Hey mate I’m kinda new to the game did you end up getting a m3u for Foxtel cheers bro
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Is this the main thread for the HDMI tuner. I know bnhf has been doing most of the legwork.
I'd suggest starting here:
Do any of these encoder boxes support 5.1 channel sound?
None that I've ever seen.
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.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
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@bnhf @GTFan @chasut Big Thanx! And a special callout to @chasut. 
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.
Yeah that's another problem, some of these apps don't even output 5.1 anyway.
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.
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.
The fact that these kinds of things exists are are so manipulatable via software boggles my mind. hahaha