Adding IP TV to SageTV

[gandalf]

I am sure that there must be a plugin to do this but my searches have not found what I need.
I want to add IP TV channels to appear as SageTV tuners. Typically they seem to be accessed using a web browser and supplying a URL to effect 'channel changing'.
This must be something people do - so could someone please point me in the right direction to start please?

Thanks

[JustFred]

Maybe this? https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49866

[gandalf]

Yes that did come up on a search but the latest update is back in 2010 and it does not look to be currently supported or even available for download. I am wary of installing something way older than my current version of SageTV (V9).

I will think differently if someone can tell me they have it running on SageTV V9 and that it is a current download.

[egeller]

I've looked at this, briefly, but have not pulled the trigger on setting it up.

If you can access the IPTV channels with VLC, you should be able to get it working. I'd try using TVHeadend to connect to the IPTV channels, and configure OpenDCT to "talk" to TVHeadend. OpenDCT can send a URL, with a channel number, and TVHeadend can be set up to define the channels and the URLs to access them.

Also: Check out the OpenDCT thread in the hardware subforum starting at about here https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...postcount=2342

When all is said and done, I'm not sure you'd need Tvheadend.

[mlcarson]

Sorry to say that IPTV is a pain in the butt with SageTV. My implementation is currently mostly Comcast (Starter TV package) via HDHomerun Prime and then IPTV as a supplement. M3U files are not supported in Sage -- you have to manually setup generic HTTP tuners in OpenDCT.
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...77&postcount=1

The first problem with this is that there doesn't seem to be a way of doing tuner pooling with HTTP tuners so you have to setup one for each connection available.

The larger issue is that Schedules Direct (SD) is the expected EPG which works really well for traditional CableTV but not so well for IPTV providers because their channels may not be in the same DMA and there are also timezone issues. You can only have 4 SD lineups which can be very limiting with IPTV -- especially when timezone shifting cannot be done per channel. M3u files are not supported so TVG-Shift is therefore not available either. XMLTV can be done with SageTV but the plugin doesn't provide the automation so you need an automated way of getting the XMLTV guide to SageTV.

The latest beta version of Emby handles the IPTV tuner connection pool issue by just specifying the max connection and natively supports M3U files and the TVG-Shift parameter for timezone shifting. I gave up on the SageTV for now and just went with Emby even though SageTV's Guide, scheduling, and remote control options are much better than Emby.

If I could work through an automated way of getting the XMLTV files that I need, I'd probably switch back to SageTV because I prefer its UI. I know that there are some streams that just don't play well with SageTV's generic HTTP tuner and required the generic pipe tuner with FFMPEG. Emby didn't seem to have the same issues on them.