I really need a way to deal with duplicates within my live TV guide.

[Nostradamus1973 23]

Hello everyone,

I desperately need some help pertaining to the Live TV guide/channels of Emby Server.

Currently I have an IPTV service that offers 6 lines(aka connections) as a maximum, I need double that; unfortunately all the vendors I've been shopping at have a maximum of 6 connections and that's a HUGE problem for me because I need more due to a large family and lots of DVR needs for my family.

So, here's my question: Is there a way to combine the 2 services without getting duplicates? OR, is there a way to set up 2 live TV services separately where I can assign users to each of the 2 different services? I do have IPTVeditor and doing odd/even channels(or any other TV guide Kung Fu necessary) is tantamount to having a deep desire for the funny farm when one is dealing with 500+ channels.

That being said, I'm well aware that there are ways to get 10+ lines from certain providers i.e. restreaming or paying 5-10 times what I'm currently paying for my current line/connection fees, however, that's not an option for me.

I'm not sure if there's a way to handle this problem I'm having or not, if there truly isn't, maybe this should be moved to the Feature Request section because after many months of looking for vendors and explaining my situation, many of them are telling me Emby can't handle something like this because they've been poised many times with this same question from Emby users in the past and none of the said vendors had a solution.

Thank you

Edited November 22, 2021 by Nostradamus1973
Grammatical errors and sentence structure colloquialisms

[Luke 40111]

HI, you probably won't get duplicates, but if you do, you can use the emby server channel management screen to uncheck the channels you don't want and they'll be removed.

Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[Carlo 4552]

I can think of a much easier way to do this.  Create a little script/program if you can do this that will read the m3u file and add a group like TVGroup1 to one file and TVGroup2 to the other m3u file.  Even if you can't script you can likely do this with a search and replace with the right regex search command.

Worst case is you do this manually to one file and save it then do a search/replace in the 2nd file.

Now when Emby Server loads both m3u files back in the groups will become tags in Emby which will be quite handy for your purpose.  You can now go into permissions for each user, then to the parental controls tab and do this:

So have the users you block from TVGroup1 and half you block from TVGroup2.
The users won't see the two sets of channels but one set.

So works great for user control but you will need to watch this starting out if you DVR a lot to see which set of channels the DVR is using (likely 1st m3u) and balance users based on that otherwise that group will run out of usable channels quicker.

The DVR itself likely won't care because it will use any available channel from any "tuner".
You could always pickup a 3rd subscription if needed but reserve it for DVR and yourself and call that one the "house tuner".

This may be a slight bit of work but will work.

[Carlo 4552]

We just released a small update that makes this much easier to implement.

We have pushed out a change to M3U functionality that can be very helpful and used by admins in a few different ways.

When setting up or editing an M3U tuner, you will see a new option to use.  "Auto-add tags to channels" shown above.
This will do exactly what it sounds like. Every channel loaded from the M3U source will be tagged with the entry you set in the config.
Each M3U source can have a different tag associated with the channels from that source.

USEFUL USES

Many IPTV providers limit the number of simultaneous streams in their service. If you need additional streams, you could purchase another plan adding a 2nd m3u tuner to your system, you end up with an unmanaged set of channels, having duplicate channel entries of every channel. Not only does it make using LiveTV harder to maneuver with double the data, it looks far less clean and becomes confusing to users.

With the new auto-tagging functionality, you can set a tag like IPTV1 and IPTV2 to each tuner.  Every channel will now be tagged according to what tuner it's associated with. With the help of Emby's Parental Controls you can add a tag assigned to a tuner's channels in parental control in the section that blocks items with these tags.

Setting Up Tags for TV Users

• Split Users: Set up half your TV users with one tag and the other half with another tag. Each group shares one tuner and only sees one set of channels.

• Multiple Subscriptions: Use 3, 4, or more IPTV subscriptions to spread the number of tuners/streams across your users.

Tagging for Different Uses

• Split Subscriptions: Have one IPTV subscription split among your users while keeping a second subscription for your use. This way, you can provide LiveTV and recording abilities to users, while reserving a subscription for your own private use.

• Curate Channels: If your m3u file doesn’t use grouping, move multiple channels at once to category-based m3u files (e.g., sports.m3u, news.m3u, kids.m3u, premium.m3u, network.m3u, local.m3u). Set these up in Emby LiveTV with each file having a tag to match the content.

• Multiple m3u Files: If you have multiple IPTV m3u files from different sources, tagging helps you know what source a channel is from by looking at the channel's tag.

These are just a few of the creative ways this new functionality could be used.

If you don't see the new tag option when adding or editing an M3U tuner, it may not have updated on your system yet. You can manually upgrade this easily by upgrading the M3UTUNER plugin to 1.0.32 or later in the Plugin Catalog.