Allowing Internet Streams as channels in Live TV

I was thinking that it'd be pretty neat and would certainly set XBMC apart if it allowed for internet live streams to be used as TV channels For example BBC iPlayer's live TV channels as already included in BBC iPlayer video addon or USTVNOW integration or even just Al-Jazeera and RT's live streams.

Is there already a way of doing this or is there currently any development being done in this regard?

you can already write an add-on which does just that if you like. just set the stream url in a channel tag to the url of the live stream, and it'll work.

dushmaniac Wrote:you can already write an add-on which does just that if you like. just set the stream url in a channel tag to the url of the live stream, and it'll work.

Could you point me to a little example addon? I would like to make a "Ziggo Web TV" backend, allowing Ziggo customers to watch and record the Ziggo live streams through XBMC.

I would like to voice my support for your idea.

Keep us updated. If you can do that we could integrate a lot of stations in. Maybe even get the EPG data right and then boom we are recording it. PERFECT.

Subscribing to this thread.

I would really like to give it a shot, but I really do not know where to start.

there's a demo add-on in the tree that you can use as an example. the way that add-on uses xml is a hack, so don't immitate that (I just need something working quickly when I wrote that). the principle is the same though.
https://github.com/opdenkamp/xbmc/tree/m...s/pvr-demo

Isn't it a lot easier to just setup VDR as your backend and use their IPTV plugin? The vdr-iptv plugin supports multicast, unicast, rtp and http. Hence you can even use VLC as live transcoder to alter the stream before sending it to the frontend.

http://www.saunalahti.fi/rahrenbe/vdr/iptv/


You don't need any further plugins and can still use the same pvr-xbmc version.

I think YaVDR (the distribution), after initial installation already has 3 internet streams as testing channels added (nasa, 3sat and some other)

'Thanks for the pointers, gentlemen. This should get me going. Don't hold your breath though: I'm slow, busy, and untalented. Well maybe just slow and busy.

what would be wrong with an xml?

oneadvent Wrote:what would be wrong with an xml?

Integration within the rest of your TV channels.

Example: You already have a dvb-c stick for your ziggo channels, via VDR you can add the same channel based on the weburl and put it in a different group.

When you are recording something via your dvb, you can still watch another channel via the weburl. It is like you add a second virtual tuner.

Better then "Yet Again Another Plugin" which reads and plays from a xml.

I onced looked at it and it nicely integrates stuff as Nasa-TV together with the rest of my TV channel. Hence I can even use all the recoding features to record the new launch of apolo 69 (or whatever)