "play\ USA\ on\ YouTube\ TV"

It seems to only works for channels that google assistant can recognize. Others do not work. It responds that it does not recognize the channel. It recognizes and responds to hbo and hbo zone for example, but not to hbo2 and hbo family.

Running on a m2 Mac mini which I’ve found to be a pain when trying to mess around with things like this haha.

No it’s an actual set top box , so when I turn it on (which I leave it on most of the time anyway) it loads straight into the last tuned channel, so don’t need to launch any apps, can go straight into changing the channel to whatever ChannelsDVR is playing - not sure what the US equivalent of Foxtel would be, not sure if cable companies send out “proprietary” stbs

Not super great with all this sort of stuff (even home-assistant will likely confuse me)
But the gist of it is to run this code (via GO?) and have one of the files already loaded up with what I want it to do per channel

Eg
For fox footy it would be - if $1 = 504, then send ir command of 504 through harmony hub to Foxtel device

And make one of those for each seperate channel?

Hopefully I can work it out and run it this way rather than mucking around with what I was going to do.

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Do you have the ir part of things worked out for the foxtel box? Are you able to send it any commands using the mac mini? If so how?

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Not really, I can control the box via the harmony app - but I believe one of the other devs/creators of channelsdvrs made a project to control harmony over http so could possibly utilise that.

Only thing I’m not sure of that is how the harmony api project will go handling having to send 3 separate ir commands per channel tuned when the tmm1’s project detects the channel has been changed.

I guess I’ll find out if I get to that point when I give it a crack :joy:

How are you going with your setup? All done or still working on it?

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Ever wanted Twitch streams in Channels?

adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d twitch://stream/STREAMERNAME tv.twitch.android.viewer

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That’s super cool but just FYI this is also possible without having to control an external HDMI box, via hlstube, which works for YouTube Live as well as Twitch streams:

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Does anyone know if closed captions are transmitted on these encoder devices?

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If you turn them on at the source. HDMI does not have a separate 'track' for captions/subtitles.

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