BETA: Custom Sources can now mix XMLTV and Gracenote channel mappings

In the latest pre-release we've added the ability to have a single Custom Source that can contain both XMLTV mappings as well as Gracenote mappings, removing the need to create two Custom Sources.

Existing sources will be defaulted to XMLTV-only to ensure guide data is not disrupted, but all new Custom Sources will automatically notice Gracenote mappings in the m3u and use them.

This setting can be adjusted at any time in the Custom Source settings:

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Awesome, thanks! Definitely helps with source mgmt.

th

Its been a long time coming. This should mean that I don't have to have a separate custom channel playlist if I need to use xml file data now

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Nice! :+1:

Of course it'll make some new work for stuff like PLM and FastChannels, but will be totally worth it! Looking forward to giving this a whirl when I have the opportunity.

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Good news! In development, I've been able to get this to work and have had excellent results. Details can be seen here.

Tomorrow I'm going to promote the changes to PLM prerelease and then test in my production Channels environment for an extended stretch.

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Following your lead here.. I haven't tried it yet- but look forward to implementing in FC.. would make management quite easier!

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Testing complete and I have no notes; everything worked great! Therefore, as of v2026.08.21.1518 of Streaming Library Manger, this feature is now available. Details on the Wiki...

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Sorry, looks like I spoke too soon, found a couple of issues:

  • After a server reboot, the XML guide data never scheduled a reload and therefore expired until I forced the issue.

  • RTSP transport is not being allowed (Yes, this is a MPEG-TS playlist and I can confirm it works in a separate custom list using text).

    2026/08/22 10:58:34.145493 [HLS] Couldn't generate stream playlist for ch2047-dANY-ipfe80--54fc-67b6-2da7-678-Ethernet: M3U: Get "rtsp://admin:***@10.255.1.155:554/H265/ch4/main/av_stream": unsupported protocol scheme "rtsp"
    

You would have to submit diagnostics for us to have any idea what’s going on there.

So I did some additional testing, and the RTSP thing happens elsewhere, too. The driving factor is having a forwarding link. In other words, it's an http url that resolves as rtsp. Diagnostics submitted just after doing a successful play and one of the errors on the same playlist (5f400bee-a054-4197-abca-cb07fde20b1c). Not sure how far back in time those logs go, but the reboot was before 8/21 at 5:09pm EDT.

Looks like the guide issue was because the Custom Source had a failed initial fetch and that caused the guide data for that source to not refetch for 24 hours. The behavior has been updated to continue to re-fetch how it normally would.

Regarding the rtsp: it doesn't appear that we ever had working rtsp: URLs after an HTTP redirect. We may be able to add this, but it could take some effort to make it happen, so I'm not sure if we will be able to or the timing of it if we are.

I don't understand what advantage mixing these two services has for channel mapping? Gracenote provides guide data, what does XMLTV do exactly?

Provides guide data for channels not tied to gracenote guide data.
Think Fast (Free Ad Supported) Channels.

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Previously, you couldn't have a single source utilizing guide data from gracenote AND xmltv. It had to be either or, making you have to break your source up into multiple sources.

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I'm literally down to one source to feed into Channels now. It's fantastic!

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The only thing one has to think about now is HLS over mpeg-ts.
I manage all my sources with Playlist manager. I will eventually make the change.

Actually, you don't! With the Fallback Feed, even with the rare instances Channels can't handle a HLS feed in a MPEG-TS playlist, PLM can automatically do it for you:

Also, there's some goodies coming in the next version that can help speed things up and deal with situations like my RTSP issue above...

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