PlutoTV with OpenDCT and fHDHR

[jpwegas]

I was playing around with PlutoTV this weekend and was able to get it working in Sage using OpenDCT and fHDHR.

Background:
PlutoTV is a free IPTV service owned by ViacomCBS. It is ad supported so there is currently no subscription fee. Mostly they run old shows so if you want a 24/7 MacGyver channel or a classic 80s movie channel this is a nice service.

fHDHR is a project to make various video sources appear as an HDHR or other "devices". In most cases, this means it's pulling from an m3u IPTV stream, but it depends on the exact origin/source.

fHDHR has a "core" and plugins. Plugins can be sources (called "origins") like PlutoTV or "interfaces" like HDHR, which "look" like an HDHR device to other services like Sage or Plex or Emby.

What I did (brief summary):
I set up the fHDHR "core" (https://github.com/fHDHR/fHDHR) and the PlutoTV plugin (https://github.com/fHDHR/fHDHR_plugin_origin_plutotv). There are basic instructions on github which basically involve doing a git clone and then installing some Python dependencies. (Python3 is required.)

My final fHDHR config file is pretty basic:

[main]
uuid = RANDOMLY_ASSIGNED

[fhdhr]
address = 0.0.0.0
port = 5004

[plutotv]
username = REDACTED
password = REDACTED

The "main" section will be automatically created the first time you run it and a random value is created for the uuid. I added the other sections later. There is a web page that it presents at port 5004 and you can see how things are set up.

On the web page you might notice that by default it creates 4 tuners for PlutoTV, although you can override this in the configs. I did not test how many streams PlutoTV allows simultaneously.

Then in OpenDCT, I followed the normal instructions for creating a Generic HTTP Capture device which is basically:
1. Stop OpenDCT
2. Add the new device to the 'generic.http.device_names_csv' list in the 'opendct.properties' file. (I named mine "DCT-fHDHR PlutoTV-0").
3. Start OpenDCT so it creates a device entry.
4. Wait 20 seconds then stop OpenDCT
5. Edit 'opendct.properties' and add the device to the 'sagetv.device.global.only_devices_csv' list if you filter devices.
6. Add streaming_url for the new device: "http\://IP_ADDRESS\:5004/api/tuners?method\=stream&tuner\=0&channel\=%c%&origin\=plutotv&stream_method\=direct"
7. Start OpenDCT
8. Stop/Start SageTV (so it will pick up the new device)

You should now have a new source in SageTV. If you use Schedules Direct, there is a "Pluto TV" lineup you can use.

Issues I've noticed so far:

1. The SD "Pluto TV" lineup channel numbers don't always line up with the ones presented from fHDHR and the Pluto TV web page. I remapped (both physical and logical) the channels that I wanted so all the numbers match.
2. When OpenDCT stops using a stream, it takes 5-10 seconds for fHDHR to stop steaming. When switching from one PlutoTV channel to another, OpenDCT will try to connect again more quickly than that, and fHDHR will reject the request because the tuner is still "in use". I tried using the "stopping_executable" option to force a delay but that didn't seem to help. I have "fast_network_encoder_switch" set to false.

Some other notes:

1. There is a Locast "origin" so you should be able to use this same method for Locast. I have not tested this.
2. Because of the plugin architecture, it looks relatively easy to add new origins. This might be a way to get TV Everywhere into SageTV, but I did not have time to work on this but may in a few weeks.
3. For some origins (sources), fHDHR grabs and/or builds XMLTV data, but SageTV has no way by default to grab this from fHDHR, so in order to have EPG data you have to use a lineup that exists in Schedules Direct (PlutoTV has this), or possibly use the XMLTV plugin. I have not tried this either.
4. Originally I tried fHDHR set up with PlutoTV as a "source" and the HDHR "interface" plugin so OpenDCT would just magically see it as a new HDHR, but fHDHR's HDHR implementation isn't quite what OpenDCT and Sage expects (different APIs I believe) so they don't see these automatically like they do with real HDHR devices. fHDHR has streaming URLs that can be used even without the HDHR interface plugin, so that is what I used above. I removed the HDHR interface plugin as it wasn't needed.
5. If you want more than one PlutoTV tuner, just repeat the instructions above to add more to OpenDCT. Be sure to change the "tuner=0" to "tuner=1" or similar in the URL for each device.
6. fHDHR can have multiple origins/sources defined (like PlutoTV and Locast). If you add another origin plugin, you can add another device in OpenDCT, just change the 'origin' in the URL to match the "short" origin name.

So far it's working pretty well, although I have not done any long recordings. Hopefully ENE or someone else will have some thoughts on options for OpenDCT to wait longer between tunings of the same device.

--John

[wayner]

fHDHR seems like a project that could be useful for SageTV since HDHRs are so well supported. And I saw your post in the Locast thread as well.

We are starting to see some interesting ways in being able to integrate streaming TV channels into SageTV. Or other Media Server software like Plex, Emby, etc.

[AlphaCrew]

Nice work, Thank You!

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by wayner

fHDHR seems like a project that could be useful for SageTV since HDHRs are so well supported. And I saw your post in the Locast thread as well.

Apparently Plex and Emby use the older protocol so they work. ENE commented on another thread that OpenDCT uses the newer/faster protocol but not the older one which fHDHR (and I think other similar projects like Telly or tvhProxy) use. To use it seamlessly with Sage either fHDHR would need to support the newer protocol or OpenDCT would need to support the older one.

I do think it's good that a lot of "video source" projects are using the HDHR API to act as a common interface to various DVR like projects.

--John

[mlcarson]

The FHDHR product has been modularized so there are plugins for origins and interfaces. Wouldn't the Interface plugin make it easy to integrate into SageTV?

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by mlcarson

The FHDHR product has been modularized so there are plugins for origins and interfaces. Wouldn't the Interface plugin make it easy to integrate into SageTV?

Yes it could!

An fHDHR Interface plugin that behaves like a Sage Network Encoder would be a really cool idea and open up a lot of options.

--John

[pjpjpjpj]

Being a user of HDHRs but being completely not a programmer (i.e., most lingo in the OP was Greek to me ), I would love to know if there is a possibility that this could be packaged up into a SageTV plugin. Could that happen?

[wayner]

I think the previous post to yours is the most relevant here. There is something called fHDHR which allows various streams to mimic and HDHR. If you could do that and come up with a tuning method then there could be a variety of IPTV type of streaming services which could be used by SageTV with very little effort required.

There is a slight problem in that currently SageTV does not read those streams as it uses a newer protocol. If we could get someone to change things so that SageTV used the older protocol then it could really open up some interesting things .

And there is a much larger universe writing "plugins" to allow services like Locast, PlutoTV, etc to allow them to work with fHDHR.

Here are some of the docs:

fHDHR is a Python service to take various sources of video and make them accessible to client software including, but not limited to*:

Plex
Emby
Jellyfin
Channels
fHDHR is not directly affiliated with the above client software, and you will receive NO support for this script via their forums.

fHDHR was designed to connect to clients by emulating a piece of hardware called the HDHomeRun from SiliconDust. fHDHR is in NO way affiliated with SiliconDust, and is NOT a HDHomeRun device. fHDHR simply uses the API structure used by the authentic HDHomeRun to connect to client DVR solutions. This functionality has since been moved to a plugin.

fHDHR core supports m3u, but with plugins can emulate an HDHomeRun, or a Plex Media Grabber. Other interfaces to clients can easily be developed as plugins as well.

History
I got the Hauppage QuadHD, and the Mohu Sail as a pandemic-project. All was fine working within Plex, but I also have Emby setup as a backup to Plex when auth is broken.

I thought to myself, "Self, I should look on github for a way to share my tv tuner between the two".

That's when I tried both npvrProxy with NextPVR as well as tvhProxy with TVHeadend. I had to tinker with both to get them working, but I started testing which one I liked more.

Around this same time, I stumbled upon locast2plex by tgorgdotcom. I wanted to contribute to that project to get it to a point that I could fork it to work for other video stream sources.

The locast2plex code development wasn't going quite fast enough for the feature-creep in my head.

I then proceeded to create the initial iteration of fHDHR which I originally called "FakeHDHR". I've rewritten the core functionality a few times before landing on the current code structure, which feels 'right'.

I've worked really hard to create a structure that simplifies new variants of the core code to work with different 'origin' streams. Combining these works really well with xTeVe.

One of the variants goes as far as scraping a table from a PDF file for creating a channel guide!

I can easily create more variants of the project to do other video sources. Paid ones, I could potentially accept donations for, as I don't want to pay to develop for multiple platforms.

[pjpjpjpj]

Wayner, not sure if you were talking to me... I understood "what" this is, I was just wondering whether it could be packaged into a SageTV plugin where you'd click "install" and it would do everything needed and maybe an interface could be created (or a simple how-to instruction guide where you'd have to manually enter feeds into the sage.properties file or some other file or GUI). In other words, for folks like me, adding/writing scripts and manually installing other files/software and setting them all up would take a lot of "for dummies"-level explanation, so I wondered if a lot of that could be rolled into a plug-in.

Also wondering if those looking at this were around and/or remember Michaeldjcox's web feed encoder plugin back in v7 era, that somewhat did the same thing (https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...b+feed+encoder). Michael quit Sage in January 2020 (per his farewell post then). His plugin worked for some internet video streams and even online streaming radio stations (you'd just have a logo on the screen while the music streamed through SageTV) and created fake channels in your EPG for them. I never got it working well myself, but again, that's probably due to my aforementioned lack of programming knowledge.

[wayner]

I was responding to you. I am not sure how much work would be needed to set this up. I haven't really used OpenDCT. It takes a bit of work but it isn't too bad. Once that is set up it shouldn't be too bad to get the stream into SageTV. The other issue then becomes the guide data. If the channels that you are receiving in something like Pluto are esixting TV channels then it shouldn't be too hard to pull the data into SageTV, assuming that you subscribe to guide data today from SD. Getting data for online only channels might be a bit trickier and require a bit of work but it shouldn't be too hard.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I was just wondering whether it could be packaged into a SageTV plugin where you'd click "install" and it would do everything needed and maybe an interface could be created (or a simple how-to instruction guide where you'd have to manually enter feeds into the sage.properties file or some other file or GUI). In other words, for folks like me, adding/writing scripts and manually installing other files/software and setting them all up would take a lot of "for dummies"-level explanation, so I wondered if a lot of that could be rolled into a plug-in.

The issue with making it an easy to install plugin is that you would still need to set up the fHDHR server and get that configured. The OpenDCT config was actually easier than getting fHDHR set up. I guess it would be possible to bundle it all in a Sage plugin, and have some easy way to configure it, but I don't have time right now to work on something like that. My main goal was to show that using fHDHR was a possibility (at least for some types of sources/origins), even though it is a very manual process.

--John

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

The issue with making it an easy to install plugin is that you would still need to set up the fHDHR server and get that configured. The OpenDCT config was actually easier than getting fHDHR set up. I guess it would be possible to bundle it all in a Sage plugin, and have some easy way to configure it, but I don't have time right now to work on something like that. My main goal was to show that using fHDHR was a possibility (at least for some types of sources/origins), even though it is a very manual process.

--John

Thanks, that was sorta what I was asking. I wasn't asking you to necessarily do it. ... just wondering if the fHDHR installation *could* be automated to occur within a plugin installation.

Back in the Sage v6 days there were a number of plugins I installed which had pretty complicated installations but folks wrote really great "how to" pages that made it fairly easy to follow along and get things working. Unfortunately there aren't the huge number of people using Sage anymore (both from the lack of interested programmers and from the lack of interested users who finance... er... egg them on )

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Thanks, that was sorta what I was asking. I wasn't asking you to necessarily do it. ... just wondering if the fHDHR installation *could* be automated to occur within a plugin installation.

Back in the Sage v6 days there were a number of plugins I installed which had pretty complicated installations but folks wrote really great "how to" pages that made it fairly easy to follow along and get things working. Unfortunately there aren't the huge number of people using Sage anymore (both from the lack of interested programmers and from the lack of interested users who finance... er... egg them on )

I think it should be possible to get most of the fHDHR components installed as part of a Sage plugin. The OpenDCT setup might still have to be manual, although it might be possible to automate part of that step as well.

--John

[VCRUser]

It looks (from their github) that fHDHR doesn't work under Windows.

https://fhdhr.github.io/fHDHR_Docs/usage/

[wayner]

Originally Posted by VCRUser

It looks (from their github) that fHDHR doesn't work under Windows.

https://fhdhr.github.io/fHDHR_Docs/usage/

Increasing, Linux runs under windows with WSL2. If you haven't installed this then you should. This may run under Windows if you install Ubuntu 20.04 under Windows. You can also run docker on the most recent versions of Win10 https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/install/

This is from the link you posted:

Docker¶

This portion of the guide assumes you are using a Linux system with both docker and docker-compose installed. This (or some variation thereof) may work on Mac or Windows, but has not been tested.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by VCRUser

It looks (from their github) that fHDHR doesn't work under Windows.

https://fhdhr.github.io/fHDHR_Docs/usage/

fHDHR is written in Python 3 so I would expect that you should be able to run it on Windows as you would any other Python 3 program.

--John

[VCRUser]

Originally Posted by wayner

Increasing, Linux runs under windows with WSL2. If you haven't installed this then you should. This may run under Windows if you install Ubuntu 20.04 under Windows. You can also run docker on the most recent versions of Win10 https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/install/

This is from the link you posted:

I really don't want to get into Docker (I know very little about it), and am using Win 8, not 10. Does this even work under Windows 8? I assume if I was able to get it set up under Docker, I'd have to run my whole Sage server under Linux/Docker if I wanted to use this - that all seems like far too much trouble. But if it all I needed to install was Python to make it work under Win 8 and my current Sage server setup (which is a brand-new setup anyway still getting its fine points worked out), I could see giving it a try. Has anyone here gotten it working under vanilla Windows + Python?

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by VCRUser

I really don't want to get into Docker (I know very little about it), and am using Win 8, not 10. Does this even work under Windows 8? I assume if I was able to get it set up under Docker, I'd have to run my whole Sage server under Linux/Docker if I wanted to use this - that all seems like far too much trouble. But if it all I needed to install was Python to make it work under Win 8 and my current Sage server setup (which is a brand-new setup anyway still getting its fine points worked out), I could see giving it a try. Has anyone here gotten it working under vanilla Windows + Python?

You can run fHDHR on a completely separate system, it does not have to run on the same host as SageTV nor does it have to run in Docker. I run mine on a dedicated Ubuntu 20.x VM that is on a separate physical host from my main SageTV server. fHDHR just needs to run on something on your network that supports Python 3 and can be reached by whichever host is running OpenDCT.


--John

[VCRUser]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

You can run fHDHR on a completely separate system, it does not have to run on the same host as SageTV nor does it have to run in Docker. I run mine on a dedicated Ubuntu 20.x VM that is on a separate physical host from my main SageTV server. fHDHR just needs to run on something on your network that supports Python 3 and can be reached by whichever host is running OpenDCT.


--John

Ok, so I need Python 3.7 (no prob) + OpenDCT, which could run under Windows, in order to use fHDHR? I took a look at the OpenDCT thread and there are over 70 pages there, but nothing (at least on the first page or the GitHub site referenced) that tells someone completely new to it what it's for, what it does, etc. Is there a doc of that sort somewhere that I just haven't found?

[wayner]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

You can run fHDHR on a completely separate system, it does not have to run on the same host as SageTV nor does it have to run in Docker. I run mine on a dedicated Ubuntu 20.x VM that is on a separate physical host from my main SageTV server. fHDHR just needs to run on something on your network that supports Python 3 and can be reached by whichever host is running OpenDCT.

What would be the ideal way to run it? Have it added to the SageTV docker so that it is in the same docker? Have it in a separate docker?