FastChannels Player — a new Android HDMI-encoder bridge
Some channels can't be played back directly and need a real device to play them — a Fire TV or Android TV box whose HDMI output gets captured back into Channels DVR. This started as an experiment built on Kodi; I've since pivoted to FastChannels Player, a custom Android app that uses the device's own built-in Fire TV/Android TV player instead.
Important: this is not a decryption tool. FastChannels Player doesn't crack, strip, or bypass anything. It remote-triggers normal playback on your own device and captures that device's HDMI output, just like using a capture card with a TV. Provider licensing and entitlement checks still happen normally on your device.
- More reliable playback than the earlier Kodi-based experiment — no more random freezes on channel or ad-break transitions.
- Works with either a fixed single HDMI encoder — tested with this single-port HDMI encoder — or ah4c, a third-party project that supports a much wider range of capture hardware: Hauppauge, Magewell, Blackmagic DeckLink, network encoders, and more. The ah4c path is now tested end-to-end with a LinkPi network encoder and Fire TV Stick.
- Fully automated install: a button in Settings pushes the app to your device over ADB, with no manual sideloading.
- Captions/subtitles, a one-click "Add to Channels DVR" button, and an idle-stop watchdog so a channel doesn't stream forever after everyone stops watching.
This is still device- and hardware-dependent setup, so please read the setup guide before diving in: docs/fc-player-setup.md.
New TV Everywhere providers
- YouTube and YouTube TV are now selectable sign-in providers in Settings → TV Everywhere, alongside Cox, Sling, and Xfinity.
- YouTube TV is newer and less battle-tested than the other providers, and is flagged as such in the UI. Let me know how it holds up.
Bug fixes
Cleaned up a batch of sign-in and guide-data issues on providers that have been around a while — none of these are new problems, just old ones I finally tracked down: NBC guide data going empty after NBC changed something on their end, FYI (A+E) sign-in breaking after A+E restructured their site, Cox sign-ins occasionally colliding during multi-channel logins, DirecTV Stream browser sign-in reliability, and improved Gracenote guide-ID matching across several TVE channels.