German Channels missing!

[darkspook1]

ZDF ZDF neo ZDF info das Erste MDR thanks in advance!

[darkspook1]

I've searched about them on google you can add them easily

EXTINF:-1,ZDF HD

https://zdf-hls-01.akamaized.net/hls/live/2002460/de/high/master.m3u8

EXTINF:-1,ZDF info

https://zdfhls17-i.akamaihd.net/hls/live/744750/de/high/master.m3u8

EXTINF:-1,ZDF neo

https://zdf-hls-02.akamaized.net/hls/live/2002461/de/high/master.m3u8

EXTINF:-1,MDR Sachsen

https://mdrsnhls-lh.akamaihd.net/i/livetvmdrsachsen_de@513998/master.m3u8

EXTINF:-1,MDR Sachsen-Anhalt

https://mdrsahls-lh.akamaihd.net/i/livetvmdrsachsenanhalt_de@513999/master.m3u8

EXTINF:-1,MDR Thüringen

https://mdrthuhls-lh.akamaihd.net/i/livetvmdrthueringen_de@514027/master.m3u8

[lmazardo]

From my french ISP, I could not reach ZDF, I've the following errors.

vlc https://zdfhls17-i.akamaihd.net/hls/live/744750/de/high/master.m3u8                                                           
VLC media player 3.0.7 Vetinari (revision 3.0.7-0-g86cee31099)
[00005623089cb570] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.                                    
[00007f68d0001690] access stream error: HTTP 403 error
[00007f68d031cd20] access stream error: HTTP 403 error
[00007f68d031cd20] access stream error: HTTP 403 error
[00007f68d0001520] access stream error: HTTP 403 error
[00007f68d0001520] access stream error: HTTP 403 error
[00007f68dc001810] access stream error: HTTP 403 error
[00007f68d0001520] access stream error: HTTP 403 error
[00007f68dc301b90] access stream error: HTTP 403 error

[darkspook1]

hmmm... from my German ISP, they work just fine! do I have to change something? I am relatively new in these things!

[darkspook1]

I've checked! they work only on German ISP! would you add them or I doesn't make any sense adding them only for the people in Germany? :)

[freearhey]

We don’t add geo-blocked broadcasts, as they are too difficult to support.

[DocSniper]

A list of working German channels: https://github.com/mediathekview/zapp/blob/master/app/src/main/res/raw/channels.json However, I haven't tested if some of them are geo-blocked.

[freearhey]

@DocSniper Unfortunately, not all channels work (some are really geo-blocked), but I added the rest.

Thanks for your help!

[DocSniper]

@freearhey Glad, that i could help. :-)

But one more thing to the rejection of geo-blocking channels.

While I understand the problems of maintaining the geo-blocked channels, if you live in a country and are not blocked then you want to have all possible channels, otherwise the list is unfortunately almost worthless (in my opinion). For example, to build a full German TV on IP basis with Kodi, you also need ARD, ZDF and other channels.

Possible solutions:

• How about adding the geo-blocked channels to the lists and adding something like "(geo-blocked)" to the channel name, then people can guess that it's not playable abroad.
• Or alternatively, create a second list, e.g. as "[CountryCode]-geo-blocked.m3u". Then the standard m3u files would remain unchanged but as a resident you would have all the channels (when merging the lists).

Just a suggestion, I understand that this only complicates everything. ;-)

[freearhey]

@DocSniper We only recently discussed this with @boomski, so if you don’t mind, I just copy my point of view on this issue here:

To prevent playlists from becoming obsolete, the links in them must be constantly checked.

A couple of times a month I run a script on my computer that automatically goes through all 8000 links and checks if broadcasts are available. And for this script there is no difference the channel is geo-blocked or just does not work. The same thing with the VLC player, usually it does not even produce any errors.

At the same time, people from completely different places can use these playlists, and adding broadcasts limited to one/two countries to them seems a little unjustified to me.

That’s why I so much resist adding such links.

If someone is ready to write a script that can bypass geo-blocking, let me know. And then we can discuss how to store such links in the repository.

[DocSniper]

@freearhey Yeah, I think so too, it's hard to check geo-blocked links and dead links are of course bad.

But one more thought:

• The largest number of users of a country list, e.g. the DE list, are probably Germans who live in Germany (unblocked users).
• Only very few users of the DE list are probably Germans or German speakers living abroad (geo-blocked users).
• Those who can not speak German will probably not be interested in the DE list at all (geo-blocked non-users).

Therefore, in my opinion, also blocked channels should be included, since almost all users of the country lists are not affected by geo-blocking. ;-) But that's just my opinion and I fully understand the reasons why this project excludes geo-blocked channels.

To be constructive, here's a suggestion to check all 8000 links from a single country. With Wget or curl in combination with TOR as proxy it could be possible to check all links. TOR can use certain country exit nodes with the command tor --ExitNodes "{us}" or tor --ExitNodes \{us\}. So a bash script could start TOR with appropriate exit nodes for a specific country, then check this country list and exit TOR. Then continue with the next exit nodes and the next country list. See: https://2019.www.torproject.org/docs/tor-manual.html.en#ExitNodes

[darkspook1]

@DocSniper thanks for supporting. Actually I thank the most German speakers will be eventually in Germany. For checking purpose, man can apply tor or other VPN program and the people who suffer from the Geo-blocking can run a VPN program themselves on their computer or Android-Box.

[freearhey]

I created a new issue #480. Let's continue the discussion there so that the rest can also participate in it.