Multiple Live TV Tuners, double channels

[darrenkdean 31]

On 12/1/2022 at 5:31 AM, EODCrafter said:

This can be done by Playlist/Tuner? Hmm, never saw this but never really explored it. Looks to me it's all or nothing....

I believe there's a way to do it using tags & parental controls.

[EODCrafter 181]

2 hours ago, darrenkdean said:

I believe there's a way to do it using tags & parental controls.

Pfff.

[greengo 1]

23 hours ago, EODCrafter said:

The same exact streams on TiviMate & Emby that play flawlessly are buffering on NextPVR.

I added the Plugin to Emby and this is what I get. Supposed to be 102 channels 

check the npvr config, that all the channels are imported?

[Carlo 4560]

I've tried it all different ways and what I would do is add a tag via xteve to each one so you end up importing "TVList1" & "TVList2".  Emby will import your tags.

Now use the parental controls and block one group of users from using TVList2 and the other half from using TVList1.

Each user will only see one set of channels.

It's not the most ideal way to handle this but it works.  Once you have everything in xTeVe setup it's super easy to deploy in Emby as you'll have the tags already.

Hopefully this will make it into the server soon.

Carlo

 

[IkeTaylor11 61]

2 minutes ago, cayars said:

I've tried it all different ways and what I would do is add a tag via xteve to each one so you end up importing "TVList1" & "TVList2".  Emby will import your tags.

Now use the parental controls and block one group of users from using TVList2 and the other half from using TVList1.

Each user will only see one set of channels.

It's not the most ideal way to handle this but it works.  Once you have everything in xTeVe setup it's super easy to deploy in Emby as you'll have the tags already.

Hopefully this will make it into the server soon.

Carlo

 

This is not what we are trying to accomplish. The goal is to use 2 different providers on the same channel to combine lines and for availability. If one of your providers goes offline in your scenario, half your users are down. TVheadend accomplishes this and is the solution. Anyone trying to cobble anything else together is really doing themselves a disservice to their users. Emby has said to use TVH. 

[EODCrafter 181]

1 hour ago, greengo said:

check the npvr config, that all the channels are imported?

It worked fine with the Docker Version, just Buffered like crazy. That was with the Windows executable since that is where I have Emby running.

I've moved on.....

[EODCrafter 181]

9 minutes ago, IkeTaylor11 said:

This is not what we are trying to accomplish. The goal is to use 2 different providers on the same channel to combine lines and for availability. If one of your providers goes offline in your scenario, half your users are down. TVheadend accomplishes this and is the solution. Anyone trying to cobble anything else together is really doing themselves a disservice to their users. Emby has said to use TVH. 

....and to also buy two, three, four of SAME Provider (different login Creds) and have Emby Combine into two, three, four, connections without duplicating the Channels.

In other words, take a 1 connection service, buy 5, Emby combine and have our "5 Family & Friends" be able to watch different channels without 10 Zillion dupes.

Edited December 3, 2022 by EODCrafter

[Carlo 4560]

On 12/3/2022 at 2:14 PM, IkeTaylor11 said:

This is not what we are trying to accomplish. The goal is to use 2 different providers on the same channel to combine lines and for availability. If one of your providers goes offline in your scenario, half your users are down. TVheadend accomplishes this and is the solution. Anyone trying to cobble anything else together is really doing themselves a disservice to their users. Emby has said to use TVH. 

Understood, to clarify, reading the thread you'll see it's something we are looking at to give you the functionality you need/want.  I was simply stating the best way to approximate a solution now using only Emby and xTeVe which is what the op has.  xTeVe really isn't needed for what I mentioned.

The functionality being asked for, is already being done for HDHomeRun tuners. I have 3 HDHomeRun Prime tuners (9 tuners total) that all have the same channels but appear as just one channel list in Emby not 3.  This is essentially what is needed for these Internet based channels as well. The set could ask for the number of streams supported and the primary URL used to pull the channel list along with the username and password (already in the URL).  Then could ask for a 2nd and/or 3rd set of username/passwords.  That would provide the first set of streams as usual and the count of streams. as soon as X+1 streams is needed the 2nd set of credentials is used to fetch the channel. When 2X+1 channels is used the 3rd set of credentials is used. Its a bit more work than the HDHomerun method but as you can see the foundation for this is mostly in place.

Combining tuners with different channel lists (ie OTA & Internet based) is also doable but beyond what most people need to simply "stack multiple accounts together" from the same source.

Currently how my server is setup I have OTA, Cable and 2 different web based services.  Anything I get OTA like ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS etc are filtered or deactivated channels in the other tuners.  Any channels I get via HDHomeRun Prime(s) is deactivated on my web based streams. For "duplicate" channels between the two different Internet providers I keep the best stream IE 1080 vs 720 and deactivate the other. This works out well for me spreading the load out.

Something to think about. If you only have internet based streams you may want to check and see how many local channels you use that could be received OTA. This will normally include a lot of local sports as well as many of the shows you DVR, broadcast on the big 4 or 5 national channels: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX & PBS. A single HDHomerun Quatro (4 tuners), cable and Antenna could reduce the number of streams needed from other sources. The advantages of this are:
One-time fixed cost for many channels you use routinely.
More reliable as well as better quality normally on OTA than any other method.
Channels from OTA are sourced locally and won't affect your ISP data cap if you have one.
Reduction in stream counts other tuners are used for.

[greengo 1]

On 12/3/2022 at 1:15 PM, EODCrafter said:

It worked fine with the Docker Version, just Buffered like crazy. That was with the Windows executable since that is where I have Emby running.

I've moved on.....

try use the windows version or linux, i use mac os version on both emby and npvr.

Did you use automerge to merge channels from different sources?

[EODCrafter 181]

On 12/3/2022 at 1:15 PM, EODCrafter said:

I've moved on.....

@greengo

Edited December 5, 2022 by EODCrafter

[bruor 43]

Came across this while searching for a solution for something and thought I would share a recent discovery for those that want to merge multiple accounts from the same provider. 

I'm using hls-proxy with a provider that allows 5 connections at a time.  HLS proxy has the ability to substitute credentials using regex group matching so that when a second/third/Nth channel is requested it swaps the credentials in the URL.  I've got 4 accounts set up in hls-proxy so that it round robins across the accounts when accessing streams.

I use threadfin (xteve) in no buffer mode to read the listings from hls-proxy and set channel logos, and then connect emby to that.  

[EODCrafter 181]

1 hour ago, bruor said:

Came across this while searching for a solution for something and thought I would share a recent discovery for those that want to merge multiple accounts from the same provider. 

I'm using hls-proxy with a provider that allows 5 connections at a time.  HLS proxy has the ability to substitute credentials using regex group matching so that when a second/third/Nth channel is requested it swaps the credentials in the URL.  I've got 4 accounts set up in hls-proxy so that it round robins across the accounts when accessing streams.

I use threadfin (xteve) in no buffer mode to read the listings from hls-proxy and set channel logos, and then connect emby to that.  

That suks. I don't have any providers that supply m3u8 streams. Thanks anyway.

[Woken 12]

You would need to setup a restreamer server with however many users your server can handle without buffering, I read through some of this but it won't happen on emby. This would need to be something on the end user to setup, thinking emby can do all this is crazy seriously just crazy. Google restreaming software it's not cheap unless you can code your own your out of luck thinking emby will do this setup it just will never happen. I also was reading on the emby forums that you can watch one channel and have more than one person watch the same channel and hide it from the provider of your tv lol not true. @Carloyou said this in different posts and it is not true, if I watch the same channel on 3 tv's the provider can see this easily. That statement is very misleading! If people want to watch the same channels above what their tuners can handle they will need to do research and learn to restream the entire m3u and if your not able to do it yourself by coding then you better have deep pockets for a restreamer. This is why m3u providers limit how many users can watch at once because if your using emby and 20 people are able to watch at once there loosing money, simple. If you email an m3u provider asking for 20 users on one m3u they will say no, they will give you at most one for 5. In vlc you can add 10 channels all the same if one fails because someones on it then it loads the next one, emby can't do that unless they tear down vlc code which will not happen. If I were to guess there are maybe 5 or even less people coding for emby good luck with this happening! I'm all for the under dog it's why I pay for emby but in order for them to eat they stick withing what they can handle as a team, if you want to become a cable tv provider then do it on your own and restream m3u's with high end gpu's This thread should of been closed long ago!

[EODCrafter 181]

1 hour ago, Woken said:

You would need to setup a restreamer server with however many users your server can handle without buffering, I read through some of this but it won't happen on emby. This would need to be something on the end user to setup, thinking emby can do all this is crazy seriously just crazy. Google restreaming software it's not cheap unless you can code your own your out of luck thinking emby will do this setup it just will never happen. I also was reading on the emby forums that you can watch one channel and have more than one person watch the same channel and hide it from the provider of your tv lol not true. @Carloyou said this in different posts and it is not true, if I watch the same channel on 3 tv's the provider can see this easily. That statement is very misleading! If people want to watch the same channels above what their tuners can handle they will need to do research and learn to restream the entire m3u and if your not able to do it yourself by coding then you better have deep pockets for a restreamer. This is why m3u providers limit how many users can watch at once because if your using emby and 20 people are able to watch at once there loosing money, simple. If you email an m3u provider asking for 20 users on one m3u they will say no, they will give you at most one for 5. In vlc you can add 10 channels all the same if one fails because someones on it then it loads the next one, emby can't do that unless they tear down vlc code which will not happen. If I were to guess there are maybe 5 or even less people coding for emby good luck with this happening! I'm all for the under dog it's why I pay for emby but in order for them to eat they stick withing what they can handle as a team, if you want to become a cable tv provider then do it on your own and restream m3u's with high end gpu's This thread should of been closed long ago!

Although with some streamers like xteve and TVheadend, you can stream same channel. 1 connection. Pretty sure Emby server does this too.

[Woken 12]

No, infact if you run TVheadend as your live iptv server and go on your emby server and play the same channel on more than one client you will see in TVheadend that multiple users are watching the same channel. When people say running emby you can watch a channel on a few clients and it masks it, nope, not true at all.

 

You can get iptv service from satellite tv forums who sell high end streaming for $90 a month for 15 users at once or use options such as PlutoTV which has no limit.

[redacted]

You can also rent from users a portal which can host as many streams as you are willing to pay for, it's not cheap.

Edited December 3, 2023 by ebr
removed link

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  We appreciate your intention to help but please do not share links to services here.  Most of them are not "free and legal".  Almost all of the content is under copyright and, in some cases, FCC restrictions here in the US.

[IkeTaylor11 61]

On 12/2/2023 at 7:19 PM, Woken said:

No, infact if you run TVheadend as your live iptv server and go on your emby server and play the same channel on more than one client you will see in TVheadend that multiple users are watching the same channel. When people say running emby you can watch a channel on a few clients and it masks it, nope, not true at all.

 

This is not true. TVH uses a single stream even if multiple people are watching the same channel in Emby. 

[Luke 42077]

Emby server can often use the same stream for multiple players. It just depends on the input format. That’s most likely why the two of you are seeing different results.

[softworkz 5066]

3 hours ago, IkeTaylor11 said:

This is not true. TVH uses a single stream even if multiple people are watching the same channel in Emby. 

You probably mean that TVH uses a single stream from the tuner. This does not contradict to what @Wokensaid. In that case, it's TVH which does the split while Emby makes two or more connections to TVH.

[adelstaifi 0]

thankyou

[Kwick 8]

So the only work around is to set tags for every channel and use parental controls? *sigh*
Almost laughable that the problem is 6 years old at this point.

[Carlo 4560]

10 hours ago, Kwick said:

So the only work around is to set tags for every channel and use parental controls? *sigh*
Almost laughable that the problem is 6 years old at this point.

If you can hold off a bit, this will be much easier to do shortly.

[Carlo 4560]

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.

 

Edited November 21, 2024 by Carlo

[IkeTaylor11 61]

Won’t ever be doing that, such a waste of time. It’s TVH or bust at this point. Let this thread die. Sorry I ever started it. 

[Carlo 4560]

This just became much easier to manage with a new feature.

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.