A lot of development work in Kodi has been done on support for providers but over all the releases and improvements I haven’t been able to read or figure out what they do or what benefit they provide. I do have the same channels that I can get OTA, OTA networked delivery, cable and IPTV but I fail to understand value knowing this gives me. Maybe some of you can explain how you use it, no doubt it is useful. If I can figure out what it is I might even be able to add it to pvr.nextpvr.
Also I merge my tuners and my experience with NextPVR users is they often merge channels too especially DVB-S and DVB-T so the provider won’t even be known until recording or Live TV so there would be a lot of unknowns showing.
I looked at recent screen shots here https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/25663 to me they look more like what are in Canada and US know as networks which are typically one network one channel (there are exceptions) Maybe this a feature for ‘subscription’ IPTV to help find the networks? Networks don’t seem to really map to provider types though.
Martin