TV Everywhere: UK Providers

Hi there,

Any plans on bringing the UK providers to Channels DVR, for e.g. Now TV, Sky Go etc?

Thanks

Is TV Everywhere even available in the UK? http://www.tveverywherenow.com/ if no then no, channels is piggybacking on that service and I don't even think TVE is offered outside of the US.

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Unfortunately no. Only American programmers was skilled enought to do such thing.

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Because we only have effectively 2 pay TV providers in the UK, Sky and Virgin, there is arguably less of an incentive for them to create a TV everywhere-type system. There are a few smaller providers like BT, TalkTalk, NowTV (Sky) and TV Player (failing), but I don't think there is enough of an ecosystem to set up such a system. Plus, the UK is fairly unique with the amount of content on Freeview. We get lots of channels for free that would be on pay TV in most other countries. Freeview claim that 90% of the most popular programming is available on Freeview.

But there are also lots of freetoview - e.g. UKPlay, iPlayer, ITVHub, All4, Five etc.. these only require a login to view both live and on-demand. I wonder if there would be another way of integration ? I know its not TVEverywhere, but would be good as a future build ?

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It shouldn't be built from scratch. You should do email campaign to Adobe - their servers are backend of whole TVE system.
IF there is no TVE in UK, channels DVR should be cheaper for UK customers because the only thing you need in fact is good HDHomeRun.

I am still waiting if Silicon Dust create such tuner for DVB-S.

Still Sky is not so small. It is available in Austria, Germany,Spain and Italy. For some reason SKY is missing two major countries in EU - France and Poland. If only they could unify their offering across the countries. The biggest issue is extortion on sport broadcast rights market I suppose.

Hi,

UK user here. I’d love to see some UK streams added to Channels app. E.g. currently there are not that many HD channels on DVB-T/Freeview in the UK, and you’re stuck with watching some channels like E4 and Film4 in SD via HDHomerun. Channel4 does have Live HD streams for those channels on their own app and I believe in the TVPlayer app as well. I wonder if those streams could be added to the Channels app in order to enrich what the app has to offer in the UK beyond the current Freeview limitations.

Any updates on this?

Does anyone know whether NOW TV especially the sky sports channels are DRM and whether it is possible to create a m3u list from them ?

This would be great. Is it possible?

We are not adding any more providers, but you could check out some of the community integrations instead.

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Americans does not know a thing about UK providers, that being said there is tvOS app called "What's on " that offers great integration with deep linking to live channels (and VOD to some extent) on BBC iPlayer, ITVX,Channel4, Channel5, UKTV NOW and Sky Go and even Discovery+
Also per my request channels Comet and Charge! was added. Developer is very friendly and eager to add more features. It also has HDHomeRun support for Freeview channels.

It does good job with searching across apps similar to what Sky Stream offers although Sky can playback content in its app (never tested Stream so I am not conclusive here).

That made me thinking about creating own set-op-box with own OS/android tv fork? based on Rpi? but that's story for another thread

At last check ITVX, Channel 4, My5, UKTV Play and SkyGo all have DRM on their live streams, so that's a non starter for direct stream playback like TV Everywhere uses. Also their streaming platforms have their own account system, it isn't like TV Everywhere in the USA where you use your cable/sat provider login for all the sites.

There is another player, prob drm too

What the problem with setting up account? it's free. I am testing the app and it properly redirect to streaming apps live stream with solely exception of UKTVPlay.

Also lot of news channels that you can play directly in the app. I am giving you solution and you whining. Only SkyGo and Now has DRM as they are encrypted channels.

Also you tend to forget DRM is easily or less easily to bypass, watching DRM streams is even supported in M3u8 standard. if you are able to watch something then you are able to decode and dvr.

You need to have broadband from EE to use this

Being free to air has nothing to do with whether a station has DRM protections on their web streams. I just checked ITVX, Channel 4, My5 and UKTV Play and they all have DRM protection on their live streams which requires you to use a player that supports one of the DRM methods like Widevine, PlayReady or FairPlay and can retrieve the certificate that the DRM library needs to decode the audio and video streams, which ChannelsDVR does not support.

So you have to use something like Chrome Capture if you want to integrate it into ChannelsDVR.

As for the account, in the USA nearly every network except PBS requires a pay TV login if you want to stream it live, that's where TVEverywhere comes in, to make sure the viewer subscribes to a package with the channel. It's the same in Canada where CBC is the only English broadcast network that doesn't require a pay TV login. The rest of the English broadcast networks like CTV, Global and City all require a payTV login if you want to livestream their actual channels, and in Canada pretty much everyone except CBC/Radio-Canada have DRM protections on their live streams.

In the UK the free to air networks have accounts so they can insert targetted ads, they don't use it to verify if you have a TV license. As long as the API doesn't require you to login to retrieve the stream URL, it is possible to do integration without requiring a login, but that's all a moot point when everything except BBC iPlayer and the shopping channels use DRM protection.

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Im using the docker container and channel 4, bbc, and ITV all work great with channels.

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Which docker container?
I am no longer able to get itv to play.

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Pretty sure it's @miibeez vlc-bridge-uk docker discussed over here