IPTVX, iProTV and Quadstream: Multiview via Channels

Are you able to get 5.1 audio from Channels DVR streams using iProTV on an Apple TV?

Yes but sometimes you have toggle between streams to get 5.1 audio to kick it from stream to stream. Donā€™t know if this a bug in the app or M3U.

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for me. :slight_smile:

I'm assuming your M3U source is the HDHR PRIME cable feed and using format=ts not HLS?

I can confirm that 5.1 surround worked prior to tvOS 16 and I've tested with one of my Apple TV HD box.

In tvOS 16 the center channel get sent to the left/right channels incorrectly and the audio receiver still think it's 5.1 surround coming in.

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My stream is posting at the channels DVR server using an HDHR OTA stream with format=ts. I am on tvOS 16 though. I'm only getting left and right speakers, no center, no rear.

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Yes, I noticed the same on my tvOS 16 Apple TV box that I'm only getting left and right channels but the receiver thinks it's 5.1 surround.

There must be is a bug then in tvOS 16 and iProTV app not sending the 5.1 correctly to the audio receiver.

Most of my other Apple TV boxes are still running tvOS 15.5.1 and those Apple TV boxes get 5.1 surround correctly.

So @Fofer , this looks interesting to me as well. Im about to dive in, but wanted to get your opinion.

Ive been using CCTV viewer. Ive got one setup 4x3 with 12 news station (all tve). For sunday sports i have a 2x2 for sports 2 OTA cbs,and fox, Redzone, and nfl channel

Ive observed at times really slow loading of the TVE streams, and the OTA channels are so slow to load, that my workaroud was to get those channels directly off the HDHomeRun instead of the channels urls.

Also at times the audio when switching the active window and jumping to full screen gets hosed.

Overall im use to the quirks, and it has been servicable, but not awesome.

So im motivated to move over to iprotv.

Is it a marginal improvement, or a BIG improvement in your opinion.

Im on the ledge, can you talk me offā€¦.lol

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In my experience it was a big improvement from QuadStream to CCTV Viewer and then another big improvement from CCTV Viewer to iProTV. iProTV handles more streams for longer durations without issue. Setup and sync works better than the others. The app interface of course has quirks of its own, but overall I've found it to be the best current performer. It's far from perfect in this context, it has some glaring omissions too. But its pros outweigh the cons, by far, and it just does a better job for me than the others do. I'll keep using it until something better comes along.

You may not like the layout though, especially the 4x3 news one you mentioned, as in iProTV it will be 2 on the top, and 10 small ones underneath.

My other app for multiview a FuboTV subscription. Their app's implementation and UI for this is great, but it's also limited to 4, and Fubo doesn't offer all the channels. Channels DVR integrates with Fubo via TVE though, 174 channels.

YouTube TV is rumored to be releasing a "mosaic mode" sometime soon, which sounds like their version of Multiview. I look forward to checking that out, to see how it compares.

Many thanks sincerely for your insight.

Im gonna take the leap.

When you implemented the ā€œbug/hackā€ to have more than the 2x2 matrix, once you are done tricking iprotv using the hosted m3u with the dummy channels, can you then delete the hosted m3u, or does that m3u link have to be live forever?

I wonder if i could host the m3u on m34u dot com instead of a link to a google public link. I already have an account there..

Best

Thatā€™s a question for @sok, this revelation was their suggestion.

I hope it works out for you!

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Wow. Thanks for this. Set it up this morning with 8 streams and really diggin it.

@Fofer

Much better loading of streams and much better audio performance than CCTV viewer.

Great hack!

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Was trying it yesterday and today and iProTV seems to lock up on me after 20 mins trying to play multiple streams. It takes a bit to load but once itā€™s working itā€™s doing well. Then the feeds freeze up.

As a test Iā€™m running multiple streams through a couple of VLC clients to the channels DVR server I set up on an M1 Mac go try this (as my NAS just isnā€™t up to the task of transcoding more than a couple streams) and itā€™s been running swimmingly all day long. So I donā€™t think itā€™s the server but the client.

I used to try this kind of stuff with a few GitHub projects back in the day that would take the channels from the HDHomeRun and transcode them and broadcast them with ffmpeg and VLC etc so Iā€™m not completely foreign to this. Channels logs when iProTV is asking for things doesnā€™t look out of the ordinary.

Not sure what I might be doing wrong. Oh well.

Iā€™m tempted get a few fire tv sticks and run channels and solve this with hardware lol.

Ive seen a feed occasionally lock up, but then realized it was an OTA station, and i exceed3d the number of tuners on my HDHomeRun flex (4).

I havent run for hours at a time yet to see if TVE streams (via channels) lock up and freeze. But in my experience this is way much more reliable than CCTV view as far as multi stream viewing.

Im interested if the different client helps you. Im on all ios and tvos devices, which have been syncing very conveniently whenever i add or change a multichannel group.

Fyi im still on ios and tvos15. I havent made that leap yet, because i read that there may be a bug somewhere with 5.1 audio compatibility with iprotv and ios 16

I think i can confirm this - I noticed my 5.1 channels weren't triggering when switching yesterday.

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I was able to rerun the setup with a new provider and I think it worked this time. For some reason I don't think it was respecting the query string params originally. I tried it again last night and everything worked surprisingly well. I'm on iOS 16 and haven't run surround sound for a while. I miss it, but I guess moments like this reduce that haha.

There is still a few bugs I've run into with iProTV but it seems to be working well enough when I need it, Channels is amazing that even though its not officially supported, it can power stuff like this.

i can confirm loss of surround on iProTV on TVOS16.

Somehow last night even though i had auto update turned off my apple TV 4k updated itself to TVOS16.

Now 5.1 doesnt reliably work coming from the iProTV app.
The Channels app itself is fine with surround.

Also i confirmed that HDHomeRun app deals with 5.1 stations on TVOS16.

I guess the crowd noise for OTA sports will be in stereo on iProTV for now.

Im kinda pissed that my apple tv updated itself. Have no idea why. I usually hold off quite some time before updating operating systems to allow the masses to uncover incompatibilities like this and i purposely have been holding off. Ive got an apple tv 4k and cant roll back which is a bummer.

Oh well. Not a biggie..

I can say that iproTV is well worth the effort, even on TVOS16, especially with the hack that @sok brilliantly exposed . So thank you sir!

This was a game changer for my Saturday college football watching. I had the 4 streams running all day and added and removed channels as games switched over. In addition, I was able to add in the MLB games as well. This has a lot of promise.

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I like to watch sports and listening to music at the same time or listen to alternative audio feed. You can Airplay music from the iPhone to the Apple TV and the iProTV app player doesnā€™t pause/stop.

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The surround sound issue seems better this week, after multiple app updates recently. Nice!

Sigh. Still no surround for me even after tvOS 16.1.

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