Table of Contents
Kodi
This page needs to be tested on the current setup
I mostly use Kodi to watch IPTV on it and some movies, although going on the respective TV channels' websites and check out their video players work just as well, at least for the free-to-air channels. It also comes with a remote control app on phone.
Useful plugins
| Dépôt Québec | Has mostly everything related to the main free-to-air channels in Québec and their VOD/streaming services |
| IPTV Simple Client | See iptv |
| InputStream Helper | Make sure Widevine is installed, see widevine |
| InputStream Adaptive |
IPTV
Kodi has a plugin for IPTV from M3U playlists, with support for EPG. I like to assign channel numbers as if it was on an actual cable set-top box from a proper TV provider, so I usually make my own playlists so I can add the numbers and only keep the channels that works for me.
Installation
- Install IPTV Simple Client.
- In Kodi's PVR & Live TV settings, make sure Use channel order from backend(s) and Use channel numbers from backend in the Channels section are checked.
- Obtain the URL corresponding to your playlist, and feed it in the IPTV Simple Client settings as the M3U playlist URL.
- Make sure Auto refresh mode is enabled and is set to at least once a day.
Common M3U format
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="..." tvg-chno="69" tvg-logo="..." group-title="General",Generic TV channel
https://example.com/streamURLhere.m3u8
| EXTINF attribute | Comments |
|---|---|
| tvg-id | Station ID, used to sync with the EPG and should be the same as in the EPG config |
| tvg-chno | Kodi will use it as a channel number. You can use a decimal point, useful for mapping radio to their FM frequencies or TV to your region's virtual channel mapping as used in ATSC in North America |
| tvg-logo | URL to a channel logo |
| group-title | Kodi can use it to make categories |
| radio | Set to “true” if it's an audio-only radio station, they'll show up on a different “Radio” tab separate from the TV stations in Kodi |
It works fairly well for most free-to-air channels and radio, although some of them use some tricks like dynamic URLs and formats the IPTV plugin won't like so you'd need another dedicated plugin, although you can use some scripts on a HTTP server to generate a proper M3U playlist for them ;) Some of them are also geolocalized, there's not much you can do other than try to fake your location with proxies and VPNs.
There's also services around so you can use YouTube and Twitch streams. Look for services that aren't down as I write this, or spin up new ones again
EPG
Needs to run the EPG script on a cron job somewhere and point Kodi to it
Sources
- https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv (Global)
- https://a39.dev/yuki/iptv (Québec City TV and radio)
Widevine
Required for some channels.
If you install Widevine from the InputStream Helper settings, it's going to download a ChromeOS recovery image and extract the needed file from it, if you don't want to waste time and bandwidth you might want to fetch it from an existing web browser install instead. Depending of the browser, you can find it either in /usr/lib/chromium, /opt/google/chrome, or /usr/lib/firefox.
mkdir -p ~/.kodi/cdm ln -s /usr/lib/chromium/libwidevinecdm.so ~/.kodi/cdm/libwidevinecdm.so
Note that we're doing a symbolic link, so we can automatically keep it updated.
Now on the playlist you can do something like this:
#EXTINF:-1,Widevine-protected Channel
#KODIPROP:inputstream=inputstream.adaptive
#KODIPROP:inputstream.adaptive.license_type=com.widevine.alpha
#KODIPROP:inputstream.adaptive.license_key=https://example.com/license||R{SSM}|
https://example.com/manifest.mpd