lol, blame sok. His helpful post here got me started:
At the very least, the ability to ingest your own channels.m3u (instead of having to add each channel manually) was a great improvement.
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Agreed. The ability to get your setups ready on am iOS device is a big plus, too.
The tvOS interface for creating new setups is basically useless, though - at least at first try. I'll take a couple of more cracks at it, though.
I really REALLY wish they exposed channel numbers on the interface, though - would make things so much easier.
I started playing with iProTV this morning. I'm liking it a lot. Syncing across devices is great. Also, happy to find that the iPad app works really well on apple silicon Macs.
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I also like how we can view 4 channels with one enlarged window on the top and three small ones underneath it, instead of just a 2x2 grid. And yes, the sync between multiple device is a game-changer for overall channel management. It's definitely a big step up from QuadStream. Both apps seem to have stalled development though, hopefully we'll see improvements in the future. Because even though iProTV feels like the best option for this right now, it still has some limitations, bad UI and is incomplete, in a number of ways. Still feels like there's no single solution that works best across the board. Although if only Fubo added a couple more channels, I'd probably end up using their multiview exclusively. I'm also looking forward to seeing YouTube TV's "mosaic" interface, if the rumors are true: YouTube TV update will reportedly let you watch four channels at once - The Verge
With iProTV I'd like to be able to rearrange channel positioning in the 2x2 grid, on-the-fly, like we can with Fubo. Or at the very least I'd like for them to stay in the position I save them (as a group) when I re-open them. Because they don't even display in the position they're represented in, in the group thumbnail. Yes, we can replace channels on-the-fly but even with favorites it feels clunky. I'd also like to be able to rename channel groups. I couldn't figure out if that's even possible so I ended saving new ones and deleting the old ones they're meant to replace.
Also, my AppleTV can handle more streams, so I'd like more grid options, like 3x2. And I'd prefer audio focus switching to be quicker, if not instantaneous.
Until then I'll keep bouncing around between Channels DVR, Fubo and iProTV, and keep dreaming 
Yeah, it's soooooooo close.
The tvOS app, for viewing, is easily the best yet. Snappy fast, gives you the native (i.e. surround) audio (which Fubo doesn't) - it's great.
Managing anything on tvOS? Absolutely hopeless. I still haven't found the way to create a multiview setup on tvOS itself. Thankfully, the iOS/iPadOS app does it beautifully. If only the channel number was exposed anywhere, i would pretty much live with it as-is.
Longer term, it needs 3x3 or 4x4 to be competitive with other apps, but it's my go-to for now.
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Oh, cool! How?
1 - Export your http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels.m3u?codec=copy&format=ts to local M3U file or create one manually to test it out (I’ve used Feedlix to extract the M3U file and there are other ways to do this, search the forum)
2 - Use a Text editor program and edit the local M3U file and add these dummy duplicate channels, sample below (the bug was when you have duplicate channels inside the local M3U file, the iProTV get into a loop when you created a grouped view that have the duplicate channels selected in the multi-view mode, so the more duplicate channels you create in the local M3U file the more multi-view screens you get)
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV1
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV2
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV3
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV4
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV5
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV6
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV7
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV8
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1.0" tvg-id="1.0" tvg-chno="1.0" tvg-logo="" tvc-guide-stationid="" tvg-name="" group-title="Multiview",MV9
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1.0/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="2.1" tvg-id="2.1" tvg-chno="2.1" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s32356_h3_ba.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="21634" tvg-name="PBS" group-title="Favorites",PBS
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/2.1/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="4.1" tvg-id="4.1" tvg-chno="4.1" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s28711_ll_h15_ab.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="21234" tvg-name="CBS" group-title="Favorites",CBS
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/4.1/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="5.1" tvg-id="5.1" tvg-chno="5.1" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s28708_ll_h15_ac.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="21236" tvg-name="ABC" group-title="Favorites",ABC
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/5.1/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="9.1" tvg-id="9.1" tvg-chno="9.1" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s28719_h3_ba.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="24504" tvg-name="FOX" group-title="Favorites",FOX
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/9.1/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="11.1" tvg-id="11.1" tvg-chno="11.1" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s28717_ll_h15_ac.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="20505" tvg-name="NBC" group-title="Favorites",NBC
http://DVRIP:8089/devices/ANY/channels/11.1/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
3 - Upload the edited local M3U file to Google Drive and create a Google Drive direct link for your M3U file (Google Drive Direct Link Generator) - this step you need to host your own M3U file publicly so iProTV can get to it because iProTV doesn’t support local M3U file yet.
4 - Go to iProTV and Add Provider and select Remote File m3u and point to the Google Drive direct link you’ve just created in step 3.
5 - Open one of the dummy channel and go into multi-view mode and add another dummy channel and now save the grouped views name as whatever you want or call it Template so you can reuse it to create other views later.
6 - When you open the new grouped view you can see it’ll open a bunch for dummy channels in multi-view mode. At this point you can replace the dummy channels with the real channels and save the grouped view with another name.
I created a template view for like 8 channels and use that as my starting point. You can create as many as you want, I think the latest Apple TV 4K can handles up to 16+ screens with h264 but iProTV layout you get 2 large split screen on top and it will add the rest of the channels to bottom of the view.
Once you created the multi-view template you can delete the dummy channels, if you don’t want to see them from your Google Drive hosted remote M3U file and make sure to refresh the Provider in settings for the changes to take effect.
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Wow, thanks so much for that detailed write-up. I've got it working now, playing around with 7 streams and it's working great. (Once I got to 8+ streams, bottom row got a bit too small...) I do however like how I can switch between 2 channels at the top (with 5 at the bottom) and 1 channel at the top (with 6 at the bottom) and also, that I can switch which channel takes that top spot, by selecting it. This is easier than replacing channels to rearrange them, and definitely is the best multiview for me right now.
So cool. I really appreciate you sharing that, how in the world did you figure that out?!
Well, it’s started with Tivimate on the Nvidia Shield TV Pro (my first ever/last Android box) it’s a great hardware but it couldn’t handled 8+ multi streams consistently when using with mpeg-ts and it was working fine with HLS but I wanted keep 5.1 surround and refresh rate in tact when watching sports. Tivimate would pauses and stop responding after 1 hour or so watching live TV and when I start switching channel. I think this was Tivimate issue. I purchased the Nvidia Shield TV Pro just for the multi streams but got tired of switching the input from Apple TV to Nvidia Shield Pro TV and Tivimate crashing.
I created a custom M3U file to use with Tivimate and it had multiple group-titles like Favorites, Sports, News, etc. Tivimate doesn’t support M3U group-title=“Favorites;Sports;News” correctly so I created multiple group-title manually with the same set of channels and just renamed the group-title to “Sports”, “News”, and so on and delete the channels that doesn’t belong to “News” or “Sports” group-title. In Tivimate you can select/filter by group title when browsing the guide listing. I wanted to mimic the Channels Collections as group-titles.
When I imported the same M3U file to iProTV and create grouped views this is when I noticed multi-view mode loaded the same channels multiple times and more than 4 streams. I decided to delete the other groups “News”, “Sports” and kept only “Favorites” from my M3U file and then it started working normally just showed me my 4 streams instead of 6 or 8 streams.
Did a few more tests and knowing that iProTV can load more than 4 channels in multi-view mode this is when I added the dummy channels in the M3U file and playing around with it. Hopefully the the developer don’t fixed the bug yet or provide us with more than 4 streams in multi-view mode in the next release.
YouTube TV mosaic mode looks interesting. It’s hard for me to go back to watching 1 channel at a time when I can load up my favorites group with 8+ streams at a time (no channel surfing) but my wife hates it, she said too many streams she can’t focus on one. It’s great watching multi-view on the iPhone & iPad when I’m away from home watching live TV.
Wow, thanks for sharing that too. Very interesting, great work!
Yes, I'll be curious to check out YTTV'w mosaic feature when that comes out, and may even switch over from Fubo if it works better. (Hopefully Channels DVR doesn't have any issues authenticating YTTV for TVE integration.) Now that I'm spoiled by Multiview I'm kinda bored just watching one channel!
Oooh, this sounds interesting. I've never gotten these 3rd party apps to work remotely like the Channels client does. I'm guessing they've only worked on my own home network because when I export the m3u, I use http://192.168.0.21:8089/devices/ANY/channels.m3u?codec=copy&format=ts
(because 192.168.0.21 is the internal IP address of my DVR.) When I tried the same with my Spectrum external IP address instead, the channels wouldn't load, nor would they load when I tried the URL I get from the Channels DVR webUI, the one formatted like: af382a1bb09d.u.channelsdvr.net. Am I going about this incorrectly?
UPnP on my router works for remote access with the Channels app, so I never needed to forward port 8089 to that internal IP address. I did try that just now to see if I could get iPro TV to work remotely. I disabled WiFi on my iPhone, confirmed cellular connection, but it still didn't work. Would it only work on remote WiFi? Any advice or pointers, anything else I can try to get this app streaming remotely? I'd love to use the iPad app on my M1 MacBook Pro when I'm away from home.
Tailscale.com it! Install it on your Channels DVR server, MacBook, iPhone, and iPad. Create a new remote M3U file by pointing to your Tailscale’s assigned Channels DVR server IP address (100.x.x.x).
http://100.x.x.x:8089/devices/ANY/channels/2.1/stream.mpg?codec=copy&format=ts
Make sure Tailscale are running on the Channels DVR server and the remote clients (MacBook, iPhone and/or iPad).
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Cool, thanks again!
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The other cool thing is that how iProTV app can go in & out of locked screen and the background audio mode kicks in very quickly on the iPhone/iPad.
I also created a playlist category with audio mode only when listening in the car like a podcast with multi-radio mode.
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="1205" tvg-id="1205" tvg-chno="1205" tvg-logo=https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s32645_h3_aa.png?w=360&h=270 tvc-guide-stationid="32645" tvg-name="ESPNHD" group-title="Favorites",ESPN Radio
http://100.x.x.x:8089/devices/ANY/channels/1205/hls/audio.m3u8
I wish the app displays the program image of the show when in audio mode instead of just playing blank screen.
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That's cool, thanks for sharing that! I'm also noticing a (related?) issue that's worth mentioning, though. When I quit the (iPad) app on my M1 MacBook Pro -- or the AppleTV app -- the multiview channels that were playing, continue to stream. The app is still listed on my Mac under Activity Monitor. The multiviewed channels are all still listed as "watching" in the Activity window of the Channels DVR web interface. Even though I quit the app.
This can use a lot of bandwidth if I'm not paying attention... I'm not aware of a way to shut these streams remotely, though. So now I'm getting into the habit of FORCE-quitting the client app, on both platforms, after I'm done watching or listening, as I typically wouldn't want it continuing to stream 6+ channels silently in the background.
I'm still loving iProTV as a multview solution though! Once it's all set up and you know how to take advantage of its full capability, it's pretty amazing.
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There is "Audio playback in background" Settings you can turn on/off but I think it only works for single stream.
In Apple TV use the Back button to close out multi-view streams correctly. If you hit the Home/TV button then you have to force the app to quit manually.
In the iPhone/iPad app there is "X" button icon top left corner, when you soft touch one of the stream, you can touch the "X" button to close the multi-view streams correctly.
In my setup I don't have to worry about bandwidth because I get unlimited data with Quantum Fiber and I'm using 2 HDHR Quatro OTA & 4 HDHR PRIME CableCARD as my main sources. TVE source for backup at the moment.
Comcast no longer charges for CableCARD fees (this is a legacy product now for them) so I'm planning to add more HDHR PRIME CableCARD until they're no longer support CableCARD.
Is there any way to go back to the multi-view screen on iProTV once you have chosen a channel for full-screen on Apple TV? The only way I see how to do it is to go back to the app's main page and choose the saved multi-view setup again. This is the main thing that keeps me from using it over Quadstream. The back button on Quadstream takes you back to the four live split-screen channels when you hit the back button on full-screen. That is much smoother when switching between four football games if you want to go full-screen.
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No, at the moment. I sent the developer with all the issues/features request but never got a reply back. I just Enlarge the screen instead for the workaround and this works great on my projector screen (1 stream on top row and 7 smaller streams in the bottom row).
I like the iProTV app more than others at the moment because it works on iPhone and iPad too.
K, newbie to MacWorld, I bought a AppleTV and installed IProTV and setup the M3u stream and it's working fine from that regard. How do I get the 2x2 screen setup. I can't find any settings specific to multiple channel viewing on the same screen?
TIA
Update - Figured out how to do MultiView within the ESPN App through a google search, but still don't know how to do it with IPRO TV. Any help would be appreciated.
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1 - Start a single stream.
2 - On the Apple TV remote swipe up to choose another stream and touch the “play/pause”button to “Add to mutiscreen”.
3 - Once you’re in the multi-view mode you can touch the “play/pause” button again you’ll get options to Add Screen, Enlarge, Full Screen, or Save the multi-view, and etc.
4 - To exit single or multi-view mode touch the “Back” button to stop the stream.
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