Hi I am running a raspberry pi 4 and I have an issue and I am unsure what iptv client to use I got an iptv provider that doesn’t use m3us, only epgs can someone recommend a iptv app that doesn’t require an m3u I think that is part of issue with iptv simple client
EPG generally just contains the program guide information.
An IPTV stream is usually in the form of a m3u8 url/file which contains links to the individual codec streams available for that channel (one or more video streams, potentially having several resolutions available, and audio streams, such as multiple languages or audio formats) Although some streaming providers use non-iptv methods, such as RealAudio streams, or various other older, out-dated streaming methods.
A m3u would generally contain a list of m3u8 streams which represent the “channels”. That is what the iptv plugin expects.
see M3U - Wikipedia
if you have a list of m3u8 streams, you may need to build the m3u list yourself and add them all to it. If they are weird streams such as real-audio, or other non-m3u8 links, you may be able to use something like tvheadend on the back-end with plugins like ffmpeg to convert the streams into hls so that they can be played like normal iptv streams. (that is a more advanced topic)
Can you give a sample of the EPG data which you say contains the video stream info embedded in it? (I’ve never heard of such a thing myself). It does sometimes work the other way though (where one of the streams provided by the m3u8 is the EPG data).
Can you identify the provider? That would help us determine if there is a client available for it.
Note some “providers”, such as pluto, or xumo use a “video-on-demand” mechanism for each show, where they expect their custom program to read both the epg data, and the links to the individual programs from their api. (as well as embed commercials on-the-fly). Those are messy to deal with, although there are plugins available for them (including some plugins that can convert them to regular iptv m3u and epg files/links that iptv simple plugin can then read, with mixed results.