tvOS - How To Stream From a URL? (edited)

[howdydooit]

(edited for clarity). This is a little new to me, so pardon my ignorance, but I'm not too sure what I'm supposed to be doing exactly to make this work.

I'm using VLC 3.6 on an ATV 4K 3rd gen. This is a proof of concept for me, so I'm testing 2 URLs that work on my iPhone, iPad, & Mac.

When I go to the "Network Stream" menu in VLC, I add in the URL and it says please wait, then goes back to the main screen. I'm sure it's something simple. No video is presented. Probably I'm doing something wrong, or there's a bug, or something is misconfigured. One URL is https://www.tv181.one (you don't see it often, but the domain really is dot-one). This is not a specific file to play, it's a live video stream. I suspect there's more to the URL, and that's my problem?

On other devices I'd see a thumbnail with a play button (no other links, menus, etc.). Some audio streams I listen to with dedicated URLs also don't work, so I think it's something I'm missing.

Any ideas here? Thanks so much for reading and any insight you can share!

[fkuehne]

VLC needs dedicated stream URLs for playback. It cannot parse websites for video content. There is a VLC app for iPhone and iPad too that you to play such streams in the Network tab (and also syncs your last 50 URLs to your Apple TV so you don't need to type the manually), so you can try it.

[howdydooit]

Thanks for that quick reply. If I get what you're implying, if I open the URL I'm using on my phone and paste it into VLC, VLC will parse it out and be able to play it natively, and share the parsed URL with the VLC on my Apple TVs. I tried that yesterday and it loaded URLs that wouldn't play. I was just trying to see if it would work on my phone and it didn't. When I got back to the Apple TV, I noticed it loaded the exact same abbreviated URL I hand typed into my phone, so not sure what I'm supposed to see when I open the URL list on the Apple TV's VLC. I've also pasted from my browser, which probably includes the secondary string.

I deleted all of the URLs that apparently had synced over from my phone yesterday and I tried it again from my iPhone just now. I loaded the URL into the VLC app on my phone and it did the same thing - either blanked out for a fraction of a second and reverted to the original screen, or it said "please wait" and just hung there. I briefly saw the web player, then it reverted back to the VLC page. It's not playing from my phone's VLC, so whatever gets loaded into the Apple TV VLC app is the same thing that doesn't work on the mobile end. I can't figure out how to get the absolute URL, just the one that launches the web player. I presume the conversion or parsing is done at the server end.

Would you happen to have any examples of URLs that work? I've only used VLC as a player, not as a network streamer, so I'm not even sure what it looks like when everything works. I guess this is really not intended for the purpose I'm trying to use it for. I don't have any media servers of my own.

Separate issue: Last night I AirPlayed a file via VLC that was on my MacBook and I couldn't even get it to go full screen on a black background like it does in QuickTime.