Testing during Free Trial- Cord Cutter

The stream link was a separate issue to play on cloud. I am trying to test as much of the channels server during the free trial and that is one aspect that is not clear on how to set it up. I see you create a file with the information about the stream and give it an extension of strmlnk or something, but what goes in the file? How is that data formated....etc Not finding info on how to do that.

The URL to the content. There are examples in the docs.

@pmaior Stop worrying about the free trial, Channels is only $8 a month. I started the same way and continued on the monthly plan for 2 months. When I got everything setup correctly, I switched to the annual plan.

Who said I'm worrying about the free trial? That's my goal, but not worried about the money. There are also more than channels involved here as far as the free trial. Also testing Play on cloud, which is done now, works fine, and Philo TV. Testing all simultaneously. If I can avoid spending money I don't need to spend, then I will do that. There is also the live testing of computer and network solutions. So yes I agree it's not critical that I get it all tested during the trial, If I find this is not the solution for me, why would I want all the services required for the testing? I am looking to cut monthly services as much as possible too. It would be more productive for you to answer the technical questions I pose and not comment on what I worry about or what my goals are. We all have different preferences and goals here.

So just the url that is in the url box when I am streaming the channel through whatever service that is compatible? I'll try that thanks.

Update. I dolwnloaded and installed the pre-release version as recommended. Thanks for the suggestion.
Then I tried to import Xfinity using the TVE section. I did not get the form missing error like I did previously but it still wasn't working. I noticed that my phone got a text at the same time. So when checking it was an xfinity 2 factor code. So I went online to Xfinity and disabled 2 factor authentication. Took a few minutes and a couple of more attempts for that to propagate, but then it started importing channels. Awesome. I'm going to check the status in a bit. Thanks for all the help guys.

Hey @djcastaldo , I actually have TV plus on my Samsung TV with an HD antenna and it works great, but that's just one TV. and they have a lot of channels and it's free, so I could cancel all Comcast TV tomorrow and just keep data and I would have everything I need on that TV, but I have two others to cover. But your point is well taken.

I was a bit confused about streamlink as well so I'll share. you made a ascii file and call it whatever you want. and the extension strmlnk.... If you were going to link to a movie called monsters... The ascii text file would be called "monsters.strmlnk". Then you open the text find you created and you save the url to the web page. So inside the file would be something like www.movies.com/monsters.This is for movies.

If you are going to do a TV show. you have to make a folder first... so it would be imports->tv->monster tv show Then in the monster t v show folder you would add your monster.strmlink ascii text file with the URL inside the file. Hope this helps.

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Thanks @salreus That is helpful. I will have to try it and see how it works

I don't use them, but if their support article isn't clear, maybe you could offer a suggestion on how it should be explained.

The only part that is a bit confusing is where to get the url. When watching through an app the url info is unavailable, So you would have to be watching it within a browser. For example if I am watching on my amazon fire stick and watch some show on prime video, the url is not available, that I have seen, But if I load it in my browser then I can see the url in the url box of the browser. This seems like it doesn't need to be said, but why not just say, load the service in a browser, then grab the url in the url box. That part is missing in the article. But the examples kind of lead you to that conclusion. I tried one and it did not work, but I'm not stressing about it. The other thing to be carful about is to make sure that windows doesn't add the .txt extension even if you tell it what extension to use and they are hidden by default. I don't use mac so I can't speak to that. So I named my file StarTrekDiscoverySeason4Episode403TheReadyRoom.strmlnk and windows added a .txt file after that so it became StarTrekDiscoverySeason4Episode403TheReadyRoom.strmlnk.txt easy enough to fix, but you have to know it's there. To unhide hidden extensions in Win10 go to file Explorer options and click the view tab then uncheck the "Hide file extensions for known file types" The content of the file is `https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B091NB4VLY/ref=atv_hm_hom_1_c_myhimm_2_2 ' I also tried it without the stuff after the last / still didn't work.

I don't use the stream links, but it looks like from the article for TV shows, you need to use individual episodes
TV episodes would look like this:

Imports/TV/The Mandalorian/Season 1/1x01.strmlnk

https://www.disneyplus.com/video/30ea8a44-797d-4da8-b776-2e3636a2bf5a

From a link in their News blog Stream Links
Stream Links Channels — Stream Links
Where do I get the links for movies and TV shows?

For most streaming services, you can browse their website to find URLs for content. Once you start playing the content, copy the URL from the address bar in your browser and use that.

And then I found a whole section on this forum about them Stream Links - Channels Community

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You can add TV Plus as a custom channel, and then connect an HDHR to that antenna, and have the same thing on all of your TVs.

I like the sound of that. Any more details on that setup? Have you done this?

Samsung TV+ is just another m3u Custom Channel, nothing special.

And then for recording from that antenna

Please be aware that using the Docker that @matthuisman created (as a test) passes along the exact same data you'd get, if you simply subscribed directly to the URLs themselves: Index of /SamsungTVPlus/

There's no benefit to using the Docker for this, and in fact, adding a middleman only adds another variable to maintain. At least for adding the Samsung TV+ channels to Channels DVR, there really isn't a good reason to use Docker.

Yep, you note that in the thread I linked to (plus a lot of other helpful info), so just didn't want to repeat everything you already took so much time to lay out.

one benefit of the docker containers is allowing setting channel numbers, only including some channels etc.

If they not needed - then yes - use the direct url links :slight_smile:

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