Auto switching DVR's

I have mentioned this in the past but since it happened again last night and the wife was not too happy about it I decided to bring it up again.

I have two DVR's because the DVR does not support User Profiles. This is not a big problem since I have 2 Synology Boxes anyway. But the problem is if one of the DVR's is down (maybe doing an update) and the Apple TV can not find the "last" one it used it searches the LAN for another one.

So, last night around 9pm (late for us) my wife said she lost all of her recordings. Of course the problem was her Apple TV switch over to my DVR (we do not watch the same shows). Anyway, the easiest solution is to STOP my DVR and then restart her Apple TV Channels App (then she gets her DVR) and then restart my DVR. This is not hard but at 9pm it is kind of a hassle. The other approach is the manually connect to her DVR in the setting but then I have to remember the IP ADDRESS (I do think dns works).

My recommendations are 1) please "list" available DVR's in the DVR Section so she can easily switch when that happens or maybe there would be a reason to select mine and/or 2) allow for multiple profiles where I can just use one DVR. BTW.. #1 can be enhanced if you can also select a remote DVR if you have one available (maybe if you connect to it once you could remember the connection).

For the time being, I would make her DVR a static IP on your router, and then enter in the manual DVR IP info in the app. My question would be does it always remember that IP if entered and the DVR is offline for whatever reason.

That is what I do. But it will switch to the other DVR if her normal DVR is not running. That is why I need to be able to easily select which one to use when this happens (prefer by "name I set". And of course what if I recorded something on my DVR that she forgot to record (unlikely but example)? She could simply switch to mind and then watch the show and the easily switch back. Or if in the kitchen where we share a TV each of us could get to our recordings easily. This is what we did "many many" years ago with the Verizon whole home DVR before switching to Channels DVR. We each had our personal DVR and on the UI it said our name + DVR for selection. Extremely easy and usable. We have 2 DVR's and 2 STB's and all four could easily select to either DVR on the main UI Screen.

I'd like to see something like the pictures below. When you record a program (either manually or with a season pass), you give it a Custom Tag (or multiple Tags). The client then automatically sorts the programs into virtual 'folders' based on the custom tag. That way, I can tag my wife's recordings with her name and my recordings with my name. Both can be accessed on the same server since it doesn't change any of the recorded locations. It also would allow me to create further tags (Archive, sports, etc.) to further customize my recordings. Not sure how it would work for your scenario, but I imagine it would be easier to implement than multiple user profiles.

Examples:

I have two DVR's. To keep the switching from happening I turned off Bonjour on both DVR's and then manually added the DVR on the respective clients. The Apple client does support DNS. However, if you use DNS, it seems to break tuner sharing.

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I may end up turning off Bonjour if it continues to be a problem for my wife. The negative with the solution is I loose easy access to at least one of the servers (considered only turning off mine) but I would also loose access for other features where Bonjour is handy. Hoping the developers will consider a better solution which would solve multiple problems for me. It would be very nice to access multiple DVR's from the UI in the client.

I'm not saying to turn off Bonjour entirely. Just turn it off for the DVR using the setting on the DVR website.

Thanks for your help but I have never turned Bonjour off on anything in the past so I am probably missing something. I am running Channels DVR or 2 Synology NAS Boxes. In File Services Advanced there is a setting to Enable Bonjour (enabled by default). I did not find a setting at the Channels DVR Application Level. Are you maybe talking about the Apple TV Client? Which case I have 8 Apple TV's and multiple iPads/iPhones.

There is a checkbox on the dvr settings web UI

That did not work for me. Maybe because it already connected to it in the past?

What I did:

  1. Turned on Bonjour on my DVR. And Stopped it.
  2. Restarted Channels on ATV and it connected to my wife's DVR as expected
  3. Started my DVR and Stopped my wife's DVR.
  4. Restarted Channels on ATV and it connect to my DVR.

I did not try in reverse using my wife Apple TV to see if it would connect to my DVR when here DVR is turned off and my DVR and Bonjour turned off.

BTW... My ATV always connects to my ATV. All of the other ATV's connect to my wife's DVR normally as intended.

You want to turn OFF Bonjour on both DVR's using the setup web interface for each DVR. Then you want to manually set the DVR in all the clients. This will stop the clients from finding the DVR's.

I have exactly the same issue. I'm running two DVRs and Bonjour is not enabled on either server. Yet, some of the clients (all 4k Fire TV Sticks) will occasionally switch servers without warning.

I have both DVRs are running on the same Windows server, one directly on the server (192.168.1.7) and the other one in a Hyper-V VM (192.168.1.24). When the Windows machine is rebooted, the DVR running directly on the server will naturally come up a minute or so before the VM-hosted one does. That could give clients a window to connect to the wrong server. Even If both servers came up simultaneously, if the client does a port scan on the local subnet after it loses it connection, it would discover the lower IP address first (if it's scanning up from 192.168.1.1).

Is the client doing a port scan? Is there a way to alter it's behavior via the API?

If you could expose that port scan behavior to the UI, you could get fancy and display a menu of discovered servers to connect.

There is no port or IP scan. That's what bonjour is for.

Please submit diagnostics from the app when this happens.

Hopefully Channels introduces profiles soon. It’s becoming a large hindrance in our household as well.