Captcha for TVE and YouTube TV

[pseibold]

I'm trying to add you tubetv, I've authorized NBC, etc... and have no problems on the PC, but when I go into Channels DVR, I cannot add it as a source. It appears like YouTube TV is asking for a CAPTCHA response I can't give.

Logs
2023/01/30 09:48:40.096202 [TVE] action=tvejs msg="googleLogin"
2023/01/30 09:48:40.106893 [TVE] action=wait_for_auth timeout=24s
2023/01/30 09:48:42.611420 [TVE] action=tvejs msg="googleLoginPassword found a CAPTCHA"
2023/01/30 09:49:04.109188 [TVE] action=auth_timed_out
2023/01/30 09:49:04.109188 [TVE] action=screenshot
2023/01/30 09:49:04.150836 [TVE] action=screenshot size=45325
2023/01/30 09:49:04.151381 [TVE] action=capture_html
2023/01/30 09:49:04.213033 [TVE] action=capture_html size=1975688
2023/01/30 09:49:04.283758 [TVE] Auth failed for YouTubeTV: Cable provider authentication failed

[rpaulmerrell]

I would suggest updating to the latest pre-release.
Youtube tv can be difficult.

[jxxaxxy]

Also make sure you have latest Chrome if that is your browser. If running in docker I know the TVE version was recently updated to the 109 version of chrome.

[pseibold]

It seems like I have a Captcha for TVE and Channels that I cannot respond to... any ideas how to "answer" the captcha

[pseibold]

see the error -- I'm signed into NBC and other apps, but I cannot answer the Captcha

[speedingcheetah]

Lost a lot of YTTV Channels due to CAPTCHA after installing latest beta

It's not related to the software. If YTTV is throwing a captcha then the DVR cannot login. You need to convince the google account AI that your account is safe and doesn't require captchas. Usually this happens automatically after some time. You could try opening chrome incognito to nbc.com/live and select YTTV to see if it shows you a captcha there as well. You would need to do this from the same computer where your DVR is running.

Basicly, there is nothing Channels can do about it. It is on the Google side that causes this. Some users have constant issues, others none to rarely.

YTTV is well know to have frequent issues with security and login issues....just search the forums.
I suggest you use a different streaming service that supports TVE, such as Philo or Fubo that are much more reliable.

[pseibold]

Yeah, I can do the nbc.com/live and it works fine. I get its not technically a Channels issue, but if there was a way to "See the captchia" so I could enter it... but yeah I'm trying to find any way around it.

[speedingcheetah]

No. TVE login is all done by automated script on the back end, no user interaction possible.
(though, i do wish they had the ability to do interactive login)

Are you using a VPN or anything like that? Those can trip those security checks.

Also, the Google account you are trying to use can not have 2FA enabled, that why it recommended to use a second Google account specifically for Channels, and NOT your main Google account as that should be secured with 2FA.

[Metatron]

I have the same issue. Just signed up for YouTube TV, and I can not get pass the verify via text process. running the latest pre-release, chrome is up-to-date, 2FA is off, tired a new account, tried chrome incognito. Nothing seems to work. This is only going to increase as a problem overtime as user/pass dies. There needs to be a way to reverse proxy the page into the channels UI so it can be acted upon.

[tmm1]

For those on Windows, Mac and non-NAS Linux machines, you can try the following to run chrome manually using the chromedata folder used by Channels. Login to YTTV or nbc.com/live manually in this chrome session, then exit it and try to have Channels sign in again.

chromium --user-data-dir=/home/channels-dvr/data/chromedata/YouTubeTV

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --user-data-dir=$HOME/Library/Application\ Support/ChannelsDVR/data/chromedata/YouTubeTV

C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --user-data-dir=c:\programdata\channelsdvr\data\chromedata\YouTubeTV

[Metatron]

Hummm...I don't have a chromedata folder under the data folder.

[tmm1]

Ah, its created when you add YTTV but I guess you haven't been able to add it yet.

I think you can mkdir it, or just run that chromium command and let it populate itself. Then it should be ready when you go to add YTTV

EDIT: Actually the directory is /home/channels-dvr/data/chromedata/YouTubeTV

For Hulu users it would be chromedata/Hulu

[JT-DFW]

@Metatron

Hummm...I don't have a chromedata folder under the data folder.

Strange, I don't have a YouTubeTV folder there but I do have one for Hulu LiveTV which I tried briefly a couple of years ago before ending up with YTTV. So where is my YouTubeTV folder?

By the way, after a couple of weeks missing a few TVE channels with YTTV, I updated to the latest pre-release and was able to add most of those channels back. There are some channels that report "403: (access.denied.missingpackage)" - (channels 6108-6113) but I usually don't watch those and am not even sure if they are included with YTTV.

[Metatron]

Good question. Using the mkdir command and then opening Chromium with the listed data folder path did not work. I guess I see the thought process here - have the login cached so when Channels runs, it does not need to login again. If I open Chrome with the same data path a second time and go to nbc.com/live, it does not even prompt me for a login. That you "do not" have a YouTubeTV folder makes me think the data folder being used by channels may be elsewhere - assuming this even works.

[Metatron]

I have tried multiple things, but perhaps the --user-data-dir flag is not working when the channels script runs?

[tmm1]

Can you check ps aux | grep chrom while channels is trying to auth? It should show the arguments and paths used

[Metatron]

The output is:

--user-data-dir=/tmp/chromedp-runner{random-number}

It's actually listed twice, but the files/folders are being generated in the later call.

/usr/lib/chromium/chrome --extra-plugin-dir=/usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins --user-data-dir=/root/.config/chromium --ozone-platform-hint=auto --safebrowsing-disable-auto-update --disable-background-networking --disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows --disable-sync --force-color-profile=srgb --deterministic-fetch --disable-dev-shm-usage --disable-renderer-backgrounding --metrics-recording-only --disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled --disable-ipc-flooding-protection --disable-popup-blocking --mute-audio --disable-client-side-phishing-detection --disable-features=site-per-process,TranslateUI,BlinkGenPropertyTrees,VizDisplayCompositor --disable-prompt-on-repost --disable-gpu --no-default-browser-check --hide-scrollbars --enable-automation --user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.157 Safari/537.36 --no-first-run --disable-background-timer-throttling --disable-hang-monitor --use-mock-keychain --enable-features=NetworkService,NetworkServiceInProcess --disable-breakpad --password-store=basic --user-data-dir=/tmp/chromedp-runner4177009808 --no-sandbox --remote-debugging-port=0 about:blank

[tmm1]

Please update to prerelease and try again

[Metatron]

The pre-release is creating and using the proper data directory now. Unfortunately, even if I specify the directory in chromium and pre-login, the channels attempt still fails and I get the SMS auth page.

[agdolimpio]

It seems the process fails at NBC.

It would be better if the process did not abort when one channel throws this error. It should continue on to try other channels and then give an error report when finished.