2014-11-12, 17:12
Bare with me on this, there's a lot of information and misinformation scattered about the place so I thought it best to put it all here and see what anyone can come up with!
In the UK, there are two FTA (free-to-air) TV services; Freeview (DVB-T/T2) and Freesat (DVB-S/S2).
On DVB-T/T2, there are various channels which can instruct an MHEG-IC compatible device (2012+ Freeview HD box) to grab an IPTV stream (MHEG is the interactive/red button stuff). These channels are provided by Connect TV, now owned by Arqiva who provide the DVB-T/T2 broadcast/transmission services. There is also the upcoming Freeview Connect service that will also use MHEG-IC. The channels can act as portals to multiple IPTV streams - live or on-demand (think iPlayer, 4oD etc.) or can just link to one stream so it appears to be a regular channel (like Motors TV). Now, although regular consumers have to have a Freeview HD box (and probably something else for Freeview Connect), we shouldn't. These streams don't appear to be listed anywhere so for starters, some kind of MHEG-IC software layer is required to get them - or even just a decoder which can dump a list. However, although the MHEG-IC channels are broadcast over DVB-T (DVB-T2 currently not required), none of the existing PVR backends seem to support MHEG-IC - so we're missing out!
The big UK broadcasters have recently announced a large investment into Freeview Connect so these hidden IPTV streams are set to get better and better.
Freesat also have a similar service called Freetime. It uses a combination of HTML5 apps and HbbTV.
So, all this cool extra content is out there but hidden away in consumer boxes - Kodi seems like the perfect home for it! At the very least, all that should be needed for the Freeview stuff is a regularly updated list of IPTV streams, we just need an MHEG-IC decoder. Anyone up to the challenge?
Info in the MHEG-5 broadcast profile: http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_es/2021...20101m.pdf
Std MHEG-5 lib (doesn't mention MHEG-IC comparability): http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Re...HEG_Engine
I've also emailed Arqiva on the off-chance they'll give them up!
In the UK, there are two FTA (free-to-air) TV services; Freeview (DVB-T/T2) and Freesat (DVB-S/S2).
On DVB-T/T2, there are various channels which can instruct an MHEG-IC compatible device (2012+ Freeview HD box) to grab an IPTV stream (MHEG is the interactive/red button stuff). These channels are provided by Connect TV, now owned by Arqiva who provide the DVB-T/T2 broadcast/transmission services. There is also the upcoming Freeview Connect service that will also use MHEG-IC. The channels can act as portals to multiple IPTV streams - live or on-demand (think iPlayer, 4oD etc.) or can just link to one stream so it appears to be a regular channel (like Motors TV). Now, although regular consumers have to have a Freeview HD box (and probably something else for Freeview Connect), we shouldn't. These streams don't appear to be listed anywhere so for starters, some kind of MHEG-IC software layer is required to get them - or even just a decoder which can dump a list. However, although the MHEG-IC channels are broadcast over DVB-T (DVB-T2 currently not required), none of the existing PVR backends seem to support MHEG-IC - so we're missing out!
The big UK broadcasters have recently announced a large investment into Freeview Connect so these hidden IPTV streams are set to get better and better.
Freesat also have a similar service called Freetime. It uses a combination of HTML5 apps and HbbTV.
So, all this cool extra content is out there but hidden away in consumer boxes - Kodi seems like the perfect home for it! At the very least, all that should be needed for the Freeview stuff is a regularly updated list of IPTV streams, we just need an MHEG-IC decoder. Anyone up to the challenge?
Info in the MHEG-5 broadcast profile: http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_es/2021...20101m.pdf
Std MHEG-5 lib (doesn't mention MHEG-IC comparability): http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Re...HEG_Engine
I've also emailed Arqiva on the off-chance they'll give them up!
