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Full Version: [split] Comet TV Live
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Can I ask how you are getting a steam of Comet? What I would really like to do is add it as a channel in TVHeadEnd so that I could record specific shows and watch them later at my convenience. The ability to watch live is great except that's just now how I watch TV anymore; instead I record everything and watch on my schedule. So if there were some way to get an IPTV stream into TVHeadEnd, that would be the ideal for me. Then I could record it just like any other channel and play it back through the TVHeadEnd PVR addon in Kodi.
xbmclinuxuser, it grabs this page ( http://comettv.com/live.html ) and parses it. If you go to that page in your web browser and view source you'll find a url for a "m3u8" playlist that contains links for 6 different resolutions.
(2016-03-05, 20:37)bonelifer Wrote: [ -> ]xbmclinuxuser, it grabs this page ( http://comettv.com/live.html ) and parses it. If you go to that page in your web browser and view source you'll find a url for a "m3u8" playlist that contains links for 6 different resolutions.
I don't get it, I went to that page and attempted to view the source and didn't see anything with an m3u8 extension. TVHeadEnd will sometimes use a stream with a m3u8 extension, if you could perhaps post the ones for the highest two resolutions I could try them and see if they work. But for some reason when I view the source in Firefox I don't see them. If you don't want to post them publicly you can PM me.

Of course the other question is whether those URL's stay the same or do they change? If the page has to be scraped every time you want to tune in a stream then that presents a problem.

I sent a PM to learningit with some additional information that I didn't really want to post publicly because I wasn't sure it was appropriate for this forum, but I will send you a copy so you can see what I'm trying to do.
No need to send me a PM, I'm not a coder. In FF 44.0.2 I was able to see the m3u8 link: http://content.uplynk.com/channel/810bf2...afc91.m3u8
(2016-03-05, 21:10)bonelifer Wrote: [ -> ]No need to send me a PM, I'm not a coder. In FF 44.0.2 I was able to see the m3u8 link: http://content.uplynk.com/channel/810bf2...afc91.m3u8

Sorry, I had already done it when I saw your reply, just please delete it then. But that URL is exactly what I needed, I now have the channel in TVHeadEnd and it plays, the only question is whether that URL will stay constant or whether it will change from time to time. But thank you for providing that link, that was the key!

For anyone else wanting to attempt to do this (no guarantees!), you have to have a version of TVHeadEnd that is new enough to support the pipe URL (late 3.9 versions or any 4.x version). Then you create an IPTV network if you don't have one already, and then you create a mux with the following parameters:

Enabled: (Check)
EPG Scan: Disable
Scan Status: PEND (it will change to IDLE after it has acquired the stream)
AC-3 Detection: Standard (the default)
URL: pipe://ffmpeg -loglevel fatal -i http://content.uplynk.com/channel/810bf2...afc91.m3u8 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -flags +global_header -strict -2 -metadata service_provider=CometTV -metadata service_name=CometTV_Live_Stream -f mpegts pipe:1
Interface: (leave blank)
ATSC: (leave unchecked)
Mux Name: Comet
Service Name: (leave blank)

After it scans the stream it should create a service which can be viewed in the Services tab, and then if you highlight that service and click on "Map Seletcted" it should create a channel. You can then go into the Channels tab and edit the channel name and number, etc. but in any case it should appear in the Kodi channels list. If you give it an EPG source then it should display in the grid as well. Wikipedia shows a list of Comet TV affiliates, you'd probably want to pick a Sinclair affiliate for guide data since Sinclair owns Comet TV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Comet_affiliates

If it doesn't work check to see if ffmpeg is installed on your system, if you need a static build try http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/ - or, check to see if the URL has changed.

I hope this isn't out of line for this forum. But I don't get a reliable signal from the local Comet TV affiliate and it sucks to record a show and then find it is unwatchable due to bad weather. So this could be a solution IF the URL stays the same over time. If they change the URL every day or two, then obviously this is not going to work with any degree of reliability.

EDIT: It appears this ONLY works with services sending m3u8 or similar types of streams. So while in this case it was not that difficult once I had the URL, for other services it might be much more difficult. Still it would be interesting to have a list of other live streaming channels that could be mapped to a TVHeadEnd channel in this manner, but I suspect they are few and far between.