Yes (and if I change http to rtsp it works in channels too)
How are you running Channels? Is it the same machine you're using to test with VLC? Is Channels running in a container? I'm kind of at a loss if you're only changing rtsp to http and your M3U is otherwise identical.
I'm running channels in a docker on unraid - testing is on an M1 Mac mini using VLC. HTTP works perfectly in VLC, but nothing at all in channels.
Hmm, weird - have tested using web player and I get audio, but not video. iPhone app gets same tuner not available that I get from the iPad app (running on Mac).
Edit - have sent debug logs via iPhone app if it will help.
Edit - weirder - despite me choosing the satip source in web player guide it started playing from my hdhomerun, so this is a red herring. Back to no http playback in Channels.
The container/unraid may have a firewall issue? You could check that the firewall on the unraid is allowing http through for that docker container. I can't help with the specifics since setups vary quite a bit.
Do I need the beta client apps at the moment for this to work? I have beta server.
Nice Neil is alive because he stopped responding to me, well anyway..where did you get your IPSAT tuner?
I was searching for Mega Sat 3 and some other models - they are sold out, Amazon or ebay have no clue when they will be available. Does manufacturer went bankrupt or they didnt realise potential?
Hi beyo77,
I managed to pick the Kathrein EXIP 418 brand new on Amazon for £303 which I think is still a bit pricey but wanted the protection of a known middleman in case of issues/returns etc.
I’ve just checked the purchase link and it appears the seller has now increased price to £380.
I think the aiming point price wise is around £200 if you’re braver than me and are willing to dust off that German dictionary from school.
Found this link below. Pretty sure they are a well known German distributor of all electronics. You may want to look into potential import duty. Not 100 percent sure on our EU status.
I’m new to Sat>IP servers so I’m not up to speed on prices/compatibility of any other boxes! If you look back there are a few guys that mention they own other boxes!
Genuinely curious... why you preferred this over having TVheadend in between? Or was it just the challenge? 
Personally, I see TVheadend as the 'replacement-missing-UI' for my Megasat Sat>IP, it allows me to get a basic channel bouquet imported, disable all the junk, move channels around easily so the +1's are where they 'should' be, etc. Not to mention the MUX sharing (recording multiple channels using a single tuner) etc that it does by default, which I'm not sure if the Megasat does on its own?
It doesn't seem to have any downsides to channel speed switching, comparable to a Sky box (from memory) for me at around 3-4 seconds on an HD channel, or is it just the fact that there is another external aspect to the setup?
A combination of things really. I was using the old tvh-telly-channels setup pre M3U support in Channels.
- It worked but felt like it needed regular attention/maintenance. The new system has fewer places to look if/when an issue comes up.
- I could never get tvh to connect to my sat>ip server over http instead of rtsp, and I would get frequent pixelation mostly on high-bandwidth channels. Not a single dropout over http.
- There's been very little developer activity/attention to tvh in quite some time. The project feels stale and I absolutely hate the overly complicated and user-unfriendly interface.
- It was interesting to learn more about sat>ip in general and it spurred me to completely redo my entire media server setup. I've now got everything running on a linux server all managed from the command line (and various web interfaces). It's lean, fast and uses very little computer resource.
That being said, there are a couple things I miss.
- In tvh it was much easier to combine channels from multiple sources (sat, terrestrial, HD/SD variants, etc) and prioritise which ones to use. I've worked around that in Channels by creating a primary M3U and a couple backup M3Us to use as failovers in case a channel isn't tuneable for whatever reason, but it's much less elegant. The devs have hinted there might be some work on this in the future though.
- I also miss the relative ease of renumbering/reordering channels, assigning logos, etc. Channels lacks that functionality completely so I use an online M3U creator/manager, but it's still not as versatile as tvh. Again, the devs have hinted this might be improved soon.
- I don't really miss mux sharing since my sat>ip has 8 tuners and my HDHR has 4 tuners, but it would be a 'nice to have' in that it's more efficient.
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That surprises me - tvh is probably the most stable piece of software in my entire setup, which is why I'm reluctant to remove it. Although I do agree about the PITA UI, but what tvh does (for me) it does really well
I've just migrated away from sat>ip -> tvh -> Telly->Channels, to the native m3u support direct from TVHeadend and remapped all the channels.
I was hoping that as the channels numbers from the m3u remained the same, just with the removal of Telly, it might automap based on the original Telly import - but I seemed to end up with BBC guide for 75% of the channels it imported.
I do find that I need to manually reload the browser, i.e a refresh, after manually mapping channels to the EPG/guide - otherwise if I try and go in and edit again, all sorts of 'weird' stuff seems to happen, what was mapped gets mapped elsewhere, random mappings appear. So presumably something is cached/stored locally.
I still need to keep 1 Telly instance, unfortunately, as I run this in a separate Linux network namespace - would be fabulous if you could specify the network namespace the M3U and associated streams should be retrieved over
Yes, this is definitely a pain point. It's much better since the ability to search/add channels from any lineup, but it's still fiddly to work with.
I agree. I have multiple network adapters to make sure nothing gets saturated. It would be great if I could tell Channels to access different services over different networks (eg, use eth0 for local M3U, eth1 for Pluto M3U, etc).
Submitted a pull request to support the MEG-8000, so that it includes the modulation in the issue raised by @stoli412
My m3u example is below for anyone that is interested, streaming over HTTP rather than RTSP, I strip out lots of stuff - 'rubbish' channels, kids, radio, music, etc.
Change (find/replace) 10.1.1.10 with your Sat>IP server IP.
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Version 2020.12.25.0233
Had to roll back for now, to using TVheadend first, will do some further testing next week - might be a PID issue, as the PIDs vary slightly between the 2 method I'm using.
When using an m3u from kingofsat, my tuning times are around 10-15 seconds on BBC One HD - compared with 4-5 seconds when going via TVHeadend first. Both are using UDP based RTSP. Other channels also seem to see longer tuning times, although I did only flick briefly. On the former, I also see various messages in the Channels log:
2020/12/27 08:17:16.790747 [TNR] Opened connection to M3U-TVHeadend for ch101 BBC One HD [transcode=none]
2020/12/27 08:17:19.022778 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: [h264 @ 0x4208600] mmco: unref short failure
2020/12/27 08:17:19.038135 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: [h264 @ 0x4208600] reference picture missing during reorder
2020/12/27 08:17:19.038160 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: [h264 @ 0x4208600] Missing reference picture, default is 2147483647
2020/12/27 08:17:19.219581 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: [h264 @ 0x4208600] mmco: unref short failure
2020/12/27 08:17:19.257205 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: [h264 @ 0x4208600] Increasing reorder buffer to 2
2020/12/27 08:17:19.269748 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: [h264 @ 0x4208600] Increasing reorder buffer to 3
2020/12/27 08:17:22.860584 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: [rtsp @ 0x41bdf80] Could not find codec parameters for stream 4 (Audio: ac3 ([6][0][0][0] / 0x0006), 0 channels): unspecified sample format
2020/12/27 08:17:22.860733 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: Consider increasing the value for the 'analyzeduration' and 'probesize' options
2020/12/27 08:17:22.869371 [HLS] ffmpeg: rtsp-101: [mpegts @ 0x427ea00] Timestamps are unset in a packet for stream 0. This is deprecated and will stop working in the future. Fix your code to set the timestamps properly
When testing with the same RTSP channel link directly in VLC, the tuning time is comparable to the 4-5 seconds when using an m3u from TVheadend.
Finally migrated over from a DVBViewer generated m3u playlist, direct to SATIP - So now my m3u playlist tunes directly to either my Kathrien or triax SATIP servers.
So far I have loaded & re-mapped channels for Astra 28.2 - Manually... that took some time!
As i write this post im now scanning channels on Astra 19.2 & will hopefully have a custom M3u playlist loaded into channels DVR & EPG mapped by tomorrow morning
The final satellite to add to my setup (but will require re-alignment of my satellite dish & a 3rd lnb fitting) will be for scanning of Hotbird 13e. I currently have my dish offset for 28.2 & 19,2 & TBH couldn't be bothered last week messing about with the amount of work involved to offset my dish for a '3 satellites on 1 dish' setup as the problem has always been lack of EPG for Hotbird 13e... however as channels DVR seems to have updated its EPG support and now shows listings for channels on Hotbird, im tempted to get it setup over the next few days!
So far so good. It will be nice to remove DVB Viewer & have direct tuning to my SATIP servers! Nice work.
For me, an m3u playlist as HTTP seems better - Channel loads are quicker. One thing i have noticed is loading a channel within the Channel DVR web browser does take longer than my Apple TV box. Also, having my Apple TV box with a wired connection onto my LAN also improves channel loading times. Most channels load within 1 second. I also did a bit of testing earlier today to see what channel scan / load times are on Astra 19.2 - As this satellite is wired into a unicable multiswitch and uses my triax SATIP server - Channel loads are 1 - 2 seconds, so no real differences.
All my channels seem to have options for subtitles, ability to change audio streams etc... basically whatever is provided by the m3u list Channels DVR seems to recognise and handle without issue.
Everything seems to be working well. I've had no real issues with failed connections etc since creating new m3u playlists. My series passes all seem to be working ok & plenty of live tv has been successfully recording this afternoon.
The only improvement of SATIP / m3u which would be good, is the ability to have channels correctly filtered (i.e. HD, SD...etc). All channels within my m3u lists show up in Channels DVR as HD.
Thanks again for the support.
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I'm in Poland so not afraid of EU duties. GB will have bigger problems from 1 January, unfortunately.
I stopped learning German after leaving High School 25 years go, so the dictionary may be helfpfull 
Still this is sooo pricey especially for salaries in Poland. The way to go is to find a friends to participate, one pay for server another gives space with symmetric fibre 1000/1000 and we are ready to go
Speaking about providers - I always Thought Virgin is satellite not a cable. And yes, they are overly paranoid, Sky could offer only decryption card for using with E2 tuners but no:( That Sat>IP tuners has no place for inserting such cards anyway 
If Channels could utilitze that to get access for SKY On-demand boxes that would be huge, but probably this never gonna happen in this world. Sky uses the same approach in Germany, Italy, Austria and probably Spain.
They are not intrested in entering Polish market unfortunately. In Poland most of the channels on satellite are encrypted even the terrestrial ones which is a shame but our government similar to US government doesn't do a shit about this. The channels that are FTA in UK or Germany like HGTV,CBS Reality are paid and encrypted in polish version 
Maybe some other specialist here know (@racameron ?) is there anything that can convert Enigma2 tuner eg. VU+ Duo from being sat>ip receiver only into server? after all they are linux-powered.
I don't know why, but it seems like the prices have gone up and the choice has gone down since I bought my sat>ip server around this time last year.
Virgin Media in the UK and Ireland is a cable provider, not sure about elsewhere. You're absolutely right about Sky (and Virgin): they will never allow subscribers to use their own equipment, which is a shame because I would happily pay for a subscription if I wasn't restricted to accessing it through their (horrible) boxes and apps.
Whilst I never looked into it too much, I thought TVheadend supported card readers etc?
I'm not sure if it supports CI+, but it does support CI.
TVheadend does support card readers, but good luck getting one to read a UK Sky card reliably, consistently and legally. 