VLC and playlists (m3u8 type files)

Thanks to @antspants who suggested to me the idea of using m3u files (playlists) as they contain relative links and so don't need to be placed into the actual folders containing the music.

VLC creates these excellently -- simply open folder of your music and save the playlist to a file -- store anywhere on your computer.

The newer m3u8 format works too -- particularly useful if your music contains non standard Latin char sets or chars outside the normal 256 byte ascii char set.

cheers
jimbo

Apparently you can also make m3u files for online playlists. I would like to investigate that (one day)

One common use of the M3U file format is creating a single-entry playlist file pointing to a stream on the Internet. The created file provides easy access to that stream and is often used in downloads from a website, for emailing, and for listening to Internet radio.

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antspants said:

Apparently you can also make m3u files for online playlists. I would like to investigate that (one day)

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Hi there

@antspants
It does work -- a good way to start is if you have an amazon firestick -- sideload vlc on it and you can play remote files- or even better sideload kodi on it, install an iptv app -- iptv-basic is a safe one to install via the kodi plugins repository and enable the m3u plugin. Internet radio operates a bit different though. If you have an Android phone install Radiogarden which gives a load of world wide free Internet stations (not BBC as they've altered their media streams) and check out the format.


Note users in the UK are blocked from "Foreign - to them" Radio stations due to some type of N.Korean "Big Brother" system even when there's ZERO copyright on a whole slew of these radio stations so all this "Rights issue" is a 100% load of high quality "Bow Locks").

The crazy thing is that the stations themselves are perfectly accessible via their Internet sites - but the advantage of an app like radio garden is you just select and play the station - the app runs in the background so you can carry on with whatever you are doing. If you cast to a screen which has an inbuilt sound bar you then lose sound if you switch away from the foreground site to another screen. However that's another issue -- a VPN will always get round that trivial problem of Geoblocking.


Added ---

Another solution for playing in a car etc -- set up a home web server with the m3u directory acessible. Then you should be able to access that remotely via a phone and play the music -- output to speakers, car aux in / blu tooth etc etc. This works so far at home -- I've set up a 2nd access point using the samsung phone facility and the phone's network -- disabled the wifi temporarily so I have 2 totally different networks. From the phone login to temporary home web server and just play --- "Seemples" .... The only thing I'm struggling witth is that I can only have one top level folder but for just playing music that's fine -- I'm no expert at this - perhaps some here who run their own servers might help a bit here. Be careful though some ISP's don't like people using their service to provide Internet Servers !!!.


Cheers
jimbo

Wouldn't all this require unlimited data at all times???
That would cost me a fortune!!!

Edwin said:

Wouldn't all this require unlimited data at all times???
That would cost me a fortune!!!

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I was thinking the same thing. Mobile data in Australia is criminal.
this is why we rank so far down the list of data & modern infrastructure.

Edwin said:

Wouldn't all this require unlimited data at all times???
That would cost me a fortune!!!

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What unlimited data ??? . The music data is on your own system !!! all you are doing is just playing an audio stream which can even for uncompressed .flac files run at a very small bit rate.

Video is a problem - but audio streams are tiny. Just try it. Play a few files from your own system with the wifi on the phone switched off -- and then check data usage -- you'll be surprised how small audio bandwidth is.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

The music data is on your own system !!!

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I don't get it!
You mentioned playing audio streams from online stations in your car when you're out and about! How does that work???

Edwin said:

I don't get it!
You mentioned playing audio streams from online stations in your car when you're out and about! How does that work???

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No problem.

@Edwin
@antspants

just set a PHONE to radiogarden and then output the audio to car's blu tooth / aux in or whatever. You won't use much data. (Assuming you've got mobile coverage though. Might be tricky in outback in 'OZ but in cities / towns should be OK).

For iPhones / Samsung's there's plenty of usbc adapters to a male or female jack socket. So just plug that to your aux in. You don't need car's internet system.

cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

You won't use much data. Assuming you've got mobile coverage though.

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That's my point, I don't have data! I'm a cheap b*stard, I have a $5/month texting plan! Period!
That's why I take all my stuff with me...,

in my car...



and, on my Phone...

Edwin said:

That's my point, I don't have data! I'm a cheap b*stard, I have a $5/month texting plan! Period!
That's why I take all my stuff with me...,

in my car...

View attachment 98763

and, on my Phone...

View attachment 98765

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I drive along side of people who have open WiFi. It’s called Road-Range.

jimbo45 said:

The crazy thing is that the stations themselves are perfectly accessible via their Internet sites - but the advantage of an app like radio garden is you just select and play the station

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I don't use Radio Garden app, but there are other Android radio apps that still provide BBC radio stations and you can also add the streaming URL's to apps from this type of source...

trevo said:

I don't use Radio Garden app, but there are other Android radio apps that still provide BBC radio stations and you can also add the streaming URL's to apps from this type of source...

BBC Radio Streams

BBC Radio Streams. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

gist.github.com

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@trevo

Those haven't worked for a year or more - you have to use the BBC sound app itself with / without a vpn depending on the content being broadcast.

e.g


Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Those haven't worked for a year or more - you have to use the BBC sound app itself with / without a vpn depending on the content being broadcast.

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That's why I said "this type of source"...the links come and go, the last ones I used are linked below, but for the last month or so the app I use, RadioDroid 2, gets the BBC stations without any problem currently.

trevo said:

That's why I said "this type of source"...the links come and go, the last ones I used are linked below, but for the last month or so the app I use, RadioDroid 2, gets the BBC stations without any problem currently.

BBC Radio Streams

BBC Radio Streams. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

gist.github.com

Click to expand...

I think also the issue is getting non UK stations from within the UK - a VPN fixes that though. No probs in the USA though.

Here though your link in Isl throws up a 404 !!!. RadioGarden still works perfectly.

Cheers
jimbo

antspants said:

Apparently you can also make m3u files for online playlists. I would like to investigate that (one day)

Click to expand...

Create m3u for online playlist? Like this How to Create M3U8 Playlist for IPTV in Notepad