Excitel Cable Cutter Plans with IPTV option

[imdarkray]

@Himanshu42 is this cable cutter plan? I am using 400mbps cable cutter plan. I don't see star plus and those channels in my playbox tv app. also most of tv contents are played from their respective apps. like for Sony channels, the app redirects to sony liv app. How is your works inside the playbox tv app? I don't have iptv configuration in my router.

 

[anmolbhard004]

iptv not launched in patna maybe?

@imdarkray do you get ipv6 ?

 

[imdarkray]

@anmolbhard004 I am using pfsense. not getting ipv6 on it over DHCP6. Not sure about the correct configuration.

 

[Himanshu42]

@imdarkray Yes, it is a cable cutter plan but with IPTV. I've mentioned above as well that this plan does not apply to the existing users of Excitel, you'll need to get a new connection from Excitel, as they install a different router at your home with IPTV configurations.

@anmolbhard004 indeed, sorry for missing this out. IPTV is currently available to new users in the Delhi-NCR region only.

After using IPTV for 2 days now, few more things I have noticed:

1. There are no buffering and no playback issues at all. The video quality of channels remains FHD all the time.
2. I have realized watching IPTV in playboxTV doesn't usually cost any data. I don't even know how it is playing the channels then .
3. I have tried subscribing to a channel by paying through UPI and the channel did started playing immediately.

So far the IPTV service looks promising, but the lack of Zee channels really hurts me .

 

[Himanshu42]

Here I am with another update on this.
It was working fine but suddenly all STAR channels vanished from the IPTV. It's been more than a week now and it is still not fixed. I have tried contacting Excitel, but they were clueless (as expected), then I contacted PlayBoxTV and surprisingly they did reply saying "It is down from headend and will be fixed soon" and I have no idea how long it gonna take now.

On the bright side, all the Zee Network channels are now added to Excitel IPTV (but still no love for the "Bhabhi Ji Ghar Par Hai" lovers, I mean no AND TV added yet)

 

[AD2011]

@Himanshu42 What is that br1483 protocol that is being used for IP_TV? Can you provide a screenshot from the WAN configuration page. It's the first time I have seen such a protocol being used.

 

[Himanshu42]

I have no idea about that too! I did tried googling this but had no luck what it is used for. The screenshot attached in my post is itself from wan configuration page.

 

[The_PC_Guy]

I have realized watching IPTV in playboxTV doesn't usually cost any data. I don't even know how it is playing the channels then .

This is common with IPTV. IPTV channels are broadcasted over Multicast IP range and are internal to the ISP.
224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255 Should be the IP ranges for them. This also limits them to just Live broadcasts as regardless of who's watching they'll just keep blasting out the packets (UDP, rtp/rtmp) so adding catch up wouldn't be possible AFAIK. I'm a little fuzzy on the details as I read through this long back.

But this might help IP multicast - Wikipedia

 

[The_PC_Guy]

What is that br1483 protocol that is being used for IP_TV

Maybe they're referring to the RFC 1483? Looks to be ATM PVC (A Permanent Virtual Circuit is a permanently established logical connection between two devices on a packet switched network. Examples of PVC can be found on ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and Frame Relay networks).
I'm not 100% sure why they need a tunnel for this. I'm planning on switching to a different ISP soon as my spectra plan expires, maybe I'll give excitel a try. (I don't think IPTV is available in BLR yet though)

 

[Himanshu42]

@The_PC_Guy thanks for all these explanations. All these things are too technical for me but I'm amazed that Excitel/PlayBoxTV has really invested in such a big infrastructure to provide the IPTV service. It was down for a couple of days a few days ago and I had no idea who I should contact for the IPTV lol, excitel had no idea about this and PlayBoxTV replied to my messages when they already fixed the service.

So far, its partially working, but I'm still not convinced with their service and support. The STAR channels are still missing from the IPTV and nobody knows the reason or providing me any estimated time on when it will be fixed.

I also have a Jio Airfiber connection which somehow works better than Excitel for me, probably because the Jio tower is just 94m away from my home. I'm waiting for the IPTV in their set top box which looks alot better, Jio is already testing their IPTV service and some users has also started receiving an update in their Jio STB to run the IPTV (few videos are available on youtube).