iptv - dealing with frequent channel list changes? (1 Viewer)

[sanyok_ua]

Hello,

my provider adds new/deletes iptv channels quite often.
His preferred solution is the software, named IPTV player, where one can insert link to m3u on server, player downloads it on start; EPG is also provided and link is in m3u, in the first line:

#EXTM3U url-tvg=http://goodnet.tv/App_Files/jtv.zip url-epg=http://goodnet.tv/stb/epg.zip m3uautoload=1 cache=1000 deinterlace=1 aspect-ratio=4:3 tvg-shift=0

Now (let's forget for now about EPG), the biggest problem with all this in Mediaportal is the channels rescan. Time to time, I need to go to TV server setup and rescan all channels, it's time consuming. Also, it doesn't delete outdated channels, I need to compare old and new playlists manually. I do it once in 1-2 month, but this is boring.

Question: why this scanning is needed for m3u at all?
Please assess idea if there are any caveats to write i.e. custom scripts (I can write them by myself, I'm developer) that can update MP database to be in sync with m3u i.e. before tv server start, or there are some stream parameters cached during scanning in order to not do that work on each tuning? In that case I can at least write tool that removes channels that are removed on server playlist and prepares extracted m3u that contains new channels only, for faster scanning?

 

[mm1352000]

Hello sanyok_ua

Question: why this scanning is needed for m3u at all?

TV Server uses the scan process to find the corresponding DVB service details - ONID, TSID, SID - which enable it to actually receive the stream. In other words, we don't assume that only one channel/service is provided per URL.

mm

 

[sanyok_ua]

Thanks.
Good feature, but I've not heard about such to be used in iptv, all streams known for me are 1 transport stream=1 channel.
Quick googling shows mythtv developer doesn't heard either: http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-dev/2013-January/073246.html
And I believe for compatibility reasons it's unlikely someone will start IPTV broadcasting with several streams, as there is a lot of software written that accepts just URL.

Anyway, I understand tuning code has to be the same for all technologies, on this layer you probably don't care about source of stream, so possibly there can be enhancement to i.e. use the only available stream if there is one stream in transport stream and onid/tsid/sid are not specified in database, but I understand it may require huge changes that conceptually look not nice. So I'll go with last approach.