SamoTech IPTV Player {Windows App}
I’ve been building a Windows IPTV player with AI assistance — looking for real-world feedback
Hi everyone,
I’ve been working on a Windows IPTV player called SamoTech IPTV Player, and I think I’ve reached the point where automated testing isn't enough anymore.
I’d like to get it in front of people who actually use IPTV players and see what happens.
GitHub:
https://github.com/SamoTech/samotech-iptv-player
Latest release:
https://github.com/SamoTech/samotech-iptv-player/releases/tag/v0.1.5
The project is open source and currently uses PySide6/Qt for the interface and VLC/libVLC for playback.
It supports M3U/M3U8, Xtream, and MAG/Stalker-style sources, along with Live TV, Movies/VOD, Series, EPG, Favorites, History, channel switching and fullscreen playback.
One thing I’ve been quite strict about is the playback architecture. I don't want to keep adding different playback engines every time something doesn't work. The current design is built around libVLC and a single native video surface, with playback liveness and recovery handled around it.
The project has also been developed quite heavily with ChatGPT and Manus.
I use them for things like repository analysis, protocol research, code review, implementation, testing, debugging and documentation. I still make the decisions and review the results, but I’ve been using AI much more like an engineering assistant than a code generator.
And honestly, this has created an interesting problem.
I've accumulated a lot of automated tests and documentation, but I don't want to fool myself into thinking that means the player is ready for every IPTV provider.
For example, the latest provider validation couldn't be completed because the authorized Xtream endpoint available for testing returned HTTP 403 before we could obtain actual media URLs. I also didn't have a populated authorized M3U or MAG source available for the test.
So I'm not claiming universal IPTV compatibility.
That's actually why I'm posting here.
I want real users to try it with their own legitimate IPTV service and tell me what happens.
Things I'm particularly interested in:
- M3U/M3U8 playlist loading
- Xtream login and catalogue loading
- MAG/Stalker behaviour
- Live channel playback
- Buffering and playback stability
- Channel switching
- VOD
- Series/Episodes
- EPG
- Fullscreen
- Playback controls
- General UI/UX
And don't just tell me whether it works.
I'd like to know how it compares with whatever you're currently using.
Is channel switching slower?
Is something missing?
Are the controls in the wrong place?
Is the menu unnecessarily complicated?
Is there a button you expect to see that isn't there?
Does fullscreen behave the way you expect?
Does the player feel responsive?
Are there features from another IPTV player that you consider essential?
I'm also interested in feedback from people who use IPTVnator, VLC, Kodi, TiviMate, OTT Navigator, MyIPTV Player, or other players.
If you're thinking:
>
That's useful feedback.
For the technical people here
I've been doing quite a bit of forensic testing around VLC as well.
The application now monitors actual VLC playback state and media-time progression rather than assuming that calling play() means playback is working.
We've also tested things like:
- playback lifecycle
- buffering/stall handling
- recovery
- stale channel switching
- process stability
- VLC/Qt/Python runtime loading
- Windows packaged EXE behaviour
- memory/thread/handle behaviour
- security and static analysis
The automated test suite currently has coverage around M3U, Xtream, MAG and VLC/playback orchestration, with the latest official non-presentation test corpus at 885 passing tests.
But again, synthetic tests aren't a substitute for a real IPTV stream.
That's the part I need help with.
If you are an advanced Windows user
The current release doesn't have a dedicated debug BAT launcher yet.
I'm actually considering adding one, but I don't want to make a useless console window that just dumps random information.
I'd rather make it useful.
For example, if you were debugging an IPTV playback problem from CMD, what would you want to see?
VLC state?
Media time?
Buffering?
Recovery attempts?
Channel switching?
HTTP/network errors?
Qt errors?
DLL loading?
Provider response information?
If you have ideas, let me know.
Obviously, please don't post usernames, passwords, MAC addresses, tokens, private playlist URLs or anything else that could expose your provider account.
If you test it
You can keep the feedback very simple.
Something like:
>
That's already much more useful to me than "doesn't work."
If something fails, I'm especially interested in what happened immediately before the failure.
Documentation
I've been keeping the engineering investigation and audit work in the repository rather than just saying "trust me."
UI/UX audit:
https://github.com/SamoTech/samotech-iptv-player/blob/main/PHASE24_UI_UX_AUDIT.md
Real provider playback audit:
https://github.com/SamoTech/samotech-iptv-player/blob/main/PHASE25_REAL_PROVIDER_PLAYBACK_AUDIT.md
VLC playback remediation audit:
https://github.com/SamoTech/samotech-iptv-player/blob/main/VLC_IPTV_PLAYBACK_REMEDIATION_AUDIT.md
And one question for the developers here
I'm genuinely curious about this one:
How do you feel about using AI agents such as ChatGPT and Manus for a project like this?
I've found them extremely useful for digging through a large codebase, generating tests, finding edge cases and keeping documentation up to date.
But there's also a danger of creating a huge amount of "engineering evidence" without enough real-world validation.
That's something I'm deliberately trying to avoid.
So I'd rather have someone tell me:
"Your architecture is wrong."
or
"This feature is missing."
or
"Why are you doing it this way?"
than have people tell me the project looks great.
If you have a few minutes to try it, I'd really appreciate it.
Use your own legitimate IPTV source, try to break the player, and tell me what you find.
That's probably the most useful next step for this project.