The update just released is great.
Very nice imiprovements.
As of v2025.03.18.1154 of PLM, the below items have been addressed. Additionally, there have been a number of performance and quality of life improvements all throughout. Much of this can be seen in the greatly updated documentation on the Wiki.
And one last important note: PLM and Streaming Stations are now on by default for new installations!
Filters are now remembered when you save/new/delete a value. It won't remember exactly where you were, but will remember what you input and maintain it, thus a step in this direction.
By child station in a playlist, you can override the Stream Format. In other words, if you set your playlist as HLS, you can say an individual station is MPEG-TS and PLM will then parse it into a final compatible playlist for Channels. As a reminder, even if you don't care for Docker, there are versions in Windows, Linux, and Python self-deployed for any OS.
In addition to being able to turn off a whole source, you can now turn off individual parent stations. This can be especially useful with season ones so you don't need to favorite/hide in Channels and just leave everything in place for its eventual return. Read about it here:
I have found that if I do not sync my stations on my clients that hidden stations will still appear if they are assigned to a Channel Collection, but ones that don't exist anymore are not a problem. As such, this resolved that issue for me entirely!
The use of the 'temp.txt' file has been deprecated, meaning there is no longer a need for the offset to remove it if it still exists. This should fully eliminate any potential issues that have existed in the past from this methodology. Further, the same process that created this was also causing performance issues and lockouts while running. This has been resolved, too, and the program will be fully responsive even when intensive automation routines like this are running!
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This is unnecessary. Setting format to MPEG-TS allows playback of both MPEG-TS and HLS streams. My feature request was to remove the unnecessary hurdles the end user has to jump through by following the outdated documentation.
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Buddy, I don't work here; I'm just a paying customer like you. Complaining to me won't help.
I just thought of your situation and many requests (that don't read remotely like the way you are describing now) and spent precious hours of my life developing a solution that works within the confines of how Channels functions and presents itself. Take it or leave it, but I don't need to be lambasted for caring.
Maybe next time consider something like...
"Thanks, but I actually found that you can just set the playlist to MPEG-TS and it'll work with that and HLS, so this isn't completely necessary. I wish the Devs would update the documentation to reflect this info."
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Question:
Is there any downside to making ALL my Custom Channels MPEG-TS (excluding STRMLINK) ?
Take this as a grain of salt because I'm far from an expert, but my understanding is that HLS tends to be "better" or "cleaner" when dealing with live streaming, but perhaps not as "efficient" as MPEG-TS. Since the Channels Devs think there is a value to maintaining this difference, then I'd stick with it, as well, simply because there's got to be some kind of benefit. I'd also say, just because in one use case HLS streams worked with the MPEG-TS setting, that is no guarantee it will work in all situations. Given that, IMHO, I see no need to add risk.
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Thanks.
No
This is not about you. This is about all who read this to prevent them from wasting time by following an outdated documentation.