IPTV playback stable with Threadfin and hls-proxy

[d00zah 143]

12 hours ago, bruor said:

What is TV Next? 

Some 'light' reading.

 

[CharlesF 24]

On 1/6/2025 at 9:22 PM, Carlo said:

None of these proxy fixes will be needed in TV Next.

In looking through forums, TVNext was first teased four years ago, and based on my research, Emby has not followed through on it.

[d00zah 143]

6 minutes ago, CharlesF said:

In looking through forums, TVNext was first teased four years ago, and based on my research, Emby has not followed through on it.

... , yet. Much discussed & slated for the 5.x release cycle? It HAS been a long wait.

[horstepipe 375]

Hello fellows,
does any of the solutions described here help with the old issue that Emby does not release the streams in some situations?

I am running in to that from time to time. The only thing that helps is restarting the whole Emby server, which means an interruption for all users.

Best regards

[bruor 37]

The proxy seems make emby less likely to hang up on channels.  I think this is because it hides all the provider side redirects/errors/failures. 

[horstepipe 375]

Worth to mention that I already use threadfin but still have that issue. 
So you say it is worth a try putting also hls proxy in between?

[Kimballslice1890 8]

If the streams are HLS, putting HLS proxy between your provider and threadfin / xteve has proven to be the most stable imo. You can configure HLS proxy to drop the steam after errors or after X time if there's no chunk requests. 

 

Just use threadfin as a channel epg manager that passes through directly to HLS proxy.

 

I haven't figured out how to (if it's possible) to enable HLS proxy ffmpeg to take in other streaming formats to convert to HLS. It just fails.

 

Streammaster project was killed. But there's a new one called dispatcharr which looks similar and looks like it gives you the ability to kill streams. Haven't had any time to dive into it yet. 

[CharlesF 24]

So just to add here, I have tried HLS Proxy, StreamMaster and the other day I tried Dispatcharr.  My server is on a DS423+.  I found that both HLS and StreamMaster work well, although the StreamMaster interface is slow and buggy, while Dispatcharr, which worked, did not work nearly as well in terms of channel loading times.   Some basic observations

 

1. HLS Proxy - works well, fastest channel loading times.  However if you use an IPTV service that doesn't allow channel selection, you need to use an m3u editor to pare down the list of channels (m3u4u.com for example).  This means exposing your IPTV credentials to a third party (or you can use IPTV Boss, which personally I do not like bc the interface IMO is tedious and complicated).

2. StreamMaster - combines functionality of HLS plus a m3u editor, however the GUI is very buggy/laggy.  Streams don't seem to load as quickly as HLS but works fine

3. Dispatcharr - I was pretty hopeful this would be better than StreamMaster, and in terms of the GUI, it is better than StreamMaster, although it takes forever for the m3u channel list to load, but once loaded the UI is nice.  That said, channel loading in Emby was significantly longer than either HLS or StreamMaster.  For the record, even within Dispatcharr, when clicking the channel preview, it took a while to load.

My hope is that either a) Emby releases the long awaited LiveTV update (not holding my breath), or Dispatcharr continues to improve and loading times quicken. 

[Apotropaic 35]

On 09/05/2025 at 11:46, CharlesF said:

1. HLS Proxy - works well, fastest channel loading times.  However if you use an IPTV service that doesn't allow channel selection, you need to use an m3u editor to pare down the list of channels (m3u4u.com for example).  This means exposing your IPTV credentials to a third party (or you can use IPTV Boss, which personally I do not like bc the interface IMO is tedious and complicated).

Good information there, I've only just started looking at HLS Proxy and ThreadFin so it's very useful to know how well the others work.

But in response to your m3u editor issues, there is a free plugin on emby 'M3U to STRM' that will download your m3u file either from the internet or a local file, manipulate it by either including/excluding group titles/channel names and then spit out new m3u files to disk, which you could import into another app (or emby itself). The plugin can be run on a schedule to do this automatically. There's a lot of options and flexibility but once you get your initial config sorted it will just run in the background and no need to manually manipulate anything or share your info with anyone.

[bruor 37]

I thought that tool was for ripping vod content out of an M3U and writing it to .strm text files on disk so they can be indexed. I ended up writing my own tool for that though because my provider includes the imdb IDs and I wanted to add those to the folder names, and delete anything from disk that the provider removes. 

Edited May 10 by bruor

[Apotropaic 35]

17 minutes ago, bruor said:

I thought that tool was for ripping vod content out of an M3U and writing it to .strm text files on disk so they can be indexed. I ended up writing my own tool for that though because my provider includes the imdb IDs and I wanted to add those to the folder names, and delete anything from disk that the provider removes. 

It does both, so it can create .strm files for both vod (and live if you want that) but it can also pump out a new m3u without the vod (and for completeness create a separate m3u for just vod content). I've used it in a number of different workflows trying to find what works best for me.

There have been others in the forums talking imdb ID's in the filenames, but it's not something I've tested.

[bruor 37]

I use that and also write the media info into txt files in the library so if I need to rebuild the library for any reason it goes quickly

[CharlesF 24]

22 hours ago, jaspalgill said:

Good information there, I've only just started looking at HLS Proxy and ThreadFin so it's very useful to know how well the others work.

But in response to your m3u editor issues, there is a free plugin on emby 'M3U to STRM' that will download your m3u file either from the internet or a local file, manipulate it by either including/excluding group titles/channel names and then spit out new m3u files to disk, which you could import into another app (or emby itself). The plugin can be run on a schedule to do this automatically. There's a lot of options and flexibility but once you get your initial config sorted it will just run in the background and no need to manually manipulate anything or share your info with anyone.

Where does one get this plugin?  I don't see it in the plugin list in the emby settings?

[Apotropaic 35]

2 hours ago, CharlesF said:

Where does one get this plugin?  I don't see it in the plugin list in the emby settings?

It's not in the emby catalogue but if you go to the Plugin Forum you can find the authors @mickle026post there.

You'll need to download the .dll file (I'd probably go for the latest build which you'll need to look at the last few posts for) and place it in the plugins folder of your emby installation and then restart emby. There's a lot of settings but it's intuitive once you've run it a few times. I would recommend creating a smaller test m3u file so you can run it a few times with the different settings, there's a lot of ways to include/exclude/rename depending on what you want.

[Apotropaic 35]

On 04/05/2025 at 12:41, Kimballslice1890 said:

I haven't figured out how to (if it's possible) to enable HLS proxy ffmpeg to take in other streaming formats to convert to HLS. It just fails.

 

Hi @Kimballslice1890did you get any where with this?

I've got it working for most content I've come across, so far only HEVC/H.265 is giving me issues but this may be down to my limited CPU grunt. Thankfully I don't come across it much.

[darrenkdean 30]

Hopping on this thread.  Have been experimenting with various Live TV proxies/platforms & Emby over the past 90 days.  Goals:

• Now that Net Neutrality has been struck down in the US, only a matter of time before IPTV becomes an issue if not already.
• Simple solution, is to pass IPTV streams thru a VPN connection that rotates servers periodically.  Gluetun container does this.
• Since Emby does not natively, at least that I can tell, give me the ability to isolate & pull IPTV streams thru Gluetun without redirecting all traffic thru Gluetun, will need an IPTV Proxy.

• Of the various iterations I have experimented with, Thread Fin, coupled with IPTVEditor.com to clean up the m3u lists, EPG mapping, & channel icons, seems to be the best solution & can easily integrate with Gluetun.

 

• Challenge: Getting a weird hangup, where Threadfin is showing 5 Client Connections, but when I look at the Emby Server Dashboard, only 2 Live TV streams are playing.  The trouble is, on occasion, we will go to play a channel, & Emby will just spin with a black screen.  The way to correct this, is to restart the Emby Server, in which case it will release the unused tuners, that Emby believes are still in use.

Solution: It would appear, that some sort of heartbeat test is needed, between the Emby Server, connected clients, & Threadfin, to determine if remote Emby clients are still calling for the Live TV stream.

 

Anything I am missing here?  Any configurations or workarounds that are known?

Edited May 27 by darrenkdean

[bruor 37]

IME, threadfin as a stream buffer doesn't work well, it's okay for channel management but if the provider adds channels regularly for PPV etc those stations will never populate automatically.  

I believe I've seen the black screen issue and had to not limit the number of tuners in emby, I had to limit it in threadfin, but then I used to get odd stream connection errors from the provider through threadfin and had to put hls-proxy in front of it for my provider. 

I've been testing dispatcharr which works really well as a buffer, it is great at reconnecting streams when they have issues and keeping the client from dropping out when a provider glitch happens, I had one channel freeze for two minutes and resume which has never been possible before.  

If I was in your shoes I'd get a VPS in Canada, use it to run your proxy where connections to your provider will originate.  Use tailscale to connect your emby server to your VPS so it can pull down the streams over a secure tunnel. 

[darrenkdean 30]

10 hours ago, bruor said:

IME, threadfin as a stream buffer doesn't work well, it's okay for channel management but if the provider adds channels regularly for PPV etc those stations will never populate automatically.  

I believe I've seen the black screen issue and had to not limit the number of tuners in emby, I had to limit it in threadfin, but then I used to get odd stream connection errors from the provider through threadfin and had to put hls-proxy in front of it for my provider. 

I've been testing dispatcharr which works really well as a buffer, it is great at reconnecting streams when they have issues and keeping the client from dropping out when a provider glitch happens, I had one channel freeze for two minutes and resume which has never been possible before.  

If I was in your shoes I'd get a VPS in Canada, use it to run your proxy where connections to your provider will originate.  Use tailscale to connect your emby server to your VPS so it can pull down the streams over a secure tunnel. 

Threadfin has a feature, that replaces the EPG data with URL stream name, which fixes the PPV issue.  I have it updating 4 times per day & as best I can tell, it's working, unless there's something additional you've found here that I am missing.  I have Threadfin working thru a Gluetun http proxy & it appears to be pulling thru the VPN tunnel correctly.

I started testing with dispatcharr, but found the database to be non persistent.  ie: When the container was stopped & restarted, the m3u & data was lost.  I may look at it again.

[bruor 37]

In threadfin I remember having to go in and manually touch each channel that was new (bulk edit was broken) that it had found so that it would be published. I don't remember exactly why, it's been over a year since I used it last. 

I just upgraded my container to the latest image last week and can confirm that it stores data properly across restarts.  However, it does depend on docker volumes for the DB which blocks it from running on my NAS

[darrenkdean 30]

On 5/28/2025 at 8:08 AM, bruor said:

In threadfin I remember having to go in and manually touch each channel that was new (bulk edit was broken) that it had found so that it would be published. I don't remember exactly why, it's been over a year since I used it last. 

I just upgraded my container to the latest image last week and can confirm that it stores data properly across restarts.  However, it does depend on docker volumes for the DB which blocks it from running on my NAS

Just installed HLS proxy to configure between the IPTV editor & Threadfin.  Looks like quite the learning curve.

 

How is Dispatcharr working for you?  Is Emby also holding on to streams no longer being called for, like it does with Threadfin?

 

About to pull my hair out trying to solve this.

[bruor 37]

Dispatcharr is working well.  One thing I just noticed is that my provider sends an error mp4 file instead of valid HLS to the client when they have issues on their end, hls-proxy wouldn't choke on this and emby would throw an error, dispatcharr passes this video through to emby since it's changing everything to mpeg-ts and the clients can see the error now. 

In hls-proxy channel management wasn't really a thing, super easy in dispatcharr, it even has a field to hold the gracenote ID for a station and I'm hoping Emby will support the tag in the m3u in the future for matching guide data.  Until then I made a little proxy in golang to edit the M3U when requested so that Emby can auto map guide data. 

I don't think I'd notice the stuck tuner issue because I don't have any tuner limits configured in emby, and the stuck tuners seem very much like an internal thing as I could never see them on the status page. I've noticed some cases where emby seems to drop the IPTV stream from the proxy prematurely, but this could be problematic feeds from the provider as well.  In the case where this happened it seemed like dispatcharr was hung up trying to get more HLS chunks and couldn't.

[Apotropaic 35]

19 hours ago, darrenkdean said:

Just installed HLS proxy to configure between the IPTV editor & Threadfin.  Looks like quite the learning curve.

 

How is Dispatcharr working for you?  Is Emby also holding on to streams no longer being called for, like it does with Threadfin?

 

About to pull my hair out trying to solve this.

Hi, have you got HLS Proxy working in any capacity?

Apologies if I’m teaching you stuff you already know but HLS proxy needs your playlist, and the playlist it produces needs to go into emby/threadfin or whichever way you want it.

Either way Emby needs the playlist that HLS Proxy has manipulated to change the stream paths (to your HLS Proxy instance).

The other common issue I see is getting the ffmpeg stuff sorted so it can be convert mpeg/ts streams to HLS.

In my testing I rarely ever get a stuck stream anymore on emby. It has moved to the HLS Proxy but luckily that has a configurable timeout so it hangs up if no client chunk requests come in.

I do like dispatchaar but I’m struggling to work out how to deal with VOD so I’m still trying to figure that out. With HLS Proxy it’s really simple.

[bruor 37]

I really hope dispatcharr does something super cool for VOD. 

I wrote a script to rip vod out of the M3U to .strm files on disk so emby indexes them like everything else.  I did see someone on the dispatcharr forums discussing how to set up M3U2strm for vod, might be worth a search to see if it works for your provider.

[darrenkdean 30]

I have HLS proxy stood up inside of a docker host on a prox mox server.

 

Thinking thru how to configure it.  Currently, I have 2x separate IPTV providers that I import into iptveditor.com.  This is where I clean up the channels, unify categories, bring in color channel logos, & match up EPG data.  I have (alt) channels for all the major networks, as a back up, in my Live TV setup.

 

After that, I import these two providers into Threadfin for channel assignment.  I have 2x separate Threadfin dockers running, one for each provider.  On one of the Threadfin instances, I pull in that provider 2 times.  One from IPTVeditor & once directly from the provider.  The direct feed from the provider is only for live streaming sporting events like ESPN+ where TF has a solution & then I limit the TF tuners to 5 to prevent oversubscribing it.

I don't use any of the VOD TV/Movies so that is not an issue I need to solve.

I think it might take me an eternity to manually assign color channel logos, match up epg data, etc. outside of IPTVeditor.

 

Any suggestions, lol?

[Apotropaic 35]

11 hours ago, bruor said:

I really hope dispatcharr does something super cool for VOD. 

I wrote a script to rip vod out of the M3U to .strm files on disk so emby indexes them like everything else.  I did see someone on the dispatcharr forums discussing how to set up M3U2strm for vod, might be worth a search to see if it works for your provider.

I have my fingers crossed for that too. I have a current working solution using a separate HLS Proxy instance, I extract the strms from the playlist directly inside emby through a plugin.

It would be good if Dispatcharr could identify the VOD content and split it into a separate playlist. I did try and just enable VOD as a channel which works but scaling it up to hundreds of thousands of entries just killed it

@darrenkdean- are you seeing streams appear in the Status screen of HLS Proxy, or is this the issue that you aren't seeing them?

There's no reason why you can't continue to use IPTVeditor to curate the playlist, pump it into HLS Proxy (you can have multiple instances of this), pump the output of that into Threadfin for any other channel manipulation you need to do, turn off the Threadfin proxying/buffer setting, feed that into emby. Within HLS proxy you'll be able to view all the active streams and limit them there.

What I don't know is what HLS Proxy will do to your playlist customisations out of IPTVeditor, as in will it keep your tv logo info and channel numbers intact. Channel names and group-titles should remain fine.

Edited June 4 by Apotropaic