Getting Pluto extra to work

[mvallevand]

Try this, I think I see what I was doing wrong.  Any update after 10pm and before 8am should take it to 8am.

(file removed after apparent misuse of the extra)

Martin

[bouilliabai]

Minutes seem like hours, and the hours they seem like days....

Code:

07/31/24 13:01:25.00 [      PostLoadEPG.bat] EPG has been LOADED
07/31/24 15:07:13.62 [      PostStartup.bat] NPVR Recording Service STARTED
07/31/24 18:02:32.70 [      PostLoadEPG.bat] EPG has been LOADED
07/31/24 18:28:51.02 [      PostStartup.bat] NPVR Recording Service STARTED
07/31/24 23:02:45.25 [      PostLoadEPG.bat] EPG has been LOADED
07/31/24 23:29:03.48 [      PostLoadEPG.bat] EPG has been LOADED
08/01/24  2:44:39.93 [        UpdateEPG.bat] Logfile is 63463 bytes, maxsize is 64000.
08/01/24  2:44:39.93 [        UpdateEPG.bat] EPG Update TRIGGERED
08/01/24  2:45:17.74 [      PostLoadEPG.bat] EPG has been LOADED
08/01/24  8:00:11.05 [      PostLoadEPG.bat] EPG has been LOADED
08/01/24 13:00:26.90 [      PostLoadEPG.bat] EPG has been LOADED

It looks like more than one instance of the timer can run in memory, so repeated manual EPG updates and/or service restarts could lead to additional updates during "waking" hours for that same day, but the off-hours activity seems to have been quashed. Thanks.

Now, other than pauses in the stream for ad breaks causing NextPVR to terminate the Streamlink connection (as if that dead horse needed another beating), the main remaining issue is as described earlier in channel updates leading to the channel numbers being indexed, even when those channel numbers are already assigned to the same Pluto TV channels. This can be worked around manually, but it'd be nice to be able to selectively disable this feature or poll the server to determine whether there is a match, and if so, do not increment the minor number.

[mvallevand]

Ok that looks better and glad that is sorted my updates where 8 hours so I never saw the bug before 8am. However, I've pulled the release since users need to respect the PlutoTV https://legal.paramount.com/ca/en/plutotv/terms-of-use part #4 by redistributing PlutoTV material and I can't make them. I believe in "Don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to IPTV and copyright concerns.

Sub needs to address how to update Extras without duplicating the channels, I think I told you to untick and add only new, that should be working, and I've used that for years. Any change to an update process involving changes to the Python won't be released.

Martin

[bouilliabai]

Not sure I fully understand the implications of that. Did you mean users *not* redistributing the material? Or are there notices (other than ads) being removed that put Streamlink and NextPVR in a precarious legal position? It could be argued that any tuner or IPTV capture could be misused, which is why the principle of "fair use" usually prevails in these instances. That said, I personally choose to keep things on the up and up, so if there's some fundamental copyright issue with the extra, it'd be nice to know.

The channel numbers are, of course, indexed by the Python scripts, and reflected in the extra.xml. NextPVR sees them as new channels, and hopefully upon canceling the update or unchecking the duplicated channels, nothing in its database is changed. Again, I'm hesitant to try this because if new channel IDs are accidentally assigned, that can wreck the Kodi channel and group membership settings, and those take time to rebuild from scratch. For now, I'm only using the updated extra.xml for comparison with the existing one, editing the latter as needed to accommodate new channels, logo URL changes, and so forth, then tossing the new one. Keeping it for comparison with future updates would be a simple way to streamline the process without modifying the scripts.

[mvallevand]

I leave it to users to read rules and interpret them accordingly , the issue that caused this was a user publishing pluto-xmltv-xml for public use which I felt was in vilolation In any case I consider it a non issue now.

I am not going trying to understand what you are doing, since I just use NextPVR groups as-is.

Martin

[bouilliabai]

Regarding groups, sub said he's discovered the reason for the odd behavior and fixed it for the next release. This should allow groups to be managed in NextPVR, with edits being propagated downstream, while also being resilient to channel updates. If channel name changes could be similarly managed, that'd be icing on the cake.

A search for IPTV m3u and xmltv files leads to some of questionable origin, a few being easy to pick out when they include channels that are clearly not from FAST services. Being fairly new to this game, I can only hope that the right choices are being made. That the main source is a contributor to Kodi and his addons are listed in the forum pages is reassuring.

[mvallevand]

Groups for IPTV and groups for Extras are different so who knows. It is working for IPTV for me now though in test builds.

Martin

[bouilliabai]

This may be skin-related (Aeon-Nox Silvo), but I noticed while recording 2 VOD items at the same time, only one appears in the Recordings section of Kodi Live TV until it is restarted. Deleted recordings in NextPVR aren't reflected in Kodi right away either (or maybe at all), but are upon restart. Also, VOD series recordings aren't stored in subfolders named after the series or season, and are similarly not sorted on display in the NextPVR web interface or Kodi Recordings. Not a big deal, just that it could take extra time to peruse, especially in Kodi if a series name is long and requires waiting for auto-scroll to see the episode number and/or title.

Are there any plans to make this or the NextPVR VOD interface in general easier to navigate? I get that the main purpose of on demand is watch on a whim, which means keeping clutter to a minimum in the first place, but having to record items prior to playback necessitates at least a little planning ahead.

Just a dumb thought, but how hard would it be to create a VOD folder structure, as filtered by the lst files, that displays under Kodi Recordings as available titles that can be browsed and selected for viewing? To Kodi they would appear as recordings, but upon selection, NextPVR would initiate recording, begin streaming while recording and continue streaming when the recording is complete. Again, it's not a big issue for me, but some folks (ahem), are deterred by a multi-step process and revert to what's easy for her....

Finally, Pluto isn't the only FAST service with a sizeable on demand library. Might we anticipate additional extras for some of the other popular services at some point?

[mvallevand]

I was planning on integrating true IPTV VOD with Kodi when support is added and the initial Kodi PR is to make VOD look like recordings. However no one responded to my request for help that I will need https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?tid=65636 so I am abandoning the idea for now. Pluto TV VOD doesn't count since my addon is 100% not supported even.

Recording in pvr.nextpvr user a fake directory structure so the physical location doesn't matter I did add some support to NextTool to improved the metadata stored in the recordings

Deleted recordings and multiple recording should show up but I will now ignore all comments like this without the required Kodi debug logs and the zipped NextPVR logs. My philosophy is no logs, no problme.


For the same reason I dropped public support for Pluto TV, I won't be releasing anything I do for FAST. I suggest using pvr.iptvsimple if you want to watch VOD on demand in Kodi. That is not to say others could create an extra.

Martin

[bouilliabai]

I am most certainly interested, but not sure how much use that might be aside from running real world scenarios and commenting. That is where my experience lies, as opposed to programming or version control. I didn't even know what a PR was until looking for Ksooo's patch for the Kodi group manager. Which I still haven't found, btw.

The VOD interface in NextPVR is pretty difficult to navigate, starting with the categories approved in the Pluto lst files not appearing in alphabetical order as expected. I was comparing the list in the action movies category with that on the Pluto page, and it seems the NextPVR VOD list is limited to 17 rows. The Pluto website is so bloated when allowing JavaScript that it caused a browser crash, and it didn't go down cleanly, forcing a reboot. Guess using an old Win7 laptop for NextPVR probably isn't a great idea. Using the Pluto app on an Android box affirms that their on demand section indeed offers more than 17 rows worth in a sufficiently large movies category.

I was about to send logs showing that Kodi Recordings wasn't synching to NextPVR Recordings when 2 recordings were simultaneously selected for download, but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. A recording deleted in NextPVR still appears in Kodi for several minutes before finally being removed, indicative of a sync timer being in play. So all good there.

IPTV Simple uses m3u/xmltv for indexing channels and programs similarly to NextPVR. Judging from the json files pluto.py creates, it would be exceedingly difficult to manually parse the URLs in order to create IPTV devices for other FAST services. It's not clear what you had in mind there, and it's probably way over my head anyway.