PrismCast as a source and streaming out of home with Channels

#1

Not sure if this is the place to post this so apologize in advance but given my issue only occurs when using Channels and trying to stream TailScale sources out of home, I thought this the best place to post this.

First and foremost, I wish to give my utmost appreciation for all the hard work the dev's have done and are still doing with both Channels DVR and now TailScale.

I have had Channels DVR working between two homes for a while now with sources being an HDHomeRun for OTA and TVE via a YouTubeTV login on a couple of Windows NUC's and it works great when traveling or viewing locals from either location when away using Tailscale.

Lately, I have been lurking in the PrismCast thread and it peaked my interest so I got a Mac Mini M4 base model and have both Channels and PrismCast installed natively and working well on my home network.

Then, I tried to turn on Tailscale and see if I could stream with it out of home and although the local channels via the HDHomeRun source stream out of home fine, when I try to tune to a channel using PrismCast as the source, it immediately times out with the following msg in the Channels log with nothing in the PrismCast log so I have to assume it's somethng in Channels itself. This happens regardless of which PrismCast channel I choose but the error msgs are the same.

[ERR] Could not start stream for M3U-Prismcast ch9005 Big 10: M3U: Could not fetch playlist from :5589: Get "http://:5589/hls/bigten/stream.m3u8": lookup : no such host

At first thought, I assume it might because PrismCast is still a work in progress and integration isn't all that dynamic as of yet or it will never work out of home due to some limitations between Channels and PrismCast? Or there is a setting somewhere I am missing? Nothing more than curiosity at this point and can continue to just use my other setups when away or even just the YTTV but thought it might be worth an ask.

TIA for any info.

#2

Is this your actual error message, or did you remove the IP address? If you removed it, was it showing a LAN IP or a Tailnet IP?

Definitely not, I'm watching a PrismCast virtual channel right now via Tailscale.

#3

Didn't remove or change anything other than turning on Tailscale in Channels and then try to play something. And no, I did not remove or edit the error message other than taking off the preceeding date/time stamp. With that said, about the same time, I had the Chrome Remote Desktip extension disappear on me and not sure why either. And now, I can't even get the PrismCast page to come up. Trying to get PrismCast back up and running right now.

#4

That's pretty odd, as their should be an IP or hostname before that :5589.

Maybe you're being affected by this?:

#5

A bit more context showing where I tuned to an OTA channels (WINK) via the HDHomeRun and then it erroring out when trying to tune to the B1G network. Trying to do this via Tailscale to my S24 Ultra. As stated, this is all I see in the Channels log and there is nothing in the TailScale logs which tells me the request never got there.

2026/02/19 19:13:25.101963 [TNR] Opened connection to 10ACC45D/3 for ch11.1 WINK HD
2026/02/19 19:13:27.107300 [SNR] Statistics for ch11.1 WINK HD: ss=100% snq=100% seq=100% bps=105280 pps=12
2026/02/19 19:13:27.107450 [SNR] Buffer statistics for 100.119.36.94 (Jay's S24 Ultra) for ch11.1 WINK HD: buf=0% drop=0%
2026/02/19 19:13:27.138163 [TNR] Closed connection to 10ACC45D/3 for ch11.1 WINK HD
2026/02/19 19:13:31.537234 [ERR] Could not start stream for M3U-Prismcast ch9005 Big 10: M3U: Could not fetch playlist from :5589: Get "http://:5589/hls/bigten/stream.m3u8": lookup : no such host

Just went back and tried to play something from Channels on a FireTV Cube V3 and now can't play anything from PrismCast there either on my Cube. EPG data is there and OTA works but when I try to play a PrismCast channel, it says

Connection Lost. Streaming to the tuner failed. Press play to try again. M3U:Could not fetch playlist from :5889:Get "http://:5589/hls/amc/stream.m3u8":lookup: no such host.

#6

The missing hostname or IP address before the :5589 is likely the issue. Hopefully you have curl available on some system on your LAN, as I'd like you to:

curl http://<your.mac.mini.ip>:5589/playlist

and post the results here.

#7

Just before your last post, took a deep dive into my source config for PrismCast and found that somehow the IP for my Mac Mini was GONE! Sorry, for all this. It's all good now. Sorry for the trouble and thanks for the quick replies

#8