Quickly Test a URL in PLEX

I am very new to plex. I have used XBMC and created channel of my own to work with a Indian TV site. 

 

Currently the Indian TV site switched it's streaming to an encrypted HTTP Streaming (HLS) protocol using the JWPlayer flash player to play video in the browser. Currently the m3u8 is not playable in VLC and XBMC. 

 

I hearing good things about plex. I am willing to make the switch and start my own channel development in plex.

But I wanted to confirm that Plex can handle and play the m3u8 HLS URL first, before I make a jump.

 

So, how to quickly test a HLS streaming URL is supported and working in PLEX before starting a new channel development.

 

 

For these purposes I made myself a quick and dirty test channel where I just hard code in the URL in question and have it build a quick MediaObject with it to see if playback will work or not.  Hope this helps.

Great! suggestion.. Can point me to a reference URL which has contain ur sample code?

I don't think I've ever posted it onto github and I don't have one handy on my machine right now to copy and paste, you just need a very basic channel and instead of doing all the work to find the title, url, etc, just hard code them as a test.

I did the hard way... Reading the beginner guide.. from 
 
https://plexapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201169747
 
Please see my code and help me understand what's the error message? So I can fix it.
TITLE = 'Tamil ETV' 
RSS_FEED = 'http://askaninja.blip.tv/rss' 
NS = {'blip':'http://blip.tv/dtd/blip/1.0', 'media':'http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/'} 
ART = 'art-default.jpg' 
ICON = 'icon-default.png' 
ICON_SEARCH = 'icon-search.png'
@handler('/video/tamiletv', TITLE)
##################################################################### 
# This (optional) function is initially called by the PMS framework to 
# initialize the plug-in. This includes setting up the Plug-in static 
# instance along with the displayed artwork. 
def Start(): 
# Initialize the plug-in 
Plugin.AddViewGroup("Details", viewMode="InfoList", mediaType="items") 
Plugin.AddViewGroup("List", viewMode="List", mediaType="items") 
# Setup the default attributes for the ObjectContainer 
ObjectContainer.title1 = TITLE 
ObjectContainer.view_group = 'List' 
ObjectContainer.art = R(ART) 
# Setup the default attributes for the other objects 
DirectoryObject.thumb = R(ICON) 
DirectoryObject.art = R(ART) 
VideoClipObject.thumb = R(ICON) 
VideoClipObject.art = R(ART)

def MainMenu():
oc = ObjectContainer()
oc.add(VideoClipObject(url=“http://190.4.111.195:1911/test/testv/playlist.m3u8",title=“testTV”,summary="”))
return oc

I am getting error 

014-02-10 21:09:01,411 (1860) :  CRITICAL (core:561) - Exception (most recent call last):

  File "C:\Users\puppy\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins\Framework.bundle\Contents\Resources\Versions\2\Python\Framework\components\runtime.py", line 840, in handle_request
    result = f(**d)
  File "C:\Users\puppy\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins\Framework.bundle\Contents\Resources\Versions\2\Python\Framework\handlers\base.py", line 119, in call
    result = self.func(*args, **kwargs)
TypeError: Thumb() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)
 

On a quick look unless something went really wrong with pasting the whitespace (tabs) are not correct.  Python is incredibly fussy about this.

Also a couple of other things.

1.  Not positive of this but I think that most (if not all) m3u8's are HTTPLiveStream (HLS), so a standard VideoClipObject is probably not going to work, you have to tell the Framework that it's HLS.

2.  using the url= infers that your object is going to be using a URL service to setup all the metadata and media parts, etc (and in this case it's not).  You will need to use key= and rating_key= in order to do this.  You can set them both to that url value you used above and it should work.

I suggest you look at some of the docs that shopgirl has posted in this forum, some of them are going to help you get started in the channel framework.

incorrect tab is copy paste issue. 

are you pointing to this post  https://forums.plex.tv/topic/88056-httplivestreamurl/ ?

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