UK Freeview site / m3u

[Fred Flinstone]

Hello all,
Does anyone know of a site or reliable m3u list that has uk free to air channels?
Many thanks
Fred

[jagabo]

https://easyview.eu/index.php

[Fred Flinstone]

Thanks for this.
I note the streams are HLS how do i manage to get the individual channels into a m3u. Im unsure of the script to type for these?
Many thanks

[jagabo]

You can download the streams with youtube-dl but you must provide the referer field in the header:

youtube-dl --referer "https://easyview.eu/watch.php?stream=bbc-london" "https://uk.easyview.eu/hls/bbc-london.m3u8"

You can even pipe the video from youtube-dl to VLC to view it locally in ~realtime:

youtube-dl --referer "https://easyview.eu/watch.php?stream=bbc-london" "https://uk.easyview.eu/hls/bbc-london.m3u8" -o - | "G:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" -

The referer field doesn't have to be complete. In fact, it can be as little as "h" or any other single letter.

But using the referer and link in an m3u8 file doesn't work (in VLC) for some reason:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:0 Easyview BBC One
#EXTVLCOPT:http-referrer=https://easyview.eu/watch.php?stream=bbc-london
https://uk.easyview.eu/hls/bbc-london.m3u8

Using the #EXTVLCOPT option works (with VLC) for other sites, like:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:0,Fox Soccer Plus
#EXTVLCOPT:http-referrer=https://sportsbay.org/embed/56872/1/fox-soccer-plus-live.html
https://e7.cdn4.us/ingest666/fsplus.m3u8

Note that the vlc opt is spelled "referrer", not "referer" as in most other programs.

[Fred Flinstone]

Thanks very much for the guidence.
Just my observation the easy stream is essentially and HLS stream but the fox one appears not to be and seems to work fine in most players /iptv clients. I am noting though that the HLS url for easy doesnt seem to play in anything i open the m3u in. (With the suggested code). Tivimate.. MX (and of course VLC) as you mention. Could you recommend anything that could actually read and play the easy m3u code/file.?
Many thanks

[jagabo]

No, I haven't found anything that will play the UK m3u8 links. Not even when using a UK VPN.

[Fred Flinstone]

Thanks for the reply. Nevermind.
Its interesting how the base URL will play on my phone browser https://uk.easyview.eu/hls/bbc-london.m3u8 I wonder why that is?
Regards

[jagabo]

Its interesting how the base URL will play on my phone browser https://uk.easyview.eu/hls/bbc-london.m3u8 I wonder why that is?

With what player?

[Fred Flinstone]

To be honest im not sure what player is?
But i simply put the url into my chrome browser and it just loads and starts playing. Is there a way to find out perhaps?

[netmask56]

Here's a thread dealing with this subject - a few solutions and they play ok in Firefox and VLC https://www.beyonwiz.com.au/forum/search.php?keywords=m3u8&fid%5B0%5D=16

[jagabo]

Thanks for that. I believe it's Chrome's built in player. I verified that chrome on my Android phone could play it too. This gets us one more step... It's the user-agent field that allows chrome to play the link. This m3u8 file works with VLC in Windows:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:0 Easyview BBC One
#EXTVLCOPT:http-user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 9.0; MI 8 SE) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.119 Mobile Safari/537.36
https://uk.easyview.eu/hls/bbc-london.m3u8

But VLC on my Android phone still doesn't play it.

[Fred Flinstone]

Thanks very much for the direction. Yes i tried this code and plays fine via desktop vlc (on my mac) now my next challenge is trying to get it to run in one of the earlier mentioned android iptv clients etc.. Once again, thanks for the help.
Fred