Getting Started with IPTV using VLC PLayer

[ZerOne]

IPTV Description
IPTV essentially supports viewing television channels that you would normally watch on your television over the internet.
It looks the same as aerial, cable and satellite, except livestreaming TV uses an app on a streaming device (like a PC, Apple TV, or Foxtel).

Typically the protocol of choice for IPTV is the m3u8 video format, which supports a dynamically generated m3u8 playlist file,
that both describes the live video stream format, as well as points to one or more video segment .ts files.

The following is an example of the contents of an .m3u8 file.
This file describes the live video stream properties, but also points to a second .m3u8

Code: Select all

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1303789,CODECS="avc1.77.31,mp4a.40.2",RESOLUTION=854x480
chunklist_w814938559.m3u8

The contents of the second .m3u8 file can be seen here.

Code: Select all

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:18
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:228333
#EXTINF:8.0,
media_w814938559_228333.ts
#EXTINF:7.975,
media_w814938559_228334.ts
#EXTINF:8.0,
media_w814938559_228335.ts

The first .m3u8 file describes what stream formats are available.
In this case, only the single stream type of an encoded mp4 stream with a resolution of 854x480 is available.

The second .m3u8 file gives information on the current live video segments that are available, as well as
the video segments length (#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:18 which is 18 seconds) and what the current sequence of the video segments are.

This file is used by the video player to specify the URL in which the video file(s) should be downloaded, as well as when the playlist
should be refreshed by the video player to obtain a new list of video files to download.

[ZerOne]

Getting Started

The biggest obstacle in viewing live television over the Internet is obtaining a list of .m3u8 playlists to view available live streams.

Fortunately there is an excellent project whereby a list of different free .m3u8 playlists for different Countries and Television stations is available.
https://github.com/Free-IPTV/Countries

These .m3u8 files have information on further .m3u8 streams that are available for the specified country, allowing the media player
to display a list of channels, and connect / stream video from these stations as required.

To view an IPTV (.m3u8) Video Stream, simply open VLC Player, and select Media->Open Network Stream.
Finally, add the URL for the .m3u8 file, and VLC Player will then attempt to connect to the video stream and play.

For example,
using the above GitHub Repo,
1) Click on the AT01_AUSTRIA.m3u .m3u8 file
2) Click on the [RAW] Button to display the Raw .m3u8 data (Without the github HTML formatting).
3) Copy the URL for the given page https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Free- ... USTRIA.m3u
4) Open VLC Player and paste this URL in the Open Network Stream Dialog

The Video stream for the first channel specified in the AUSTRIA .m3u8 playlist file will now be played.