PBS Feeds

[babsonnexus]

@TV_Ken, hahaha what? None of that is true.

WGBH moved to Low VHF because they sold their UHF channel for $162 million ($219 million with some other sketchy stuff they did) during the 2017 FCC repack to free up signal frequencies to sell them to cell phone companies. None of that had anything at all to do with ATSC 3.0, just a different type of greed. The same tower location is used for the SD stations and a bunch of other things:

Originally, the tower was lower powered compared to what they gave up, but they fixed that in 2021. Still, it doesn't matter for one simple reason: we both can't receive the HD stations because they are on Low VHF and we don't have antenna's long enough to pick those up. It's exactly the same as with WSBE down here.

However, I can receive the SD versions of the WGBH stations that use the same tower location no problem down in Providence. More so, WGBH's ATSC 3.0 signal is certainly not DRM'd (at least not yet). I just did a rescan to confirm because you made me paranoid, but it's fine:

But anyway, I'm not defending WGBH or WSBE or all these terrible things they've done to make it more difficult to receive them, and fully agree that the Docker method was far superior and better overall. I'm going to investigate some of the suggestions above and see if I can put something together that would work for all of us here.

[TV_Ken]

@babsonnexus

However, I can receive the SD versions of the WGBH stations that use the same tower location no problem down in Providence.

I can usually (but not always) get 2.3 and 44.2 SD only channels, but the quality stinks. I was getting a good video quality from VLC Bridge PBS, but it had no Closed Captions which I require, especially for British Programs, which are the only two PBS programs I want to watch. I did try low VHF antennas with no acceptable results.

The only thing that still works for me is to wait until a day after a show airs and then to download it in 1080p using PlayOn (at 3 credits per show).

So I guess that PBS only uses DRM on ATSC 2.0 at the moment. I do not think this bodes well for the future of PBS on ATSC 3.0.

How is your signal quality on WGBH*NX? Does it have Closed Captions?

[TV_Ken]

@babsonnexus

The same tower location is used for the SD stations and a bunch of other things:

What happened to channel 44.1 (WGBX-HD)?

[GTFan]

Has anyone heard from @miibeez on this yet? Very bad news for me because I watch a lot of PBS on channels. I can still get one of them on my provider's DVR but not near as good a way to watch.

[chDVRuser]

https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=station_search&callsign=72098

44	32 (H)	WGBX-TV	BOSTON	MA		PBS
Display

Channel Physical
Channel Video Audio Call Sign Network/Programming Nickname Notes Print
02-2 32.10 480i (w) DD2.0 World World Channel
02-3 32.9 480i (w) DD2.0 WGBH-SD PBS (WGBH-TV 02-1)
15-1 32.3 1080i DD5.1 WBTS-CD NBC "NBC Boston"
15-2 32.6 480i (w) DD2.0 Cozi COZI TV
44-2 32.8 480i (w) DD2.0 WGBX-SD PBS (WGBH-TV 44-1)
44-3 32.4 480i (w) DD2.0 Create Create
44-4 32.5 480i (w) DD2.0 Kids PBS Kids 24/7 |

[kyl416]

WGBH's RF 5 signal has 2.1 GBH-HD, 44.1 GBX-HD along with 24.1 BizTV (WFXZ-CD which was donated to GBH as a tax writeoff by the spectrum speculator who purchased it and a bunch of other Class A stations across the country in 2012). It also now has the ATSC 1.0 simulcast of WUNI's 66.5 which is currently an OFF_AIR placeholder after Tegna pulled the plug on their Twist diginet at the end of the year.

The rest of the GBH's 2.x and GBX's 44.x channels are on WGBX's RF 32 signal which they share with WBTS-CD's 15.1 NBC Boston HD and 15.2 Cozi SD. (15.3 LX and 15.4 Oxygen are on WNEU's RF 29 signal which now also has the ATSC 1.0 simulcast of WUNI's 66.1)

[Channels2021]

Does this help?

Summary

https://pbs.lls.cdn.pbs.org/pst/index.m3u8

[TV_Ken]

@Channels2021

Does this help?

Yes it helps. I understand how things are now. What I would like to know is what is going to happen in Boston & Providence with PBS on ATSC 3.0. Currently my 2.1 and 44.1 virtual channel signals constantly break up even with a rooftop VHF antenna. I could possibly put up a bigger Low VHF antenna, but it doesn't seem worth it for just the PBS channels.

[Keith_Willis]

I sent a e-mail but have not seen any activity on github on why this solution stopped working.
Like you I used it to get my local PBS channels. I found a working source for the national PBS channels but not for my local KQED.

Source for all working public iptv feeds including PBS national channels.

GitHub - iptv-org/iptv: Collection of publicly available IPTV channels from...

Keeping my fingers crossed for a fix.

[Apsattv]

Kqed and a few other PBS have their streams on streamhoster which is outside of the other pbs drmed services...

Urls look similar to (not a real url just example of the format)

https://2-fss-2.streamhoster.com/pl_(3digit)/amlst:(6digit)-(7digit)-(1digit)/playlist.m3u8

KQED 9 - Live Public Television | KQED

i dont support the iptv-org page its full of pirated streams and github is a joke and will pull pages for no reason

[Keith_Willis]

Thanks this helped quite a bit.

[Apsattv]

@Apsattv

https://2-fss-2.streamhoster.com/pl_

Hope you are viewing it now.. but better to keep the url off the net..or it will dissapear

[Keith_Willis]

noted.

[dvrbob]

My docker install quits unexpectedly quite frequently.

[Apsattv]

How to Watch MPT

[babsonnexus]

@babsonnexus

I'm going to investigate some of the suggestions above and see if I can put something together that would work for all of us here.

I tried a bunch of the new suggestions above and couldn't really get them to work correctly with Channels. What it came down to were the good 'ol standbys of Chrome Capture for Channels and ADB Tuner. If you are using the former, here's the link:

#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="PBS ({YOUR CALL LETTERS HERE})",PBS ({YOUR CALL LETTERS HERE})
chrome://localhost:5589/stream?url=https://player.pbs.org/ga-livestream-portalplayer

You'll only get the option for a single station, so if you have access to multiple ones like I do, you'll have to pick which one you want (per device). The first time you launch, be sure to open a second tab for pbs.org and select that station.

Also, just a heads up: when the station launches, it looks like it is not going to play, but if you wait about 20 seconds it does start automatically.

If you need Closed Captions, go into full-screen mode (hit F11) and select the CC icon in the lower right corner:

Just a heads up that Close Captions are either on or off; you can't choose on your TV.

[djw]

If anyone has figured out how to link-up the com.pbs.org package using ADBTuner, please pass it along.

Thanks.

[kyl416]

PBS uses "com.pbs.video" for Android. Unfortunately the app does't respond to www.pbs.org/live or the player.pbs.org URLs, while the pbsvideo:// scheme requires you to use some specific "code_callback" parameters.

[bnhf]

@djw

If anyone has figured out how to link-up the com.pbs.org package using ADBTuner, please pass it along.

Pretty straightforward ah4c project (I'm documenting it here for myself as well ):

packageLaunch=".ui.main.activities.StartupActivity"
packageName="com.pbs.video"

And, to "tune" to the single live channel:

input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER
input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER

[djw]

Thanks, ADBTuner can't do this right?