How To Stream Global Television With VLC Media Player

A quick how to article to supplement my previous post How To Remove Ads From Youtube on All Devices. When I offer free media alternatives, particularly to boomers, I am often confronted with the question: “Well how am I going to watch [Insert whatever slop that is shown on television]?” Obviously people are not hosting whatever news channel is on in your house 24/7. As I had no solution for that, the conversation would stop there and I was unable to save the person the $100+ they spend on cable tv PER MONTH. Not to mention all those subscriptions. NOT ANYMORE!

Apparently you can stream almost any television show directly within VLC Media Player. And what is even better, you can stream global television. If you read my last post on How To Actually Learn a Language, you should be rejoicing right now.

Quickstart

1. Download VLC Media Player. (Obviously if you are on Linux, use your package manager).

If you are on Arch/Artix Linux, be sure to install all the other vlc dependencies:

vlc 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-ass 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-bluray 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-dvd 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-ffmpeg 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-matroska 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-mpeg2 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-soxr 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-srt 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-x264 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugin-x265 3.0.21-32
vlc-plugins-extra 3.0.21-32

2. Open VLC Media Player, in the top right click Media, then click on Stream.
3. This will open a dialog box, inside the dialog box click on Network
4. There will be a text box, paste this in the text box: https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/countries/us.m3u This is the link for a majority of US channels.
5. Click Stream > Next > Next > Next > Stream
6. VLC will automatically begin playing the first available channel in the list.
7. To change channels you need to go to the playlist. This can be accomplished two ways (a) Click ctrl + L; (b) On the bottom of VLC media player there is a button with three hotizontal lines and a small triangle in the bottom right corner, that is the playlist button. Once you have accessed the playlist you can begin selecting the channel you want.

NOTE: VLC will not save this playlist for you. You need to do this manually. Right click anywhere in the playlist and select save playlist to file. Save the file in your Documents folder or somewhere you will not forget it.

When you close and reopen VLC, you will need to import this playlist file. Go to your empty playlist, right click anywhere and click Add File. Find the file you saved previously. It is going to show up as one line item in your playlist. Double click that line item to expand all the channels again.

How to access global television:

Previously we used https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/countries/us.m3u in order to get US television channels. You can replace us.m3u with any country code. Example: if you want to watch Japanese television you would do steps 2-6 from above and use this link https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/countries/jp.m3u

Please save your playlist file after you have populated all the country’s streams that you want. You can curate the playlist to have multiple country’s worth of channels.

All country codes can be found here.

Here is a curated list of ones I think would be relevant to my readers:

United States

• us.m3u
• us_30a.m3u
• us_3abn.m3u
• us_abcnews.m3u
• us_amagi.m3u
• us_canelatv.m3u
• us_cbsn.m3u
• us_cineversetv.m3u
• us_distro.m3u
• us_firetv.m3u
• us_frequency.m3u
• us_glewedtv.m3u
• us_klowdtv.m3u
• us_local.m3u
• us_malimartv.m3u
• us_pbs.m3u
• us_plex.m3u
• us_pluto.m3u
• us_roku.m3u
• us_samsung.m3u
• us_sofast.m3u
• us_ssh101.m3u
• us_stirr.m3u
• us_tcl.m3u
• us_tubi.m3u
• us_tvpass.m3u
• us_uplynk.m3u
• us_vegasplus.m3u

Japan

• jp.m3u
• jp_primehome.m3u

Korea

• kr.m3u

China

• cn.m3u
• cn_112114.m3u
• cn_cctv.m3u
• cn_cgtn.m3u
• cn_yeslivetv.m3u

Taiwan

• tw.m3u

Hong Kong

• hk.m3u

Lithuania

• lt.m3u

Mongolia

• mn.m3u
• mn_skygo.m3u

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