Pluto for Channels

joagomez · March 7, 2024, 5:43pm

Your guide data URL is incorrect:
look at the url hosted at http://localhost:7779 to get the correct URL link

TV_Ken · March 7, 2024, 6:15pm

Thank you!

chDVRuser · March 8, 2024, 1:29am

Have you thought about creating your own topic here and putting the latest info in the first post since this topic is for the maddox docker container?

Something in the Playground-Custom Channels category like "Pluto for Channels-joagomez"

chDVRuser · March 9, 2024, 5:46am

Assuming the wrong original air date from Pluto is causing this title to appear with (1974) (1973) using both maddox and jgomez containers.

maddox container epg

<title lang="en">The Longest Yard (1974)</title>
<date>19731230</date>
<episode-num system="original-air-date">1973-12-31T00:00:00.000Z</episode-num>

jgomez container epg

<title>The Longest Yard (1974)</title>
<episode-num system="original-air-date">1973-12-31T00:00:00.000Z</episode-num>
<date>19731231</date>

babsonnexus · March 9, 2024, 6:04pm

I believe this is a more basic Pluto metadata issue. Look at the record just above it for Meatballs:

<title>Meatballs</title>
<episode-num system="original-air-date">1978-12-31T00:00:00.000Z</episode-num>
<date>19781231</date>

Notice how the <title> field doesn't have a year baked in like the one you showed for The Longest Yard. Channels is just concatenating whatever is in the <title> field with the year from one of these date fields, probably <date> .

I say this because the Plex container doesn't contain the episode-num system="original-air-date" and it still does the same thing:

radioboy · March 15, 2024, 5:10pm

I don't know if this is due to a problem with this Docker or a larger issue with Channels... but I have your updated Pluto docker running. For some reason, Buzzr is visible in the list of channels brought in by the docker and I can tune to it in the "All Channels" collection in Channels. I have a Channel Collection setup for Pluto specifically, but for some reason Buzzr is not one of the channels I can add to that channel collection, even when specifically choosing Pluto as my channel source. If I change the source to All Channels in the Channel Collection, I can't add it there either. It doesn't exist in the channel list. Super weird specific problem. @maddox @tmm1 any ideas if it's not due to this specific docker image?

joagomez · March 15, 2024, 6:30pm

Seems to be there for me.

Now depending on which playlist your are using, there may be a channel-id duplicate, especially with the "maddox compatible" in that the channel-id for buzzr is "buzzr" which would also be the same channel-id as what is in the TVE.
I believe maddox had done some alterations in his code for such duplicates that I did not include. In the first playlist listed I added "pluto-" to all channel-ids to avoid channel-id duplicates

so for

PLUTO LOCAL: channel-id="pluto-buzzr" 
PLUTO LOCAL channel-id by "provider"-"id" (i.mjh.nz compatibility): channel-id="pluto-5812bfbe4ced4f7b601b12e6"
PLUTO LOCAL channel-id by "slug" (maddox compatibility):  channel-id="buzzr" (Duplicates TVE BUZZR channel-id)

radioboy · March 15, 2024, 6:31pm

I am using the Maddox-compatible method and have it available in TVE, which may be why I'm missing it. I don't have de-dupes turned on in Advanced, but maybe this is why I'm not seeing it? Should I switch to the non-maddox-compatible list? I kept with Maddox since I was using his container previously.

joagomez · March 15, 2024, 6:39pm

Simple answer - look in your TVE to add that channel to your collection (channel 6750 is BUZZR) as you would have to rebuild your pluto channel collection if you changed to another playlist type with different channel-ids (as noted by @babsonnexus and why i added some compatibility - but again my "compatibility" isn't perfect as experienced by what you are hitting.)

babsonnexus · March 15, 2024, 10:00pm

I see what you are saying, and the answer is "kind of both".

As you said, if you try to add Buzzr to a Channel Collection, the Pluto one does not show as an option (for me, Pluto is 1xxxx stations):

If we look at the @maddox method, we can see the channel-id is pluto-buzzr:

But looking at the @joagomez method, we see it is just buzzr:

This is the exact same name as is used by TVE in Channels:

So it looks like Channels is getting them confused and picking one (TVE) as the overriding option. For a final comparison, if we look at the Tubi m3u (3xxxx for me), we see:

Thus, the difference in channel-id is what matters. As pointed out, Maddox put a manual fix in place to make sure there was no overlap. You can see this in the code (basically, if its on this list, concatenate pluto- to the beginning):

Both the regular and the i.mjh.nz compatible have unique channel-ids, so it would resolve this particular issue:

However, it would open you up to my original problem of destroying your favorite/hide settings on stations and their placement in manual Channel Collections. If you don't mind redoing that, then yes, just go with the regular one. Or, as was highlighted, you can just use the TVE source instead. It really just depends upon your use case and what's most important to you.

joagomez · March 15, 2024, 10:28pm

This is why with my initial playlist I concatenated all with pluto-. I personally did not want to deal with a bunch of one-offs. However this impacted your existing channels collection - thus the "maddox-compatible" still not wanting one-offs it ended up in this position for Buzzr

mjitkop · March 15, 2024, 10:50pm

FYI, the TVE stream is better than Pluto TV's stream:

	Resolution	Video Scan	Frame Rate (fps)	Video Bit Rate (mbps)	Audio Bit Rate (kbps)
TVE (ch 6750)	1920x1080	Progressive	29.97	4.4	129
Pluto TV	1280x720	Progressive	30	2.6	94

radioboy · March 16, 2024, 9:51pm

Thanks everyone for the insight on this issue!! I really do appreciate the education on how it's labeled on the various services. Also, thanks for pointing out the TVE version is actually better quality. For whatever reason, I thought the Pluto version looked best to my eyes, but I see that actually should not be the case since TVE is higher resolution and bitrate. I'm just worried for the inevitable day that I have to drop Spectrum as my CableCARD provider and seek out another provider that still has Buzzr on TVE.

kyl416 · March 16, 2024, 9:58pm

Buzzr's official stream isn't behind a TVE Everywhere paywall like traditional cable networks are. Channels throws in additional stations that stream for free when you activate the TVE option, like Buzzr, Comet, Charge, TBD, NHK World, CBS News, etc

radioboy · March 16, 2024, 10:13pm

Oh, that's even better! I didn't know that!

chDVRuser · March 21, 2024, 4:11am

@joagomez
The logs on your Pluto for Channels look better after moving this line down 4 lines (past the IF statement).

github.com

jgomez177/pluto-for-channels/blob/main/pluto.py#L180

      
        
            station_list, error = self.channels(country_code)
            if error: return None, error
            
            
id_values = [d['id'] for d in station_list]
            group_size = 100
            grouped_id_values = [id_values[i:i + group_size] for i in range(0, len(id_values), group_size)]
            # country_data = self.epg_data.get(country_code, [])
            country_data = []
            
            
for i in range(3):
                print(f'Retrieving {country_code} EPG data for {start_time}')
                if end_time != start_time:
                    start_time = end_time
                    epg_params.update({'start': start_time})
                
                for group in grouped_id_values:
                    epg_params.update({"channelIds": ','.join(map(str, group))})
                    response = self.session.get(url, params=epg_params, headers=epg_headers)
                    if response.status_code != 200:
                        return None, f"HTTP failure {response.status_code}: {response.text}"
                    country_data.append(response.json())

Instead of looking like this
2024-03-21T02:59:38.282076042Z Retrieving local EPG data for 2024-03-21T02:00:00.000Z
2024-03-21T02:59:40.797841659Z Retrieving local EPG data for 2024-03-21T02:00:00.000Z
2024-03-21T02:59:42.597379169Z Retrieving local EPG data for 2024-03-21T14:00:00.000Z

It now looks like this
2024-03-21T03:14:15.168675965Z Retrieving local EPG data for 2024-03-21T03:00:00.000Z
2024-03-21T03:14:17.300696769Z Retrieving local EPG data for 2024-03-21T15:00:00.000Z
2024-03-21T03:14:19.512764198Z Retrieving local EPG data for 2024-03-22T03:00:00.000Z

radioboy · April 15, 2024, 6:50am

In case you didn't see, @joagomez, your container made some user's sources or (me) guide data disappear over the weekend... looks like the same bad characters you scraped out of your Plex container are still appearing in the Pluto container XML. Any chance you could update to fix the issue? I prefer your container since it contains the extra channels for Pluto. Thank you!

maddox · April 15, 2024, 2:00pm

Could someone help out and write out a summary on what the fork of Pluto for Channels provides or fixes, and add it as an issue on the GitHub repo?

I can try to resolve some of the missing or broken things directly.

maddox · April 15, 2024, 2:09pm

I see now that this isn't a fork, it's a re-implementation. But the same requests stands, any information would be helpful. Thanks!

radioboy · April 15, 2024, 2:35pm

The primary thing this container solves is adding new additional channels like "Wheel Of Fortune" and "Jeopardy" that are not available in your container. I wish I knew what the actual reason behind that was, but that's the main reason I switched over to the @joagomez one.