Kodinerds IPTV: M3U playlists of free-to-air channels for Kodi and Tvheadend

Five playlist formats over the same set of free-to-air channels

Kodinerds IPTV is not a player and not a scraper. It is a set of M3U playlists that point at freely receivable television and radio streams, organised into an iptv directory with a scripts directory alongside it. What makes it interesting is that the same channels are repackaged five times for different consumers. The kodi list is tuned for the PVR IPTV Simple Client and carries content categories for TV channels. The clean list is a basic list categorised by country, which the README suggests fits VLC. The pipe list is aimed at the Tvheadend PVR backend. The rtmp list holds further streams, mainly local broadcasters, separated because the protocol differs. The dash list carries a few more channels as DASH streams and is described as being meant mainly for testing.

The sublists hold everything, so the short URLs add nothing

Every playlist type expands into a hierarchy of sublists, and the naming is systematic. A type name on its own covers all TV and radio channels, then a _tv suffix covers television only, then country or genre suffixes narrow it further.

- [typ] - beinhaltet alle TV- und Radiosender

- - [typ]_tv - beinhaltet nur TV-Sender

- - - [typ]_tv_main - nur deutsche Hauptsender
- - - [typ]_tv_shop - nur deutsche Teleshopping-Sender
- - - [typ]_tv_regional - nur deutsche Regionalsender
- - - [typ]_tv_local - nur deutsche Lokalsender
- - - [typ]_tv_extra - nur deutsche Extra-Sender (Online-Sender der Öffentlich-Rechtlichen)
- - - [typ]_tv_atch - nur TV-Sender aus Österreich und Schweiz
- - - [typ]_tv_usuk - nur TV-Sender aus Großbritannien und USA
- - - [typ]_tv_international - nur internationale Sender (außer Sender aus AT/CH/US/UK)

Radio follows the same pattern with a _radio suffix and country codes for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Poland. The README then states plainly that all sublists together contain the full content of the parent list, so lists such as kodi_tv and kodi_radio together make up the kodi list, and using them brings no added value. That is worth reading before you paste a short URL into your player.

The pipe format needs ffmpeg at a fixed path

The one format with a hard external requirement is pipe, the list for the Tvheadend PVR backend. The README states that those streams require ffmpeg, installed at /usr/bin/ffmpeg. Tvheadend starts the configured binary to pull each stream, so a system with ffmpeg elsewhere on the PATH or installed through a package manager under a different path is a setup question, not a download question. By contrast, the kodi list is built for the PVR IPTV Simple Client and works with both versions of that add-on, and the clean list assumes nothing beyond VLC reading a plain M3U file. The rtmp list is split out only because RTMP is a different protocol from the HTTP based streams elsewhere, so a player that handles one will not necessarily handle the other.

Finding the underlying stream URL with Firefox developer tools

The README explains how to obtain the stream URL for a given stream, which matters when you want to add a channel that the lists do not carry yet. The route runs through the browser. The steps it lists are to play the stream in Firefox, open the developer tools with F12, switch to the network analysis tab, find the stream file in the list of requests, which is typically an .m3u8 file, and read the stream URL from the detail pane on the right, under the headers entry.

1. Stream in Firefox abspielen
2. Entwicklertools öffnen (F12)
3. Netzwerkanalyse Tab öffnen
4. Stream Datei in der Liste suchen (typischerweise `.m3u8`)
5. Stream URL im Detailfenster (rechte Seite) unter "Kopfzeilen" finden

Two Firefox add-ons are recommended for that job, The Stream Detector and video downloadhelper. The README also links a guide on receiving MPEG-DASH streams. Note what this procedure is for: it is for finding the address of a stream you can already play, so that you can add it to a playlist yourself.

A parallel project exists for Telekom EntertainTV customers

The README positions this repository as a parallel offer to Entertain IPTV, another project by the same author, for Telekom EntertainTV customers. That is a different proposition entirely: this repository collects streams that are freely receivable, meaning no subscription or access credentials are involved, while the Entertain IPTV project addresses a pay-TV service. The two are linked from the README as separate Kodinerds.net threads and separate GitHub repositories. For a reader trying to work out what kind of project this is, the distinction settles it: there is no account handling, no authentication flow and no account scraping in these lists, just M3U files pointing at streams anyone can receive.

No releases, no licence file, and a maintenance date to check

Two facts about the project state are worth recording before you depend on it. First, the repository has no GitHub releases, so there is no version history to pin and no changelog to read. The top level listing shows CONTRIBUTING.md, an iptv directory, a logos directory, a resources directory and a scripts directory, which tells you the work is a maintenance operation over files rather than a released application. Second, no licence is declared. There is no LICENSE file among the top level entries, and the licence field is left unclassified, so the terms under which you may copy or redistribute these playlists are not stated by the project. The repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-09-06.

Editorial conclusion

Kodinerds IPTV suits a European viewer who wants free-to-air public and commercial channels in Kodi, VLC or Tvheadend without a subscription and without a scraper of their own. It does not suit anyone who needs paid or geo-restricted channels, and the project says as much by describing the streams as freely receivable. Before relying on it, check that your player can consume the pipe format with ffmpeg present at /usr/bin/ffmpeg, and note that the repository states no licence, so redistribution terms are undefined.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. jnk22/kodinerds-iptv on GitHub
3. Project website
4. README