DaddyLive, PlutoTV, XUMO, M3U/XMLTV, SamsungTV, Plex, TVGuide interfaces (appliance)

G Kazaroth

To John on VOD. What VOD does different from regular streams is that VOD has the entire movie or show ready from the provider at the start. Cabernet queues it up and will send the stream as fast as the DVR requests it. For TVH, it will squelch the stream after a short buffer. VLC also squelches the stream. I have used the Linux WGET command to pull the entire contents and it does not squelch. A two hour movie takes about 3 minutes to download using WGET from Cabernet with my internet.

If you turn on logging to Info or Notice, you will see the rate at which 6 second packets are being sent to the DVR. That along with the NextPVR log should give you info as to what is happening.

Robert Coupee

Can you provide details of how you do a WGET? What url do you do use?

Thanks.

G Kazaroth

Here is what I do. This will be for the XUMO provider. First, the VOD channels are listed in the Channel Editor on the last column. Just filter to VOD. Next to get the channel URLs, you can use the channels.m3u or lineup.json based on the format you like. For me, I will use the channels.m3u. The URL is http://IPADDRESS:6077/xumo/channels.m3u Place results in an editor and under each #EXTINF: is a URL for that channel. The channel name is on the end. I pick the "The Johnny Carson Show" with a URL of
http://IPADDRESS:5004/XUMO/watch/99991157 Now to request the stream using WGET.


wget -O tmp.ts http://IPADDRESS:5004/XUMO/watch/99991157

The display will show you are getting data downloaded to the file from Cabernet. This will continue for about 1-2 minutes and then the data rate will fall to "--.-KB/s". When this happens, the file has been downloaded. You can CTRL-C out of the wget command and use the file. The file for this show is about 45 minutes and about 250MB. VLC opens it no matter what the trailer is on the file...

A Cabernet update with USTVGO removed should be out soon. The new plugin info will be tracked under issue:
https://github.com/cabernetwork/cabernet/issues/35

G Kazaroth

0.9.7.6 released.
It will run with USTVGO cached data, but some cleanup would be helpful after the update.
# Edit config.ini and remove any ustvgo sections
# Remove the folder provider_video_ustvgo from the plugins folder and all its contents
# From the 6077 website, go to Data Mgmt
# Within Delete Instance, go to the pull down and select each USTVGO instance and click Delete
# Within Reset Scheduler Tasks, go to the pull down and select USTVGO then click Reset

# restart Cabernet

If this is too complex, I could add a script to go through and do this during the updates; however, I found file permissions may make it difficult to remove all USTVGO files.

Dan Schmidt

Quick yes/no - Does the EPG still come from https://i.mjh.nz/PlutoTV/? (If so, I really should buy the guy a coffee)

G Kazaroth

EPG for the PlutoTV plugin comes from PlutoTV and not from a foreign website.

Dan Schmidt

Thkx & let me know if U put up "buy me a coffee/beer" page

G Kazaroth

0.9.8.0 Added 123TV plugin
The release notes indicate the details on how best to add the plugin and other information. In general, the channels are working fairly good. EPG data is iffy on some of the channels, so a default set of EPG is currently being used...
This plugin is using the tvguide data to some degree. I have some ideas on creating a EPG plugin enhancement. stay tuned for that.

john tocher

Very nice. Thank you. Setting it up. Some work better than others but that was expected. Very handy.

G Kazaroth

To Clarify how 123TV works with Cabernet... 123TV uses multiple providers, some are P2P based. This is all behind the 123TV website. They group channels based on their providers. Some providers are working fine while others are no longer working. Cabernet can tell if the stream is really down based on how it fails, so when a stream is requested, Cabernet will disable the channel, if it determines the channel is one of those that is not expected to ever be up. The important thing to note is to get the channel list, then the EPG, and then run a scan on all the channels to have Cabernet determine which channels are an issue and place them as disabled.

Once the bad channels are disabled, TVH will receive only the list of channels that are not disabled. This is about half the channels on 123TV. You can re-enable the channels in Cabernet and rerun a scan to see if anything has changed. Cabernet will change them back to disabled if again the channel is offline. Cabernet keeps track of each channel status to determine if a channel was ever successful. Once a channel is successful, Cabernet will not disable it even if the channel is not working. Of course, you can still change a channel to disable as needed. I am thinking about adding a schedule event to run a internal scan weekly on 123TV disabled channels in case something changed. It could also be used to run the initial scan instead of using VLC or TVH to run it.

G Kazaroth

0.9.8.1 added channel scanning scheduled task
This is helpful when trying to initialize what is up and down for 123TV.
Plan to create the daddy live plugin next. Issue tracking that plugin is here
https://github.com/cabernetwork/cabernet/issues/36

G Kazaroth

0.9.8.2 Added DaddyLive Plugin
- EPG is not provided at this time due to the website not providing any epg data
- Easy way to review the streams are to use VLC. Use the network address : http://ipaddress:6077/daddylive/channel.m3u - All channels listed seem to be working; however, DaddyLive is going through growing pains (possibly due to USTVGO shutdown). I have seen 404 and timeout errors in the evening on all channels. Cabernet updates have reduced the issue, but it was still occurring. Expect they will be making performance/hardware updates to correct the issue.

- Will be looking into getting EPG data remotely, but wanted to get out the streams since they are working well with much better resolutions.

Small bug found, hold doing the upgrade until a patch is provided...

G Kazaroth

0.9.8.5 adds a stream fix for the 2 channels that have malformed m3u8 files.
my stats are
- 249 HD channels worked per TVH
- 7 channels failed (may work some time in the future, but down when TVH scanned them)
- The rest are SD channels that are also good per TVH
- Good channels did appear in Kodi as well as the DaddyLive tag
Note: HD means at least a 720 resolution

K Shea

I upgraded today but still have two questions:

1. I changed the PlutoTV Starting Ch Number from 1 to 2501 but even after rescanning, and then restarting Cabernet the channel numbers don't change.

2. Cabernet shows 123TV is enabled but no channels appear. Do I have to add an instance to the config file, and if so do you have a suggested configuration or any suggestions for settings?

G Kazaroth

For number 1, I find it an issue with TVH. I normally need to delete the mux and tvguide data. Make sure the channel list for the network is empty, then try to do a scan again. Before that, you can check Cabernet by requesting a channel list like http://ipaddress/PlutoTV/lineup.json and see that the guidenumber is updated.

Yes, both the plugin and its instance need to be enabled for Cabernet to get the channel list. The release notes normally have the configuration. Look like I removed the old releases during releases cleanup (oops). It is the standard way to add an instance.


[123tv_default]
label = 123TV Instance

K Shea

I also have a technical question for you that's only tangentially related to Cabernet. When recording or streaming from a source, there are occasions where they "go dark" for a time, such as during extended commercial breaks, etc. Tvheadend will by default time out after 20 seconds, and while you can override that in the Tvheadend network settings, that only seems to apply to recordings, not live TV. So how do you handle that? Do you send "dummy" video to Tvheadend to keep it from timing out? And if so, is the code to do that part of Cabernet or do you use some external program that filters the stream and drops in "dummy" video of some kind when the desired stream is missing, just to keep Tvheadend alive?

I ask because I have encountered this issue on local devices that take more than 20 seconds to start outputting a stream (the issue is that when TVH first starts the stream it also starts a script to turn the device on, and that device takes more than 20 seconds to start sending video), and the Tvheadend developers don't seem to care that the timeout override in the network settings does not seem to apply to live streams (at least not on the version of TVH being used). But also TVH is working fine otherwise except for that one thing, so I just wondered if you might know of something that would fix this problem. The way I envision it, this piece of software would start supplying a stream to Tvheadend immediately when Tvheadend accesses it (could be just a black screen, could be a single image or whatever) but at the same time it would try to get the desired stream from the source and as soon as that arrives it would stop sending the "dummy" stream and start sending the actual stream to Tvheadend. Hope that makes sense, and I suspect Cabernet does something very much like that during commercial breaks? Anyway, I figured if anyone might know of such a thing, you would.

K Shea

G Kazaroth wrote:

> For number 1, I find it an issue with TVH. I normally need to delete the mux and tvguide data. Make sure the channel list for the network is empty, then try to do a scan again. Before that, you can check Cabernet by requesting a channel list like http://ipaddress/PlutoTV/lineup.json and see that the guidenumber is updated.

No, it's not getting updated that way. Same thing with 123TV and I started out using a Starting Ch Number of 3801 but it is still numbering starting at 1. Same thing in the channel guide in the GUI, nothing changes.

> Yes, both the plugin and its instance need to be enabled for Cabernet to get the channel list. The release notes normally have the configuration. Look like I removed the old releases during releases cleanup (oops). It is the standard way to add an instance.

Thanks, it had been so long since I have added one that I forgot about that!

G Kazaroth

yes, there is code in Cabernet to send ATSC packets when no video is coming in from the provider as a keep alive. The issue with the play versus record for me is that Kodi is terminating the connection if video does not keep coming. I am not aware of any parameter in Kodi to stop this from happening. You can try it with VLC and see if it also does it there. I have not tried that. This is not associated with initialization and only talking about times when streams stop streaming for a while.

Now there is a difference between TVH initial start and pauses during streaming. TVH has a hard coded timeout on initialization, that overrides the configuration value (I found it in the TVH source). I think its like 10 seconds. We still try to send the ATSC packets, but TVH will terminate, if real video packets are not received at the start. Once video has been verified as received, then TVH uses the value in the configuration, to determine, if it should terminate the stream. In the past, I did ask TVH forum the question on the hardcoded timeout and got the normal response of if you want to become a developer, please take a shot.

I did look into sending a small blank video to TVH to get it out of initialization, but it was very difficult based on all the different stream configurations providers are using and possible dynamics within a channel. The biggest issue was knowing the future. The video must tag the video snippet with a timestamp (DTS/PTS) that matches what will be coming from the provider in the future. Obviously it is hard to determine this and is measured to 93000th of a second.

G Kazaroth

To Shea, I did the following. Ran http://ipaddress/123tv/lineup.xml and saw A&E started at 1001 (I have the channel prefix set to 1000). I then changed the value to 2000 and saved the changed. Then refreshed the tab with the url http://ipaddress/123tv/lineup.xml in my browser.
The GuideNumber changed from 1001 to 2001. This indicates Cabernet is changing the value as it should. All the client interfaces should be getting the updates, so the issue is not with Cabernet. I personally had to reorder a number of networks, so I know it is working, so long as the cache values in TVH and Kodi are cleared.

K Shea

G Kazaroth wrote:
> To Shea, I did the following. Ran http://ipaddress/123tv/lineup.xml and saw A&E started at 1001 (I have the channel prefix set to 1000). I then changed the value to 2000 and saved the changed. Then refreshed the tab with the url http://ipaddress/123tv/lineup.xml in my browser.

> The GuideNumber changed from 1001 to 2001. This indicates Cabernet is changing the value as it should. All the client interfaces should be getting the updates, so the issue is not with Cabernet. I personally had to reorder a number of networks, so I know it is working, so long as the cache values in TVH and Kodi are cleared.

I don't know what to tell you, I have Starting Ch Number set to 3800 (I also tried 500, 1000, 2000, etc.) and it never changes. If I add or remove a suffix (N in this case) that changes but not the channel number. The first couple of channels look like:

<Lineup>
<Program>
<GuideNumber>1N</GuideNumber>
<GuideName>A&E (AE)</GuideName>
<URL>http://_redacted_:5004/123TV/watch/ae</URL> <HD>0</HD>
</Program>
<Program>
<GuideNumber>2N</GuideNumber>
<GuideName>ABC</GuideName>
<URL>http://_redacted_:5004/123TV/watch/abc</URL> <HD>1</HD>

</Program>

If I remove the EPG Channel Suffix that works

But it simply will not change the channel numbers no matter what value I try. By the way I have to specify the :6077 port to even get that XML file, not sure how you are getting it without using the port number.

Would it make any difference that I have been using essentially the same database since back when Locast was still around?

« Previous Page Next Page »