strm file for live news

[nmyshkin]

I'm using strm files with Kodi and until early this past week was able to have a few news channels available from newschat.tv. Not the best resolution, but fairly dependable and the CNN is commercial-free (sort of). Anyway, after a server name change for each station (happens periodically), all hell broke loose. Now Google says the site may have been hacked (blank pages) but a look at the last Google cache of a typical page showed a message directing to another site (livenewschat.eu) where the same streams reside.

This is an example of a previously functioning strm file:

#EXTINF:-1,MSNBC
rtmp://climate.cdn.newschat.tv/edge playpath=msnbc_live swfUrl=http://www.newsviews.tv/player.swf live=1 pageUrl=http://www.newsviews.tv/news-views-video-six

The "climate" is the specific server section for this stream, but looking at the source behind the similar page on the new site, it appears that server sections are now handed off according to traffic for the "best" result. Could be a problem, but logically, you might just get a somewhat poorer stream unless they kick out requests which are not for the determined "best" at a given moment. I can't get far enough to find out.

Replay Media Capture shows exactly the same thing it showed at the old site:

rtmp://climate.cdn.newschat.tv/edge<break>msnbc_live

This, of course, is not a valid URL. Any error in the URL that can still be parsed results in a default to a cartoon on a fixed port.

Looking at the source on the page livenewschat.eu/politics, it seems that the swfUrl is unchanged. So I changed the pageUrl to livenewschat.eu/politics, hoping that some kind of parallel structure might actually work. No joy.

I've tried URL Snooper and something else I can't recall, as well as inspecting elements via Firefox, but either I see nothing useful or just

rtmp://climate.cdn.newschat.tv/edge<break>msnbc_live

again.

I know this is not supposed to be too easy, and it may be that the variable server name makes it impossible now, but if I could just figure out one, I could do the rest.

Anyone see a way forward?

Thanks!

[mikap]

I have the same problem and I can't figure it out either but here is another stream for you to watch MSNBC:

Stream list : https://www.tvonlinestreams.com/tag/news/

URL=http://tvemsnbc-lh.akamaihd.net/i/nbcmsnbc_1@122532/index_1296_av-p.m3u8?sd=10&rebase=on (lower res)

URL=http://tvemsnbc-lh.akamaihd.net/i/nbcmsnbc_1@122532/master.m3u8 (higher res)

[nmyshkin]

Thanks. I did just discover the MSNBC stream a day or two ago and surprised myself by downloading the master.m3u8 file to find the stream variants. That 1080p is gorgeous, but the 720p is just fine and less likely to buffer. What a great find! No commercials. And much better quality than the other site. I do miss the CNN, though, especially without the commercials, but CNN USA is virtually impossible to find anyway

I did find a reasonable substitute for BBC World News. The aspect ratio is a little wonky, but you can fix that with Kodi and it seems to remember.

URL = http://hlslive.lcdn.une.net.co/v1/AUTH_HLSLIVE/BBCW/tu1_1.m3u8

Edit: Aha! I've made some progress by looking at the source code for the mobile HTML5 streams. I now have a URL that works for VLC player but I have not been able to adapt it to a strm file format for Kodi (yet). Here's an example for the CBC (so far all other channels work by parallel construction, with the server name being randomly assigned according to server load, so this is just one case)

URL = http://zorro.cdn.newschat.tv/hls/cbc_live/index.m3u8

[Pawpcorn]

Hi...

Does anyone have an m3u8 streaming link for CNN ?

Thank you!!
Pawpcorn