Overview/Summary of URLs offering tvheadend services?

Digard

I refer to https://tvheadend.org/d/439-how-to-play-tvheadens-streams-in-vlc. It is 10+ years old, but made me aware of some features that can be obtained from subdirectories of http://ip.of.tvheadend.streamer:9981/... .
/playlist/channels for example, gave me a download of the list of channels (m3u).

Can someone please point me to an actual list of features / subdirs that can be used?
I'm still looking for a way to watch movies using VLC. The playlist as above is downloadable, but VLC doesn't play anything; gets stuck at authentication. Is there a better way to select within VLC?

So far, I download the m3u as the first item in the Electronic Program Guide, open VLC, and then open this file in VLC. This works, but looks cumbersome to me.

davep

https://docs.tvheadend.org/documentation/development/json-api

Jonas Lang

I hope your aim here does not include obtaining illegal pay tv IPTV streams. Discussion is definitely not welcome here.

Digard

Jonas Lang
I don't even know what that is. No idea what you're talking about. I'm not even an avid TV-fan. I love to watch/record some movies of mostly my youth, ARTE, other public broadcasters, including old French movies on TV 5 Monde.

Until now I was using a hardware cable modem, that - despite of the last firmware - had a tendency to forget recording commands. I did like the concept of tvheadend immediately. Before, I had to use the remote and click-click-click to the transmitter, click-click-click through the EPG, and so forth.
In tvheadend, a substring search on the title is enough, "Record", done. Perfect!
And eventually download, cut leading and trailing times, and rendering.

In case you wanted to know my application purposes. And aside of some - I hope - initial quirks, I have already bashed myself for not having switched to the Sundtek stick and tvheadend earlier.

While recording like mentioned above is really fine, watching a movie as described above is a bore. (You'll find my quarrels with the initially used "Watch TV" elsewhere in this forum.) Therefore my question, why I can't watch a program as easily as recording it. And no, KODI is out of question. It hurts me to see that tele-tubbies-childish interface.

Digard

Okay, since I explained my question, and think it is clear that I don't want to discuss "illegal pay tv IPTV streams", can someone please point out to me, how I can sensibly select a channel within VLC for viewing?

On my Android devices, "Dream Player" does what I am looking for: presenting logos and I can scroll and click. That'd be my preferred way of watching TV, instead of the cumbersome method described in my first post, with downloading an individual file from the web interface for each program title, and open it in VLC.

Jonas Lang

How many channels are contained in these m3u lists you intend to use. The emphasis in TVH was always on DVB broadcasts. Users post here with m3u lists containing 1000+ channels and expect miracles in TVH. Personally I do not use IPTV in TVH and am not likely to do so but if you want to experiment with IPTV streams in TVH start with a small list and take it from there.

You’d be amazed at the number of new users who drop by the TVH forum wanting to learn how to stream illegally obtained pay tv IPTV channels from lists they obtain from dubious sources. They are clever enough to ask questions in such a way as not to raise suspicion but as soon as they are challenged on what they are trying to achieve they disappear quickly.

The last thing the forum here needs is a DMCA takedown notice issued against. Now you know why I asked the question.

Digard

Jonas Lang
I understand your concerns. However, by all means, HOW do I select one out of around 300 fully paid-for, legal, public broadcasting channels within VLC, please?!?

Jonas Lang

Digard as I mentioned above I don’t use IPTV but surely you can edit the m3u list you have, save the edited version under a new name and test it that way using something like this. A bit of lateral thinking here.
https://torum.github.io/Playlist-editor/

Digard

Jonas Lang
Thanks, will try that!

HD

I'm using a little trick by only enabling the channels I like to see in tvheadend and
selecting them in VLC as a stream with:
http://yourtvheadendservername:9981/playlist/channels.m3u?enabled

Prerequisite is a distinguishable channel name, but I suspect you know how to do this in tvheadend.
Let VLC automatically expand the list ( see Preferences All ) as to easy channel selection.
If changing channels is slow, consider saving the stream as VLC playlist.

DeltaMikeCharlie

HD I'm using a little trick by only enabling the channels

Perhaps you could also create a 'Channel Tag' containing only the channels that you want to use in VLC.

Digard

HD
Looks almost good to me. In the background the playlist is building up, but there is a"HTTP authentication" in the way, that wants me to enter credentials "for realm tvheadend". I tried my non-privileged tvheadend login, and the admin user of tvheadend. Neither makes this pop-up go away.
Would you know what I am doing wrong?

HD

DeltaMikeCharlie Checked your suggestion to use a tag, and yes it works. Thanks.

HD

@DeltaMikeCharlie - Nice, even simpler.

And connect with "?tagname" instead of "?enabled" ? Haven't tested it yet.

HD

Digard - Haven't encountered this problem myself.

My hunch would be this is an issue not directly related to your question.
I would try deleting the regular user of tvheadend and let everyone use tvheadend.
Just place * in the field for username and leave the one for password empty.
This should get rid of the login form, as is the case in my environment.

Jonas Lang

Chances you are having a character recognition issue when supplying your name and password. Are all the characters you are using plain English, no spaces, no caps and no protected characters.

Jonas Lang

Also read this https://tvheadend.org/d/7834-solved-client-authentication/13

HD

I should have added that configuring a VLC playlist form the m3u will let you bypass the query
and connect with the channels directly. This is OK for performance but when a rescan changes
the inner tvheadend identification of channels, this playlist will no longer be valid.
You will then have to use the link again to create a renewed playlist that points to the channels new identity.

Crazy thought:
It must be possible to circumvent this "feature" with some scripting that at load of the m3u auto generates
the playlist and shows this playlist in VLC instead of the m3u. It would only slow the initial load a bit.
Let me know when that's done 🙂.

HD

Couldn't resist acting on my own suggestion to write some code that creates a
VLC playlist from the tvheadend m3u. It's made in powershell and works both in
my Windows and Linux machines (yes, powershell can be installed in Linux).
Lots of these scripts are available online you say, sure, but examining and
adjusting one of these is way less fun for me than creating one afresh.
Not sure if this forum allows attachments, but if anyone interested I will post.

I use a hotkey code to start my TV watching and added a call to this script.
It's now followed by a call to the VLC playlist instead of the channels url.
A change of channelid's by tvheadend still results in a broken and invalid VLC playlist.
It's because of the update just before VLC-TV startup this can't bother me anymore.

On the subject of my little trick to set channels on "enabled" in tvheadend and
then use "...?enabled" this: on closer examination the second part is unnecessary.
"http://tvhserver:9981/playlist/channels" will get you all enabled channels anyway,
and anything added seems to be ignored when generating the m3u playlist.

A filter on channel or tag name in the web-gui will not change that, I tried, only
a channel setting of enabled or disabled affects the playlist generation.

HD

Jonas Lang suggested this thread on your question.
I took note and also had a look at this one.
This is my little summary of both, good to know if ever I choose to setup a regular user.
Q:
-I'm being asked frequently for user credentials when switching channels using this url:
http://user:pass@ip:9981/playlist/channels
A:
-Add persistent authentication to the user in Configuration>Users>Passwords
-Use this url: http://user:pass@ip:9981/playlist/auth/channels

Digard

HD
It does everything that I was hoping for.
(And that VLC is a tad boring, for having to select 'Playlist' instead of showing Picons or so, is a problem of VLC.)