Help & FAQ

ERD-Playlist Studio builds and looks after IPTV playlists. Open a playlist from a file or from your provider, tidy it up, check which channels still work, match it to a TV guide, and watch, record and download what is on it.

• Windows 10 or later.
• A 64-bit PC (x64), a Windows on Arm PC (arm64) or a 32-bit PC (x86).
• Administrator rights to install.
• Windows' own media support.

The player uses the decoders built into Windows. The "N" editions of Windows ship without Windows' own media support: there the studio starts and works, but the player says "Windows cannot decode this" until you add the Media Feature Pack from Windows' Optional features. When Windows has no decoder for a single track, the player names it (for example "HEVC: no decoder on this computer") and plays the rest of the stream.

A file you have (M3U, Smart IPTV, Enigma/Dreambox bouquets, XSPF, ASX, WPL or PLS), an address from your provider, an Xtream Codes account, a Stalker (Ministra) portal, the free channels of iptv-org or radio stations from radio-browser.info.

Save and Save As write M3U (.m3u or .m3u8), Smart IPTV, Enigma/Dreambox, ASX, WPL, PLS or XSPF. Export also writes the ticked groups as an HTML, CSV, JSON, Markdown or XML report. Files are written as UTF-8 text.

Yes. Every change to a playlist can be undone with Undo (Ctrl+Z) and done again with Redo (Ctrl+Y), each playlist keeping its own history. Bigger jobs, such as an import, a find and replace or a sort, are one step each. Locking is not an undo step.

Run Stream > Stream Checker... It tries every stream of All Groups or one group and marks each with a green star (online) or a red one (offline). It then reads up to 50 of the streams that answered, and a stream that is not what it says gets a violet star. Delete offline streams removes what was found offline, and can be undone.

Grey: not changed. Blue: changed. Green: online. Red: offline. Violet: not what it says it is. An orange star before a name marks a favourite; a red star after a name marks a locked stream.

Use Tools > Playlist Health Center.. and choose Compare with a provider playlist and apply selected changes. You see every stream the other playlist Added, Removed or Modified, all ticked; untick what you want to keep as it is and press Next to apply the rest. Tick Save as provider profile to keep comparing with that source on a schedule.

Set up a provider profile with Tools > Provider Profiles... While the studio is open it looks every minute for enabled profiles that are due, and brings them up to date in the background. Profiles can also be brought up to date with the studio closed, with M3UEditorCLI sync_all --due-only in Task Scheduler.

No. When the provider sends back an empty playlist while your target has streams in it, the run stops rather than emptying your playlist. Before any change is made, a snapshot of the target is kept, and the new playlist is only put in place once it has been read back and found sound.

Before the Playlist Health Center or a provider profile changes a playlist, the studio saves a copy of it as it was. The last ten are kept for each playlist. Tools > Restore snapshot.. lists them, newest first; the one you pick opens as a separate playlist called Restored- followed by the name.

A guide finds a channel by its tvg-id. Choose an EPG code set (SmartIPTV, BaZnGa or DiamondTV) under Settings > TV guide, then use Tools > Assign EPG Codes.. to write the best match into tvg-id for all groups or one group. The TV Guide ID editor (the "..." beside tvg-id) does the same for one stream.

The status bar says how many of the playlist's channels the guide actually has data for. A low number usually means the channels' tvg-id tags do not match the guide.

Set Settings > Guide alignment > Guide time offset (minutes, may be negative). Guide alignment is an expert page: tick Show expert settings under Settings > Common to see it. For a single channel, right-click its name in the guide and choose Guide offset.

Yes. Press Space to pause a live channel; the player keeps recording it into a buffer on disk, so you can carry on where you paused. The size of the buffer is "Live TV kept for pausing (MB, 0 is off)" on the Playback settings page, 512 MB unless you change it.

When your provider keeps catch-up for a channel and the TV Guide knows what is on, Backspace offers the programme on now from its start, and going back past the pause buffer offers the programme at that moment. Press Y to switch.

rtsp, rtmp, srt and mms addresses cannot be opened, and the player says so. Neither can streams protected with DRM.

Yes, with Send to TV. It finds Chromecasts, Google TVs and televisions with Google Cast built in, AirPlay receivers such as an Apple TV, and DLNA televisions and players on your network. To put a whole playlist on a television running the Smart IPTV app, use Tools > Send to Smart IPTV...

Yes. With "RecordingCLI run" going in the background, bookings are recorded and downloads carry on while the studio is closed, and the two hand the work back and forth by themselves. Series rules need the studio, because it reads the guide.

While recordings are booked or running, the studio keeps the computer from going to sleep, and sets it to wake up a minute before the next booking. If Windows will not allow either, you are told when you book, so you can leave the computer on or turn on wake timers in the Windows power plan.

The studio asks the provider (Xtream Codes accounts say) and holds a recording or download back until a connection is free rather than having it refused. When more recordings are due than there are connections, the one with the higher Priority goes first.

Yes. Tools > STRM Library.. writes the playlist's films and series as a library of small .strm files that Kodi, Plex, Emby or Jellyfin can list and play without anything being downloaded, with .nfo files if you like. Downloads can also carry an .nfo file beside them.

TMDB and TVDB both need a free account of your own; put the keys under Settings > Databases. No key ships with the studio, and a database with no key is simply not asked. Keys are stored encrypted for your Windows account. Subtitles come from OpenSubtitles.com with your own OpenSubtitles API key under Settings > Subtitle search; with no key nothing is fetched, and a user name and password are optional. CDDB and MusicBrainz need no account.

No. Connect.. under Settings > Trakt shows a code to type on Trakt's website; your Trakt password is never asked for.

Right-click a group or streams and choose Lock, and set a code under Settings > Parental lock. From then on, watching a locked stream, sending it to a TV, or recording or downloading it asks for the code first. The lock is written into the playlist file; the code is kept on this computer only and never written into a playlist.

Fifteen: English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Polish, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Romanian and Swedish. Choose one under Settings > Common > Language and press OK; the whole program changes at once, without restarting.

Yes. Untick "Allow only one instance" under Settings > Instances (an expert page). With more than one window open, the first one looks after the recording schedule, the unattended refresh of your provider profiles, the download queue and the AI assistant connection. Only that window records and downloads, so nothing is done twice.

Yes. M3UEditorCLI works on playlists and RecordingCLI on recordings and downloads. Both answer in JSON on standard output, and several commands can go on one line. "help" after either tool's name lists everything it can do.

An AI assistant that supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) can read and edit your playlists, book recordings and look after your downloads: either on the playlist open in the studio (Settings > AI assistants, off by default, only programs on this computer can connect), or on any playlist file with M3UEditorCLI mcp.

Yes. ERD-Playlist Studio needs a valid licence key to run. Enter it with Help > Activate License..; the command line tools use the same key. Please do not share your key: a key that is shared can be revoked.

Yes. Before anything is offered, the answer from the update server is checked to be genuine, and the downloaded installer is checked against it before it runs. An update can never take you back to an older version, and your settings are kept.

The uninstaller leaves your own things where they are: your settings, caches and kept guides, recording schedule and download queue, logs, earlier versions of your playlists, and every recording and download. To start completely afresh, delete the program's folder in your local application data folder and in your Documents folder.

No. The browser script designs templates. Rendering happens on your server through the ERD Report Cloud render API.

The designer is for embedding in your website and is not charged for separately. Rendering uses ERD Report Cloud, which needs an API key: contact ERDesigns for a plan and a key.

For trials and small-scale use, the renderer is hosted by ERDesigns and is not distributed. Your server sends templates and data to ERD-Report Cloud and receives the finished document. On-premise and private cloud deployments may be available for selected use cases. Contact ERDesigns to discuss your requirements.

Yes! Contact ERDesigns to request a free trial and explore what ERD-Report Cloud can do for your application.

No. The designer is one classic script and one stylesheet with no dependencies. Applications with a bundler or written in TypeScript can use the package build instead.

Yes. The chrome is restyled through CSS variables, the canvas through colour tokens for light and dark mode, and the composition option hides the tools you do not want to offer.

In your application. The designer returns the template as JSON and imposes no storage backend.

Evergreen Chromium, Firefox and Safari.

Yes. A template carries a target of paper or label. A label targets ZPL, TSPL, EPL2 or DYMO with the label stock and print head density, and the same embedding mounts as a label designer.

Only sites that ERDesigns has approved. The ERDesigns sites are built in, and users cannot add a site to ERD-Hub themselves. Want your own website to print through ERD-Hub? Contact us: we check your domain and set up the connection with you. Any other page is refused.

No. It listens on your own computer only and sends no telemetry. A crash report is a local file you choose to share.

Yes. ERD-Hub is free to use with the ERD Report Designer and is part of that package. Rendering through ERD Report Cloud is the paid service.

Label printers using ZPL, TSPL, EPL2 or DYMO, office printers through PDF, network printers on port 9100 and serial printers.

No. ERD-Hub installs per user. On Linux a one-time udev rule needs sudo for direct USB access.

macOS (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows (x64) and Linux (x64), all as a beta.

Yes. An installed copy checks for a newer, signed release every 24 hours and applies it at the next start.