How To Create your own 24/7 Channels with your own media

Playground Custom Channels
#9

that was insanely easy. i already have one channel up and running.

one gotcha i did encounter, it involved my mapping system: if you use the default docker-compose setup that they suggest, it'll break the connection between the frontend/backend/mapper services. i fixed it by just bringing dizque into my channels bridge (note the networks list at the bottom)...

  dizquetv:
    image: vexorian/dizquetv:latest
    container_name: dizquetv
    volumes:
      - ./dizquetv:/home/node/app/.dizquetv
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - channels

if you have dizquetv running via docker in the same compose setup as channels, it also allows you to refer to it by the service name. for example, i added my source as http://dizquetv:8000/api/channels.m3u, rather than having to use the ip and port number. using that URL from your own system won't work, but the containers will be able to talk to it that way since they're in the same docker stack.

#10

@AeroR1 have you tried turning transcoding off? it seems to be working that way for me so far, and system resources are basically nothing.

1 Like
#11

also, turning on the "force direct play" option under plex settings dramatically improves the picture quality.

#12

i forgot to mention it but i have turned transcoding off and force direct play but once i try to play a file that is not compatible with plex's live tv channel codec constraints, it fails. from what i read somewhere which i cant find, plex live tv can only play broadcast standard file types, it cant direct play everything like plex itself.

also, on the github, there is this warning, which happens to me all the time if i dont enable transcoding.

  • Most players (including Plex) will break after switching episodes if video / audio format is too different. dizqueTV can be configured to use ffmpeg transcoding to prevent this, but that costs resources.
#13

i'm having issues with the guide this morning. i tried to delete and re-create the db, but in the logs now i'm seeing this:

2020/12/04 09:09:42.576836 [ERR] Failed to download xmltv: Get "http://http//dizquetv:8000/api/xmltv.xml": dial tcp: lookup http on 127.0.0.11:53: no such host

@tmm1 can you assist here? i don't know what is going on here, if i use the docker command line to enter the container i can ping dizquetv just fine - so it has no problem finding the host that way (nor should it, they're in the same docker stack so it should be able to access via service name).

edit: i take it back, i deleted and re-entered the xmltv url and now it's working. no clue what happened there.

#14

the way i had gotten around that when i was running my own channels was to re-encode any material i wanted on a 24/7 channel into the same format, and then use those files to feed the channel. a little bit of work ahead of time and a little bit of extra disk space, but a ton of system resources saved along the way after that.

#15

It says http://http// instead of http://

#16

yeah, i saw that. i guess i had copy/pasted it only into a portion of the text field and accidentally didn't take the whole thing out. after cutting the whole thing it works now.

thanks!

#17

I know. I won’t do that, I have 40 tb of stuff. The end goal is to make themed linear channels when something out there simply passes it along without transcoding.

Too bad dizquetv doesn’t rely on plex just for the metadata and not the live tv infrastructure as well.

#18

This is supercool. I would think implementation into Channels wouldn't be impossible without any third party software but for now, this is really amazing.

#19

there are solutions out there that don't rely on plex for the actual tv infrastructure, but it's a huge PITA to get working. i was using them previously but like i said i could never get the guide to work...probably because i don't think they were even using plex for that. everything was pulled from tvdb. too many variables.

i'm going to see if i can't figure out a way to tweak the code to take plex out of the equation for the actual streaming.

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#20

i'm still tinkering, but in the meanwhile setting the preferred resolution to 720p and the video encoder to mpeg4 seems to be working pretty well for me with reasonable system resource usage.

#21

I was having issues getting this up and running on my Synology DS1019+; mainly because I only have a rudimentary understanding of Linux. So if there is anyone else in the same boat, I found these two links to be helpful:

Creating custom "TV channel" streams on Plex using dizqueTV
How to login to DSM with root permission via SSH/Telnet

So, I was able to get it installed and working...mostly.

In Plex, the 24/7 custom channels I created are there, the guide data is there, and it plays as intended. But, in Channels DVR, I loaded the m3u file (which it does direct to the xml file with the EPG data) and it shows and plays the 24/7 custom channels, but there is no guide data for the episodes. Any suggestions where to look to get the guide data into Channels DVR for the custom channels?

EDIT: I found my problem. The location to specify the url for the xml file was a bit hidden:

Capture
Capture794×808 48.9 KB

2 Likes
#22

Dude! This is awesome!! Thank you for putting this guide together. I downloaded the unraid docker and it is working perfectly.

1 Like
#23

Neat! Gonna have to try this. Great work!

1 Like
#24

This is really cool... I have to try this out soon. Thanks for sharing!

#25

As soon as someone figures out how to make this work without Plex, I'm all over it. I've been dying for a solution like this for many years. Can't believe how close it is to reality.

#26

Trying to add a South Park Channel. The channel shows up in the guide, but the guide doesn't populate with the episode listing.

I get this.

Failed to download xmltv: xmltv unexpected ctype: text/plain; charset=utf-8

1 Like
#27

update to the latest pre release

1 Like
#28

Of Channels or Dizque?