Sat>IP support

Ok, I made an m3u from the digibit. All good.

I think that because channel lists are hard to come by/painstaking to make and also are different depending on location and wants it’s going to stay quite niche! Which is a shame as the kit is excellent but can see these devices are very powerful made such a way.

I'm still having trouble with mine.
Channels are taking an age to load and no sound when I try to watch on my Nvidia shield.

What is the format of your m3u?

I use TVHeadend

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Has anyone any idea why I get no sound when playing my Sat IP channels on the Nvidia Shield.
Sound works on the browser.

Plus load time is really slow compared to watching on VLC.

I really want to get this working as my wife wants me to abandon Channels DVR because of the load times and no sound on the app

Having played a little with this the channel load times and relatability are very poor with direct connection. Having tvheadend in the middle solves this but since I’ve switched to a dedicated Pi4 for Channels DVR have no way to host this. Shame really as it has promise.

I find Tvheadend very confusing and was hoping to be able to connect sat >ip directly to channels.
Is Tvheadend very processor heavy?

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I don't have a a GSS or Digibit, but I've found the built-in SAT>IP channel lists to generally be rubbish and ended up creating my own M3U for the channels on 28.2. It's a real pain to keep it up to date but it works well. I noticed there are quite a few differences to how my URLs are formed compared with the sample you shared.

Here's my URL for BBC One NW HD as an example:

http://<ip_address>/?src=1&freq=10773&pol=h&msys=dvbs2&mtype=8psk&plts=on&ro=0.25&sr=23000&fec=34&pids=0,17,18,258,5100,5101,5103,5104,5105

I've been interested in getting a Sat IP device for some time, and now that we can use channels with them, I'm really interested.

Does anyone know what hardware is good to get in 2023, and what to expect for content and coverage in the NW United States? I know most users are in UK/EU so I'm curious who is using this in the USA?

All of the SAT>IP devices are DVB-S/S2 which is an EU standard. Don't think you'll have much luck in the US.

I guess you could roll your own with tvheadend and a usb adapter

I think you're out of luck. Dish Network uses the DVB-S(2) standard, but as far as I know they will not sell you a subscription and decryption card unless it's with their own receiver. Sky in the UK is very much the same even though most TVs come with a built-in card reader here. Sat companies on the continent are much better about selling subscriptions and cards to use with your own equipment.

We have a lot of free-to-air satellite services in the UK (eg, Freesat), which makes owning a SAT>IP server worthwhile, but I don't think there is anything similar in the US. A quick search shows only a load of religious and/or foreign language channels.

Apparently you can receive some US network prime time programming via FTA satellite

https://reddit.com/r/cordcutters/comments/11mevvh/_/jbhtzuq/?context=1

If its just ABC then don't need a big C-band dish, just a small (1 meter) Ku-band dish as there is an ABC stream on Galaxy 16 (99W) at 11770 V 8750. It is the ABC network feed so won't have any local programming like news though.

A 1m Ku-band setup runs about $250 or so. By federal law HOAs can't ban 1m dishes either.

Granted C-band will give access to a bunch more stuff, but they're bigger and more expensive. And not protected from HOA covenants if thats an issue.

https://www.lyngsat.com/Galaxy-16.html

Are there any SAT>IP receivers that can create a Channels friendly M3U output from their own WEBUI/ setup program without the need to use TVH as an intermediary?

I have tried TVH with a Digibit twin, but couldn't get it to find the Freesat UK mux (despite some very detailed instructions from someone on here) and found TVH itself incredibly complicated. I also don't like the idea of any extra links in the chain.

I think what you may be looking for is a Digital Devices unit.

I did some research recently and their interface looked good - with some Windows software you can initiate a scan, create a channel list for the device and then leave the device stand alone which sounds like what you’re after.

I don’t personally have any experience with them but just what I’ve seen. Sometimes come up used on eBay (specifically eBay.de) with DVB-S2 cards inside them, depending on how many tuners you require (they take their own brand PCIe cards inside).

Hope that helps

TV Headend is a chore, really over complicated and even if you get it working, I bet you will still have problems trying to receive certain channels etc. When I tried both full Sky and full Freesat scans with the latest muxes / frequency tables, there were errors in the frequency lists, i had to manually amend the lists etc. It was a total pain.

I don't see the pointing using TVH as a go between to get a SATIP server working with Channels DVR. All you need is an M3U / text file etc loaded into the Server, map the EPG and it works. Channels DVR will connect directly to the SATIP server and play satellite TV without issue?

The M3U / channel list is the thing that takes the time to create.

That there lies the problem @neild7744 - creating a suitable channel list and which is compatible with one’s SAT>IP server is a pain… and maintaining it.

Exactly.

It is a chore.

I have a friend who has experience with writing software and programming. I mentioned this issue to him a few months back. We have kind of talked about writing some software or a batch script of some sort to do what your asking... Essentially pull all the Channel names, frequencies, pids etc from kingofsat and generate a list that can be easily copied / imported into channels DVR.

This will take out the hassle of manually editing channel lists and remove the need to mess about using other software to 'bridge the gap' / work around not being able to easily create and update channel lists.

The other thing I have considered (in the interim) is asking the developers whether we could have a section in the forum for FTA channel lists, which for those of us who are using SATIP could upload to... Again saving time and effort for each of us having to manually generate lists over and over individually.

I did create a Facebook page to try and help with this, but there didn't seem to be much demand for the lists and mainly ended up with people messaging me about how to actually setup and run a SATIP server rather than just wanting the lists. Seems that despite SATIP having a supposed standard, there are slight differences between manufacturers on how they function / communicate.

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I used to use your list! Gave up with sat>ip in the end as it just took too much maintenance.

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Would be happy to help with this if you wanted to start something. Good idea though. If we can host it on GitHub perhaps a list of transponders can be added as a custom source in Channels, like the supposed SAT>IP channel list which are so out of date.