xTeVe - M3U Playlists Cannot Be Pooled for Shared Use in Emby

[MarcusJ 18]

I'm new to Emby Live TV and am still learning. I started with a simple goal of getting Live TV setup in Emby that allowed up to 5 devices watching or recording shows simultaneously. I thought I was doing something pretty standard, but it hasn't turned out that way. I need help from someone with much deeper experience with xTeVe and Emby Live TV.

I researched and then purchased 5 devices to support 5 simultaneous users from my IPTV provider. I expected that provider to give me a single m3u url and xmltv url which would support 5 devices simultaneously. Instead, the provider gave me 5 separate m3u and xmltv links. Each m3u serves as 1 tuner/device. Please understand, these 5 playlists are identical in content (each one has the exact same channels). I hope this makes sense. Logically, they were provided as follows:

WHAT I WAS PROVIDED FROM MY IPTV SERVICE:

m3u #1   xmltv #1   No. of tuners/devices/connections/simultaneous users=1

m3u #2   xmltv #2   No. of tuners/devices/connections/simultaneous users=1

m3u #3   xmltv #3   No. of tuners/devices/connections/simultaneous users=1

m3u #4   xmltv #4   No. of tuners/devices/connections/simultaneous users=1

m3u #5   xmltv #5   No. of tuners/devices/connections/simultaneous users=1

WHAT I WANTED/EXPECTED:

m3u #1   xmltv #1   No. of tuners/devices/connections/simultaneous users=5

WHAT I HAVE TRIED:

Next, I installed xTeVe and used it as a tool to filter the 320,000+ channels down to about 1,600. To do this, I initially only added one m3u Playlist (m3u #1) and 1 XMLTV (XMLTV #1) into xTeVe. (See attached screenshot).

 

After creating a long list of xTeVe Filters, I was able to successfully reduce the channel list to about 1,600. I then "Updated" the xTeVe Playlist and the xTeve xmltv.

Next, I opened the Emby Live TV section on the dashboard and in the "Add TV Source" section, I added the url for the xTeVe proxy m3u playlist.

Then, while still in the Emby Live TV section, I opened the "Add Guide Data Source" and added the url of the xTeVe proxy xmltv file. At the bottom of that screen, I checked the "Enable for all tuner devices" button, then "Save". I think after adding this url for XMLTV #1, Emby automatically started a "Refresh Guide".

Next, I went into Emby's "Scheduled Tasks" and ran "Refresh Internet Channels". Then,  I ran "Refresh Guide" again.

The Guide Refresh took about an hour to complete, but afterward everything seemed to work! I could now watch Live TV through Emby!

THE PROBLEM:

Because I only input one of the five m3u links and one of the xmltv links into xTeVe, the resulting xTeVe proxy m3u and xepg url's only support 1 tuner/device/connection/simultaneous users. Therefore, when I tried to record a show while also watching a different show, the recording failed - showing only a black screen with a large "No more xTeVe streams available" available (see attached). 

I then went back into xTeVe and added the other four m3u playlists (m3u #2 thru m3u #5). This process was extremely slow and devoured my PC's RAM (90+% utilization).

After painstakingly adding the additional four m3u playlists to xTeVe, I went into xTeVe's "Settings" and increased the number of tuners to 5 (see attached) and saved the settings.

After doing this, I went into the xTeVe "Mapping" section which showed that I now had over 5,000 channels. I expected this to increase from the 1,600 because it added the same (duplicated) filtered channels from each of the newly added playlists. Soooo....I went thru all 5,000 channels and using "Bulk Edit" I de-activated all of the duplicates, reducing the number of active channels back to the roughly 1,600 channels I wanted. I saved these changes and once again "updated" the xTeVe proxy m3u and xmltv files.

I then went into the Emby Live TV setup and (per the instructions given by xTeVe) deleted the existing xTeVe m3u playlist and the existing xTeVe xepg (xmltv) url entries that I had been using in Emby. I then went to Emby Scheduled Tasks and updated the Internet channels and performed a "Refresh Guide". This cleared out all remnants of IPTV channels in Emby.

I then shut Emby down and re-booted the PC. When it rebooted, xTeVe was automatically launched (as expected), which opens a DOS Command Prompt window. That xTeVe process took nearly 45 minutes to complete and again, tied up 90+% of my system's RAM. Ultimately it did complete, but still continued tying up 75%+ of my system's RAM even after it completed. Really?!?!

Finally, I thought the deck was finally cleared to re-start Emby Live TV using the new xTeVe urls that included the "consolidated" xTeVe proxy playlist with all 5 of my original m3u playlists. I went into Emby Live TV setup and added the new xTeVe m3u url and the new xTeVe xmltv url. After adding these url's to Emby Live TV, Emby immediately started a Guide Refresh (as expected).

This took a few hours to complete (not unexpected given how little RAM was available on my system after xTeVe devoured so much of it). I REALLY thought that I had done EVERYTHING possible to ensure everything worked and that we would now finally have the ability to use the 5 tuners/devices/connections/simultaneous users that I had purchased. But au contraire mon frère, as always seems to be the case in my technology life, it failed. The 1,600+ channels all showed up correctly, but just as before, only one tuner/device/connection/simultaneous user could be used at a time. When attempting to watch or record a second channel on the same TV or a second TV, I got the same black "No more xTeVe streams available" screen as before. ALL OF THIS WORK RESULTED IN NO IMPROVEMENTS to the original problem.

IN CONCLUSION:

I thought I was purchasing 5 tuners/devices/connections/simultaneous users, but because I apparently don't know how to correctly set up all 5 of them in xTeVe and/or Emby, I continue to be limited to only 1 device/connection/simultaneous user. Obviously, this IPTV Service Provider simply expects its subscribers to run a single instance of an IPTV viewer app on each TV, with each TV them using one of the m3u/xmltv pairs that they provided to me. This method of provisioning their service appears in my simple mind to be completely incompatible with a shared/pooled approach as offered by Emby or promised by xTeVe. I hope I am wrong.

I am frustrated and exhausted with this process. Can ANYONE help me out?

 

Edited July 30, 2022 by MarcusJ

[Spaceboy 2493]

yeah - what you want (what we all want) is the as yet unimplemented functionality that was developed by emby as part of the live tv beta. however i think its been almost 2 years now and only small amounts of that are being implemented very slowly. this allowed native pooling of all tuner types within emby

in the meantime you might want to look at something like nextpvr. not sure but it might allow you to pool the m3u's as you are trying to do.

otherwise you want a better/different iptv provider that will give you the X users you want on one subscription. they do exist

[mark-in-dallas 86]

In 7 or 8 years of using IPTV services and probably going through a dozen or more providers, I've never seen any that issue separate M3U  links for each connection.

[MarcusJ 18]

Thank you both for your replies. It's just my luck I'd pick the only IPTV provider dumb enough to do it this way.