Xfinity Stream to catch missed episodes

#1

There are a couple Novelas I've recorded where I missed a number of the first episodes before beginning to record them with Channels. I have found that I can watch them with Xfinity Stream over one of our Rokus or with a web browser, but I'm not sure of the best way to get them to add to the series collection if I wish to preserve.

I'm pretty sure there's no way I can record those past episodes with Channels (please confirm), so I've captured some using Bandicam, which does okay but is a fairly hands-on process and is lossy as it is not simply saving the source stream.

Years ago I used to be able to get Olympics programming with a url and a manifest using ffmpeg, and when they started breaking everything up into fragments - using AdobeHDS.php. It was tedious work, but the resulting files were amazingly high quality at very efficient filesizes. The quality was far superior to anything I saw on high definition cable.

Perhaps Channels even uses some aspects of that technique to "record" a lot of its streamed programs also.

Anyway, I'm just hoping to be able to capture the stream that's being fed to the browser via Xfinity Stream as well. I've looked into trying something like DVDFab's DRM M3U8 Downloader (Safe M3U8 Downloader | Save M3U8 Video Streams), because I wonder if that also grabs the actual stream, or if is also just doing a type of screen capture.

Does anyone have a method of doing this that works best for them?

#2

You may be able to do it Channels DVR this way:

I don't do it myself but I believe that @Edwin_Perez does and may be able to advise you.

1 Like
#3

Start ready from here ... any problems I can help.

#4

You're best shot is StreamFab or Playon or OBS really. Using the HDMI/ah4c tool would work too yeah

#5

That looks really cool, but it doesn't occur to me how it could be used to record On Demand content such as I've been doing to capture the first episodes of a series that "aired" a while ago but is still available on Xfinity Stream.

#6

I use it to record HBO and Showtime ... I use Playon Cloud to Download any Episode I need much easier than trying to capture it. Requires no extra devices.... Just Channels DVR server.

I also have Primes with Cable cards so that makes it easier to record if it re-airs again.

#7

That makes sense. I've been meaning to give Playon Cloud a try but I didn't know how it would work for Xfinity Stream's On Demand content. Do you find that the quality is as good as if you had captured it yourself using something like OBS? I suppose it would be simpler in not having to guess the best framerate to capture in, as I've found many streams that are 25 fps, while others are 30 fps or other framerates.

#8

Unfortunately Playon Cloud has removed XFINITY. Peacock is Still there. I just buy Credits from Playon Cloud as I need them do not have a subscription.

#9

I can understand, as two-factor authentication can be bypassed for Xfinity's TVE, but I haven't found a way to do that for Xfinity Stream. I imagine that's a problem for a service like PlayOn.