tdiguy 96 Posted October 3, 2020 Share Posted October 3, 2020 Is there a listing of ip tv providers that are tested and known to work well with emby? Also curious, if i switch to a iptv provider can i still record from those "channels" like i do from my hdhr tuner within emby? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mlcarson 13 Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 Almost every IPTV provider that is legal is using their own proprietary delivery mechanism that won't work with Emby. The closest you can probably get to legal is Locast and that requires another piece of software for it to get into emby. If it plays live in Emby, you can record it with Emby. You can take it to extremes and use IP Video encoders that take HDMI as an input and record that via Emby. If you're concerned about the legality then don't use IPTV services. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdiguy 96 Posted October 4, 2020 Author Share Posted October 4, 2020 Interesting, i could swear there was a service similar to lowcast a few years ago that got shut down. Lowcast is also free from what it looks like. Might switch to this if my wife realizes how little tv she actually watches, now days its mostly youtube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 I think you might be referring to Aereo TV that was based out of NY city who got shut down. Locast is a bit different (in theory) and so far has dodged law suits (been a few). They recently switched to what I'd call a forced donation model of $5/month to not get their "advertisements" and 15 minute "time outs". Sounds like a subscription plan in every way to me. So in order to use Locast you need to cough up a $5/month "donation" or it frankly doesn't work and stops which will drive you nuts. SiliconDust (maker of the HDHomeRun tuners) had a service that is now defunct. It was designed so you had to have one of their ATSC tuners and could receive your normal OTA channels PLUS with a subscription pull down national network channels. To any software these streams (mostly) looked like other HDHomeRun channels. They never really got the quality correct and were battling issues technical issues (ie interlaced and compression artifacts) but ended up having to shut the service down as the company they purchased from wasn't authorized to sell to them. It was around $35 for 45 channels or so. Here's a read: https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/hdhomerun-cancels-live-tv-streaming-sevice-premium-tv/ There is another service commonly known as TV Everywhere or TVE for short. TVE is a legal service ran by networks and providers jointly. In order to access TVE you need to have an authorized account with a cable provider and you only get channels that are part of your plan so you're paying for this service on your cable bill. You generally do not get local channels but the national channels (CNN, FoxNews, Hallmark, NBA, NFL, ESPNs, etc). The advantage to this is that streams are pulled from the broadcast network sites and you do not need a hardware tuner. There is not a limit that I know of of how many streams you can use at one time (I've had more than a dozen in use). You do not get all station in your cable package and will not get DRMed channels. I'm on Comcast/Xfinity and via my Comcast login get around 150 channels plus some fluff channels not used. These days with "triple play plans" it's difficult to get residential Internet without a cable bundle so you likely have access to TVE if you are a US cable customer. A combination of Locast and TVE will likely get you 175 to 200 channels assuming you're in a market that Locast covers (about 43% of the population right now). In order to easily get the Locast and TVE channels via an M3U file to use in Emby will require another piece of software and it has a monthly charge of around $8 (handles all Locast and TVE integration). But for $8+5=$13 and your cable authorized login you get a lot of channels and the quality is very good. This could be a very good way to try Emby Live TV as you don't need to purchase hardware based tuners and can easily record 4 local channels from Locast as well as many network stations (I don't know the upper limit if there is one). Kind of like an unlimited tuner. Also since these streams are authorized by your cable company they shouldn't pose any problems for you to use as they are part of the service you're paying for and are LEGAL streams. The thing to worry about however with any type of IPTV or streaming setup is the bandwidth you use if you have an ISP imposed cap on usage. Light to moderate usage likely isn't going to be a problem but it's not the best method for heavy use and will never replace dedicated HW based OTA & Cable tuners. To me this is an ideal "backup" service or 2nd/3rd tuner. If you have an OTA and/or cable tuner it's a great way to get a couple extra Live TV or DVR recordings without purchasing additional tuners. Since it's all software based it also works great on a portable Emby system as well. I use this on my notebook. I can take several hundred media files in Movies and TV Shows libraries with me, but if I want to watch Live TV I can as well without the need for HW tuners which is great on a portable system. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdiguy 96 Posted October 4, 2020 Author Share Posted October 4, 2020 I currently have a setup with a hdhr prime and such. Tons of programming almost all of which is not used. Primarily i like to have the option to watch local news, though i almost never watch it. My kids aren't really into tv and my wife almost never uses it. I keep hoping that she realizes this because cable makes up a huge part of our bill. If that happens i might get away with switching to lowcast or maybe even a good outdoor antenea and a hdhr tuner, but i live in a bit of a valley so tv reception has always been terrible. To me going to something like lowcast or a iptv provider wont be the primary source of entertainment, its more a nice thing to still have. But it seems like most providers want things locked down to their proprietary system, which is really what i want to avoid. I moved away from dish network because i got tired of their crap with recordings. I would have channel package "a" for years record shows from it and such and then they changed the pricing and i would go to package "b" and then all the recordings i had on their dvr would not play. After my ticket being in their queue for a week they got back to me and told me it was a new function of their system i could only watch recordings that were from channels i currently was subscribed to. This even happened to a few shows that moved networks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 That kind of DVR trickery is low. Once you've recorded it from a tier you paid for it should be yours. Have you thought of dropping your cable to the lowest or entry tier for TV? That should come with only the local channels. You might find you can't even do this or your Internet costs go up since you're not in a double/triple play plan anymore. Every region/provider is different but it wouldn't hurt to call and ask to see what you could save per month. All you would need is the Cable Card and none of their equipment so probably no hardware charges or taxes on it plus saving on the plan. You could also try removing the CC and see if you can get clear qam signals off the cable for locals and then you wouldn't need any cable TV service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdiguy 96 Posted October 4, 2020 Author Share Posted October 4, 2020 (edited) I currently use a cable card and thankfully they do not charge for that. Unfortunately clear qam is not an option. My provider encrypts all their signals now. So anyone connected to their service has to either use a cable card or a box from them of some sort. Recently the FCC dropped the mandate for supporting cable cards also, so i wonder when cable companies will drop that also since it would mean more people reliant on a cable box / rental. The local cable company is comcast around here and i am sure if i drop my tv package down that they will increase my internet cost. Sadly there is no real competition where i live, its either comcast or dsl, and i dont think dsl should be allowed to say they are high speed internet. Edited October 4, 2020 by tdiguy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark-in-dallas 86 Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 (edited) I had DirecTV for years and years, then after AT&T, no scratch that, they are just a baby Bell that weaseled their way into buying the name but will never be AT&T to me. Anyway, after they bought DirecTV and their service went to crap I cancelled it and went with an outside antenna and TIVO. I only watched a couple of channels that I couldn't get OTA anyway. But, I did add an IPTV service, because their were channels like TBS, TNT, USA and FX that I did occasionally watch. I stuck with that setup for about a year and a half. Then when I found I could setup locast as a tuner in Emby and add a comskip script I ditched Tivo too. I was really getting fed up with the crap they started pulling anyway, like shoving Tivo + down our throats and repeatedly adding their own commercials to the beginning of my recordings. Between Emby, locast, IPTV and xTeVe I spend less than $25 a month and get everything I could possibly want and none of the garbage that I don't. Edited October 4, 2020 by mark-in-dallas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdiguy 96 Posted October 4, 2020 Author Share Posted October 4, 2020 43 minutes ago, mark-in-dallas said: Between Emby, locast, IPTV and xTeVe I spend less than $25 a month and get everything I could possibly want and none of the garbage that I don't. Did you find a iptv service that works within emby by chance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark-in-dallas 86 Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 (edited) Any IPTV service that offer an M3U should work in Emby. I did read about someone who said the links were tokenized and the toekn changed every 24 hours, but I'm now on my fourth IPTV provider and I haven't seen that issue, nor have I heard of anyone else who did. Edited October 4, 2020 by mark-in-dallas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 You must be hard on providers if you're on your fourth already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark-in-dallas 86 Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 14 hours ago, cayars said: You must be hard on providers if you're on your fourth already. [redacted] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillOatman 500 Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 Free2View Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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