FastChannels - FAST Channels aggregator/manager

speedingcheetah · March 24, 2026, 9:51pm

Well, that sucks, if true for all their channels.
Maybe useful for Guide Data then perhaps, if their streams match the other FAST ones.
They seem to have at least a few days of data.

chDVRuser · March 24, 2026, 10:51pm

How are you determining that?
You also said Fox One was DRM (and it's not)

rpaulmerrell · March 24, 2026, 10:59pm

Hi there,
firstof all,
fox hasn't worked in about a month.
I also know how Philo was designed. all there channels are indeed drm proteccted.

KineticMan · March 24, 2026, 11:01pm

● FastChannels v2.3.0

Category override — click any category label in admin/channels to see how it was categorized (which rule fired and why), then manually override it from the full canonical list. Override sticks through scrapes until you clear it.
Community Gracenote Map on GitHub Gist — the community mapping file now lives on GitHub so it can be updated without a code release. URL is configurable in Settings → Gracenote if you want to point to your own. More to come here later.
"Review & Apply" flow for Community Map — instead of applying a community match directly, it now opens the Gracenote Suggestions popup first so you can verify the match before committing.
tvtv now/next in Gracenote Suggestions — each suggestion card shows the tvtv guide's current program (with subtitle) alongside the channel's own scraper data, making it much easier to confirm you're picking the right station.
Community Map browser added to admin/help — accessible from both Help and Settings.
Stream audit deduplication — kicking off a stream audit while one is already queued/running for that source is now a no-op instead of stacking duplicate jobs.
Scraper phase timeouts — all scrapers now have default per-phase timeouts (init/bootstrap/channels/EPG) to prevent a slow or hanging source from blocking the worker indefinitely.
Automatic schema migrations — category_override column and tvtv subtitle column added automatically on first boot after upgrade, no manual steps needed.

chDVRuser · March 24, 2026, 11:05pm

Fox One is working for me using Eplus

chDVRuser · March 24, 2026, 11:16pm

I know that Pluto already has them in the playlist in your fork of the jgomez docker that I'm using.

tvc-guide-title="Bravo Vault"
group-title="Reality"
tvc-guide-description="From Shahs of Sunset to Flipping Out, Bravo Vault immerses you in the drama you love with our rotating content library."

chDVRuser · March 24, 2026, 11:17pm

Thank You!

KineticMan · March 24, 2026, 11:21pm

The logic was seeing wine and thought it was a local station call sign fyi.

speedingcheetah · March 25, 2026, 12:16am

Got this setup yesterday on both my main servers.

@KineticMan One thing i am noticing.
When FAST auto scrapes, it auto adds newly added channels automatically.
Such newly added channels are enabled by default.
This then causes the new channel(s) to be added to a feed that includes that source.
Causing the channel numbers to now shift/change in CDVR.

I noticed a failed recording, and its error stated could not find the channel number, cause it was looking for the program on the old number.

Is there anyway you could add to FAST, a option to not enable newly discovered scraped channels by default.
Or, perhaps, not to have it be auto added to a Feed....something like that.

I am just trying to figure out the proper way to keep my set feeds as i want them, an not constantly have to go in and edit them each time a new channel comes or goes. Or have CDVR keep having different channel numbers every time something changes. As it is, the shifting also results in CDVR keeping the changed channel Favorited. It does not seem to update when things shift.

To stop the number shifting, I think i can set CDVR to ignore channel number from .m3u and set it to start at the same number, ie. 2000. That way, any new channels it sees it assigns its own number to. I believe that was the behavior that was happening when i was using the other sources for fast channels.

Broader range thought...
Would be cool if there could be some sort of reporting, like, hey, there was 5 new channels found recently, to inform the user of such things, to then be able to review the new channels, and enable/disable as they please.

chDVRuser · March 25, 2026, 12:22am

True. That's what I do.
CDVR will assign a channel number based on the channel-id of the channel which shouldn't ever change. I also set the start channel number in the CDVR source setting so that my sources are 10,000 channels apart from each other.

1     Source A
10001 Source B
20001 Source C
etc...

KineticMan · March 25, 2026, 12:41am

How do you have your feeds setup? I’m guessing by source?

speedingcheetah · March 25, 2026, 12:46am

Yes. Indeed. By Source.

KineticMan · March 25, 2026, 12:48am

Well what do you expect to happen then? If you have it filter by source, it’s gonna show everything in that source. Same with category.

Only “lock” is if you set channels at bottom - not by top options.

speedingcheetah · March 25, 2026, 1:01am

Yes. everything that i have enabled in that source.
And any new channels that are newly scraped are enabled by default, after i have gone through and disabled all the ones i do not want (there is a crap ton), including duplicates.

And the channels at the bottom are set and checked already by default when u check the option up top to include source.

So i thought that was the same as using the lower Channels section to enable certain channels.
But, when it auto scrapes, it adds the new channel to that list in the feed.

If your logic then is that, Sources section is higher priority than the Channels (filter) section...ok.
So, i need to just use that section and select the Channels from each source there, not check the Sources box.

Still, would be informative to some how, to know of new or removed channels in some way.
For now, i guess i just have to take screenshots of everything, and occasionally go in and compare, and see what is differnt.

chDVRuser · March 25, 2026, 1:05am

I was also thinking of that.
For now I use the OliveTin "Channel Lineup Change Notifications" that @mjitkop created.

****************************************************
2026-03-24 11:05:41
Channels DVR server URL: http://192.168.1.4:8489
Channels DVR version: 2026.03.12.2252
------------------------------
PlexTV-Gracenote: 381 channels (-8)
<--- Lineup changes (starting at 10001) --->
- 10003 : AsianCrush
- 10009 : ANIME x HIDIVE
- 10069 : RetroCrush
- 10085 : Yu-Gi-Oh!
- 10177 : Dungeons & Dragons Adventures
- 10191 : FilmRise Anime
- 10280 : pocket.watch Game-On
- 10306 : Sonic The Hedgehog
<--- Channel changes --->
- ANIME x HIDIVE (10009)
- AsianCrush (10003)
- Dungeons & Dragons Adventures (10177)
- FilmRise Anime (10191)
- RetroCrush (10069)
- Sonic The Hedgehog (10306)
- Yu-Gi-Oh! (10085)
- pocket.watch Game-On (10280)
<--- Duplicated channels --->
Z Nation: 10386, 10415
------------------------------
PlexTV: 291 channels (-5)
(http://192.168.1.3:7781/plex/playlist.m3u?gracenote=exclude)
<--- Lineup changes (starting at 20009) --->
- 20019 : Animation+
- 20020 : Anime 24/7
- 20027 : Bizaar
- 20720 : SLVR Sports and Entertainment (SLVR)
- 20721 : Beyblade
<--- Channel changes --->
- Animation+ (20019)
- Anime 24/7 (20020)
- Beyblade (20721)
- Bizaar (20027)
- SLVR Sports and Entertainment (SLVR) (20720)
------------------------------
SamsungTVPlus: 484 channels (-3)
(http://192.168.1.3:8182/playlist.m3u8)
<--- Lineup changes (starting at 50001) --->
+ 50457 : WeatherNation
- 50487 : WSOC Charlotte
- 50488 : WBTV News
- 50489 : WCNC
- 50490 : WN Charlotte
<--- Channel changes --->
- WBTV News (50488)
- WCNC (50489)
- WN Charlotte (50490)
- WSOC Charlotte (50487)
+ WeatherNation (50457)
------------------------------
Pluto kineticman: 408 channels (-1)
(http://192.168.1.3:8080/pluto/all/playlist.m3u?channel_id_format=id)
<--- Lineup changes (starting at 30001) --->
- 30413 : CBS News Baltimore
<--- Duplicated channels --->
CBS News Los Angeles: 30213, 30397
CBS News New York: 30212, 30400
CBS News Sacramento: 30211, 30404
------------------------------
DistroTV kineticman: 306 channels (+1)
(http://192.168.1.3:8787/playlist.m3u)
<--- Lineup changes (starting at 70001) --->
+ 70307 : AMERICA'S BOATING CHANNEL
<--- Channel changes --->
+ AMERICA'S BOATING CHANNEL (70307)
****************************************************

KineticMan · March 25, 2026, 1:34am

Correct.

That’s why I’ve tried to steer people to use feeds to setup custom channel lists - not use sources.

And the channum thing…. It’d create a whole level of complexity to make static channel numbers. It starts getting project into a M3U manager and not sure I’m interested in that. I was even hesitant to allow channum starts (even that was a nightmare) and just make users use CDVR auto defined function.

speedingcheetah · March 25, 2026, 2:26am

Channel numbers that do not change is a big sticking point for my mother. still operates under the old days of knowing the channel number and not the name. When you had to set the VCR to record a channel at a certain time. Or having to enter in the channel number on the Comcast remote to go to the channel she wanted directly cause the cable box guide was terrible and had thousands of channels lineup duplicates and was just hard to use.
I get annoying help me requests….my channel # with x show on it disappeared? Where did you move it to?

OTA and TVE channels almost never change number… FAST comes and goes.

Matthew_Crommert · March 25, 2026, 12:41pm

Sorry for my ignorance - but doesn't this solve the problem with the channel numbers?

Keith_Willis · March 25, 2026, 4:07pm

Ya I get the same from my Mom.
Or there is just too many channels. LOL

bnhf · March 25, 2026, 4:22pm

What would you think about using a similar approach to allowing user-submitted curated FAST channel collections? Each collection would need a decent description of the user's collection preferences (like "Classic TV and True Crime" or whatever).

This could provide a good starting point for a new user, if their viewing preferences happen to lineup with someone that's been down this road before.