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PC Caster’s stream scanner works exactly like the “video detector” apps on phones — it opens a real, visible Chromium browser, loads the streaming page you give it, and watches every outgoing network request for .m3u8 URLs. The moment a player inside that page fires off an HLS request, the scanner captures both the stream URL and the Referer header the player sent, and lists them in the scanner dialog for you to choose from.

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Why you need the scanner

Most live-stream sites don’t put the stream URL anywhere in the page source. The URL is built dynamically in JavaScript and only appears the instant the player starts requesting it. That means you can’t copy the page address and paste it directly into PC Caster — you need to observe the actual network traffic. The scanner does exactly that, invisibly, in the background while you interact with the page normally.

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How to use it

1

Paste the streaming page URL

Copy the address of the web page that contains the video player — not the stream URL itself. Paste it into the URL box in PC Caster.
2

Click Find .m3u8

Click 🔍 Find .m3u8. The scanner dialog opens and a Chromium browser window launches on your screen.
3

Click the server or quality you want

Inside the browser that just opened, navigate and click the server or quality option you want to watch — for example “TSN 4”, “ITV1”, or “FOX”. These are the links the site uses to switch CDN sources.
4

Press play if the player requires it

Some players start automatically when you pick a source; others show a play button. Click play if you see one. The stream URL only exists on the network once the player actually starts requesting video data.
5

Streams appear in the scanner dialog

As soon as the player begins loading the stream, the URL appears as a row in the scanner dialog. New streams are added in real time as they’re detected.
6

Select index.m3u8 and click Use selected

Choose the index.m3u8 (adaptive) entry from the list, then click Use selected. The stream URL is placed into the URL box, ready to cast or test.

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Understanding the scanner dialog

The scanner dialog displays a table with three columns:
ColumnWhat it shows
StreamThe filename portion of the .m3u8 URL, e.g. index.m3u8 or chunklist_b3000000.m3u8
HostThe CDN domain serving the stream, e.g. stream.cdn-provider.com
Needs Referer?yes if the stream was requested with a Referer header; — if it was not

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Prefer index.m3u8 (adaptive bitrate)

When multiple streams appear, prefer the one named index.m3u8. This is the adaptive bitrate master playlist — it lets the Roku pick the best quality automatically based on your network speed. Named variants like chunklist_b3000000.m3u8 are fixed-quality renditions and skip adaptive switching.

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What the Needs Referer? column means

If a row shows yes, the player sent a Referer header when it requested the stream. CDN servers use this as a lightweight check — requests without the correct Referer get a 403 Forbidden. A Roku cannot send custom HTTP headers, so without the proxy the stream would fail. PC Caster’s built-in proxy captures that Referer during scanning and injects it automatically on every request it makes to the CDN, so the Roku never has to send it.

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Two strategies under the hood

PC Caster’s stream_finder.py uses two detection strategies, tried in order: Strategy 1 — Quick HTML scrape (requests + regex): PC Caster fetches the raw page HTML and searches it for any URL matching .m3u8. This is instant and free, but it only works if the stream URL is literally written into the page source. Most modern streaming sites build the URL dynamically in JavaScript, so this step typically finds nothing and falls through to strategy 2. Strategy 2 — Visible browser sniff (find_streams_interactive, Playwright): A real Chromium browser is launched in visible mode so you can interact with the page. PC Caster attaches a listener to every network request the browser and all its iframes make. The moment any request URL contains .m3u8, the item is captured along with its full request headers (including Referer). This mirrors exactly how mobile video-detector apps work and catches streams that are built entirely in JavaScript.

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One-time Playwright setup

Playwright and its Chromium engine are required for the browser sniff. If you see the message “One-time setup needed” when you click Find .m3u8, open a terminal in the PC Caster folder and run: 
pip install playwright
python -m playwright install chromium
After that, click 🔍 Find .m3u8 again — no further setup is needed. The scanner raises two special internal tokens if something is missing:
  • PLAYWRIGHT_MISSING — the playwright Python package is not installed. Run pip install playwright.
  • PLAYWRIGHT_NO_BROWSER — Playwright is installed but the Chromium binary hasn’t been downloaded yet. Run python -m playwright install chromium.
Do not close the browser window yourself. If you close it manually, the scanner may not shut down cleanly. Instead, click Stop or Use selected inside the scanner dialog to end the session.
If the scanner finds nothing, make sure you clicked a server link in the browser and pressed play. The stream URL only appears on the network when the player actively starts requesting it — simply having the page open is not enough.
If you already have the raw .m3u8 URL, paste it directly into the URL box — you don’t need the scanner. Be aware that a URL pasted this way won’t have a Referer attached, which may cause a 403 if the CDN requires one. Use 🔍 Find .m3u8 whenever possible to capture the Referer automatically.

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