xTeVe Shows ZERO (0) Available Channels

[MarcusJ 18]

I realize this is not an emby question per se, but this seems to be the only forum I can find that has the xteve expertise that I need.

I just migrated everything off an old Windows 10 PC onto a new Windows 11 machine, including Emby Server, xTeVe, and a new IPTV Service Provider. I had the same setup (albeit a different IPTV Service Provider) working fine on the old PC, but I been fighting this new setup for two days without any progress. My brain is fried and I'm out of ideas. Any xTeVe expertise is welcome!

After transferring Emby perfectly to the new machine using the Backup Configuration plugin, I thought the hard part was over. I attempted to go to the xteve.de website to download the latest Windows version of xteve. This where the bad luck started. When I entered the url for xteve, I got a wierd page popping up telling me that this domain was available to be purchased (see screenshot). Did xTeVe website close down?

Anyway, because of this, I had to rely on an older xteve.exe file I had copied from the old PC. Oddly, when I ran it, the xTeVe pop-up command line window ran and seemed to be loading all of the old settings from the setup on the old PC. While I thought it was strange, I figured it would not be too difficult to overcome that issue. Well, when I launched Chrome and opened a tab with the xTeVe web interface, it was indeed loaded with my old provider's m3u and xmltv links. I deleted them and replaced them with the new provider's m3u and xmltv credentials and successfully saved them. The xTeve header fields at the top of the screen showed over 413,000 streams, but 0 of them as available (see screen shot).

I then realized that I had old filters still in there and were possibly eliminating all of the channels. After battling for hours trying to even see the filters due to constant "Aw Snap!" pop-ups in Chrome saying I was out of memory, I found that the only way to see the filters was to first delete the playlist and xml entries and only then I could immediately get into the Filters screen. So, I went into the Filters screen and deleted all of the filters and clicked Save. I then re-added the m3u and xmltv links and thought that would fix everything. No change. 0 of the 413,000 channels were available.

I then looked at the Mapping secreen, and as expected, there were no channels shown at all.

I have tried uninstalling xteve (impossible since nothing ever gets installed), deleting every file on my PC with "xteve" in its name. Nothing helps. When I re-load it, the same 0/413,000 channels is there waiting on me.

Separately, I loaded NextPVR and input the new m3u and xmltv links and they immediately populated. I only did this to eliminate the possibility of one or both of those links were problematic. They were fine.

Somehow, I have managed to screw up a pretty straight forward process - and one that I was familiar with. As of now, I have a non-functional xteve setup. If possible, I'd like to flush it and start over, but I don't know how. Otherwise, I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on repairing it.

Thanks in advance!

[EODCrafter 179]

That's correct. He let the website go and we solely use github now to "Host" everything. Find it all here

[EODCrafter 179]

Here is support for xTeVe https://discord.gg/KD2jy5V

[MarcusJ 18]

7 hours ago, EODCrafter said:

That's correct. He let the website go and we solely use github now to "Host" everything. Find it all here

Thanks for the response about the website.

Admittedly, I'm not a developer, but that github link does not serve the needs of normal users. I looked for 30+ minutes to find a simple "xteve for 64-bit Windows Download" button. There either is no such button or it has been so cleverly hidden as to only be accessible by the select few insiders with privileged or specialized knowledge. If it's that difficult to find, it is worthless to 99% of the public IMHO.

Independent of that, I did manage to find a workaround for anyone else out there that may be frustrated with xteve's peculiarities...

GOTCHA #1:

It seems xteve presumes all users are Plex users, therefore enforces a default rule that only 480 channels or less can be made available, (as that is the ridiculously low channel streams limit set by Plex). If your m3u playlist has more than 480 channels (mine had over 400,000!), then xteve will show NONE or zero (0) of them as available. To get around that, you must add a filter on the xteve "Filters" screen. So, you must open the "Filters" screen to add at least 1 filter. Simple enough, right?...

GOTCHA #2:

If you have an m3u playlist from a modern IPTV service provider, it will likely have tens of thousands of channels, if not hundreds of thousands. Reducing that enormous number of channels/streams down to a reasonable number of interesting channels is usually the primary reason people want to use xteve in the first place. Well, because the playlist is so large, the "Filters" screen will not open. It times out and pops up the dreaded Chrome "Ah snap!" error screen indicating there is not enough memory to perform the selected action.

Now, don't bother increasing the browser cache size - I did that all the way up to 2GB, and the results were exactly the same. It's a waste of time unless you just love playing with Chrome settings. I was at the end of this Chrome cache size increase process (with no improvement) when I originally opened this ticket.

The Work-Around:

Only by a long and painstaking process of trial and error, I discovered that by deleting the m3u playlist in xteve, you are immediately able to open the "Filters" screen. Woo-Hoo! Note: You do not need to remove the xmltv list in xteve as it doesn't seem to affect the Filters screen. So I did this, and then added a simple "Custom" filter that would find all the streams that included the word "Sport" in their name. Then I closed the Filters screen. I went back to the Playlist screen and once again added my m3u playlist and pressed Save. It worked! xteve found all of the Sports channels that were in my m3u playlist and showed them all as available.

So to get this same process to work to get all of the channels I wanted, I again had to delete the m3u playlist from xteve, open the Filters screen, modify the Custom filter to include all of the channel types I wanted (in my case it was US, CA, UK, Sport). This means that if xteve finds any of these words in the name of the channel stream, it will now include it in the list of available channels. After completing this expansion of the filter, I went back and once again re-added the m3u playlist into xteve. Viola!

You may have to repeat this seemingly silly process several times to get the filter(s) correct for your needs, but until someone finds and shares a more efficient solution, this one will work and chop that huge list of channels into something waasay more useful, and allow you to pass this smaller playlist on to Emby.

Hope this helps someone. 

Good luck.

Edited August 18, 2022 by MarcusJ

[EODCrafter 179]

https://github.com/xteve-project/xTeVe-Downloads/blob/master/xteve_windows_amd64.zip?raw=true

[EODCrafter 179]

Took 3 1/2 seconds, Please read!

[MarcusJ 18]

Congratulations!