Peacock stream capture options - what's the simplest?

Playground Hardware
#1

I subscribed to Peacock for their Tour de France and Olympics coverage this summer. I'm hoping to be able to save some of the programming for later offline viewing, because I never have time to watch just what I want to watch AND what is played on the national feed.. For past Olympics I've used an HLS manifest detector and used that to download the highest quality stream using ffmpeg, but I'm anticipating that to be much different this year. In lieu of that I'm either going to just capture the video real time with Bandicam (which works great by the way) or an HDMI capture device - which I've never tried, but seems like it could be done without taking up a screen.

I'm looking for what solution is going to be simplest to get a decent 1080p file for Peacock programming. Does anyone have a preference after trying various methods?

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#2

Streamfab? Other than that, I think a HDMI encoder will work.

#3

I'm using PlayOn.

#4

I just checked Peacock and it looks like they have all the Tour de France stages available for replay (on demand). So if you missed the live streams, you can still watch them now after the fact.
As mentioned, you can also use StreamFab or PlayOn to save them permanently.

Hopefully, Peacock will do the same with the Paris Olympics. :crossed_fingers:

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#5

I didn't realize PlayOn was an option for Peacock. PlayOn Cloud can be integrated into ChannelsDVR and ChannelsDVR will save the shows locally - correct?

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#6

Correct.

Even if you use StreamFab, you can point Channels DVR to the output directory where the downloads are saved and they will be imported in Channels.

#7

Do you know if both StreamFab and PlayOn save the stream from the source directly (as opposed to doing a screen capture)?d

Also wondering if ChannelsDVR handles both PlayOn Cloud and PlayOn Home recordings the same way? Or if the Cloud recordings get saved among the Recordings Storage and the Home recordings need to be pulled in as Local Content?

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#8

Peacock has said all events will have full replays, if you don't mind their nav and playback UI.

#9

I was about to suggest RedFox Anystream until I realized that sadly I can no longer launch it and apparently their servers were taken down a few months ago without notice. RIP to my lifetime license.

#10

That is the same reason why I stayed away from Streamfab for now. They have been really cracking down on Piracy.

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#11

StreamFab: save the stream from the source

PlayOn: screen capture

Yes. In both cases: local content

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#12

Too bad about PlayOn - do you know what codec, bitrate, and framerate they use for 1080 resolution? Or if it varies according to whether it is sports or not?

I usually capture with Bandicam at 59.94 or 60 fps and the highest quality and then re-encode it down depending on other factors, but that's pretty hands-on and I would rather it be done automatically in the background for most things.

#13

I don't have any 1080p PlayOn recordings but I have a couple of 720p.

From Peacock:

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image816×593 58.8 KB

From Amazon Prime Video:

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image816×593 61.8 KB

I got these during a trial period and then I decided not to use it.
The frame rates are all over the place (I had other recordings that I didn't even keep) and I was not very satisfied with the picture quality.

Unless things have changed since I last used it, you can't control anything other than choose whether you want 720p (1 credit) or 1080p (3 credits).

Maybe you have more control with PlayOn Home but I only tried Cloud because of its direct integration with Channels DVR.

#14

Thanks for that. I'm not sure if I would be very interested in PlayOn with that lack of control over the parameters, but I'm in favor of things that save time to use. I'm not certain I understand in what ways PlayOn Cloud is integrated into ChannelsDVR whereas PlayOn Home is not. Does ChannelsDVR pull data for whatever is in your account on the cloud? Or does it give you a Channels interface instead of a PlayOn one?

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#15

They have a good support article about it:

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#16

Thanks - that helps tremendously. I think ill have to try it just to see for myself how easy it is.

#17

:point_up_2:t3:

This is the only way as the TV schedule is a complete lie. Not one event I've recorded has been what it says in the guide, so creating passes was a complete waste. Everything they are putting on linear is just an advertisement for Peacock. "You wanted to watch what we said was on? Well too bad! Pay us for Peacock instead!"

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#18

Yeah I figured out pretty quickly that the Olympics guide changes every day, so I canceled all my upcoming recordings and now just schedule them day by day. Not 100% foolproof but worked pretty good yesterday.

#19

Interesting post over in the SD forum about
NBCUniversal's Olympic coverage: Supported advanced video and audio formats
https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=400186#p400186

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#20

Starting with the Tour de France, Peacock has had the best 1080p I've seen since the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics when NBC had break-free 24/7 High Definition transmission. They kept it rolling even when the announcers were taking the breaks which made it even better. Too bad the only way to record it back then was on High Definition digital tape which I can no longer play with the deck I have. Should've firewire-d it all off while I had the chance.