Wednesday, March 30, 2016

IPTV M3U players

If You have a IPTV playlist in M3U format and want a convenient way to watch it, there are quite a few different solutions for it and not all of them might be suitable for every circumstance, and as I have quite an experience with this situation, I'll try to list all the useful stuff I had a chance to try out.

Before I begin, Your playlist might be compiled from multicast streams and Your router might forbid multicast packets to pass through it, so You either need to enable multicast in Your router or use udpxy, but this post is not about that, so lets assume that router is set up and streams reach the device You want to watch on, here is a list of players tested by me:

Simple stand alone players:
Media Centers - most feature packed solutions:
  • Kodi + IPTV Simple Client - my personal favorite, works great on Windows, should be same on Mac and Linux, however did not test it on Android
  • MediaPortal - another very powerful media center package with great EPG support, but quite hard to set up compared to Kodi or Plex
  • Plex + IPTV.bundle - plugin made by me, EPG is much humbler and playback capabilities are quite limited compared to Kodi or MediaPortal, but devices supports is wider, check github repository for more information retired by Plex
  • New! Emby - did not test much but it has IPTV support out of the box
  • New! Jellyfin - needs testing
DLNA servers - when You are limited to DLNA:
  • xupnpd - ultra compact DLNA server, no EPG but completely free, can be installed on a router!
  • Serviio - very powerful DLNA server, lacks EPG and free version is limited
Smart TV apps and widgets - when you can't run a dedicated server, these are hosted solutions:
Links for further research:

And finally my choice of EPG "grabing" is WebGrab+Plus.

Thats it for now, If You have a solution not listed in here, please share it in the comments bellow.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Phone bike mounts and holders

I am not affiliated by any of these companies, but I used their stuff and it's great, so just sharing and saving for myself so I do not need to google every time I get a new phone:

Friday, March 4, 2016

Removing Skype adds

Hit Win+S, type "internet options" without quotes, choose Security tab, click Restricted Sites, click Sites and add "apps.skype.com" without quotes, enjoy: