FastChannels - FAST Channels aggregator/manager

Let's see if @bnhf can edit that script first .. not saying your ask couldn't be done, but kind of niche request.

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Thanks, he did and it works. So ignore my "edge" request. :smile:

I'm confident you'll have more in the future :nerd_face:

I'm having way too much fun playing with this and constructing feeds. Thank you for a great contribution the community, @KineticMan. I hope you don't lose interest anytime soon.

I do find the presentation of the channels in a feed on the Feeds tab to be a little lacking.
I'd like to suggest adding the ability on the Channels tab to choose a feed to use as a filter. The resulting list should include both channels in the feed and disabled channels that would be in the feed if enabled.

I think this would make it a lot easier to find mis-categorized channels, adjust which duplicates you want in the feed, and adjust Gracenote IDs.

I like the idea... Easy to implement a filter like you asked, but allowing "editing" of the filter inside admin/channels might be tricky. I could have it list all the channels (like you suggested - would be all active/inactive) but probably wouldn't be able to change anything with the filter there (short of turning on/off channels). thoughts?

Anyone else notice that most Local Now channels only have about an hour of guide data?
I set the source to scrape every 60 minutes and set CDVR to refresh the guide data every 1hr.

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Yes. I have enabled 3 of the local news channels, and only an hour or two guide data.

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I'll say this for FastChannels. It has made it easy for me to wean my FAST channel list down to just what I'm interested in. I finally have run audits on all of the sources with the exception of Amazon, FreeLiveSports, and Sling.

The full list was over 4000 channels. After audits and disabling channels which do not interest me, I'm down to 455, and that's before eliminating duplicates!

Regarding duplicates... diabling all but one of each channel means that if that single channel fails for some reason, you get nothin'? Are you guys keeping a couple/few of each redundant channel?

It's a limitation of the API we use. The Local Now API hard-caps at exactly 5 programs per channel — program_size is completely ignored. The worst channels (short-duration shows like Euronews English at 30-min segments) yield only ~1 hour of future EPG coverage per scrape. not much else we can do, short of scraping every 60 minutes - i'll make that new default (had it at 360).

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After choosing a feed, I would expect the list of channels to remain static, even if changes are made that affect the feed. Refresh if you want to see how changes on the channels tab have affected the feed.

I am to start with.
As I find which source is better for a channel (records without interruptions), I'll disable the duplicates. If none of the duplicate channels fail, I'll keep them enabled as backups since FAST channels come and go from sources.

If a recording is interrupted after starting it's not going to fall over to another stream.

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I think that this is true of CDVR in general. I've never seen an in-progress, interrupted recording jump over to a different channel before. I may have seen a recording which failed to start switch to another channel/provider. :thinking:

Yes, it definitely does failover if it fails to start.

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FastChannels 2.5.0

New & Improved:

  • Channel numbers are now stable across scrape cycles. Channels keep their assigned numbers even as sources add or remove channels — no more guide reshuffling after a scrape. This should help some of the DVR issues you've seen if chan-num changes for a scheduled DVR recording.
  • User-pinned channel numbers survive scrapes and source updates permanently.
  • Channels admin now lets you filter by feed — see exactly which channels would appear in any given feed's output without leaving the admin panel.
  • New startup migration system ensures database changes apply automatically on container start.

Under the hood:

  • Worker processes are now fully isolated — scheduler, scraper, fast, and maintenance each run as separate processes with independent watchdog restarts. Should eliminate overnight time-outs we saw occassionally on jobs.
  • Heavy background jobs (channel purge, bulk enable/disable, Gracenote tasks) moved to a dedicated maintenance queue so scrape jobs aren't delayed.
  • EPG prune and other DB operations now run in batches to avoid SQLite lock contention.
  • Feed channel filter logic deduplicated between admin and API routes.
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@KineticMan Are we able to submit PRs to the community gracenote list or would you prefer to keep channel requests here?

here is better for me pls

oh - for the community gracenote... i still haven't decided the best path forward for that. anyone have suggestions how we could all collabrate on that list?

Github PRs :slight_smile:

Edit - That still puts the onus on you for approvals, is it possible to add others with approval and merge permission? I imagine there are several folks here who would happily take that on.

Edit 2 - In the meantime: Plex -> MythBusters -> 180083 (WBTVMB) ... Props to the sweet new gracenote helper for allowing me to narrow that down :clap:

Just like the other dockers do, just make it an excel list and people will chip in via PRs.

(Anyways, that isn't a big deal for me since I use SLM to map everything out but yeah)

If you are super trusting, you could have an open Google Sheet and a routine that scrapes that into hosted the CSV file on a regular basis. But that leaves too much open to many potential problems, including users accidentally deleting the whole thing.

Instead, you could also create a request input form in something like Google Docs, Survey Monkey, or something similar and then move them over yourself if approved. A Google Doc -> Approval -> Google Sheet -> Hosted CSV path might be a... fun... thing to set up, but would require less manual intervention in the end (just check off that you accept the change). Since most users aren't on and don't want an account on Github, I'd avoid the PR or Issues path, or having people dump it in this thread and clog it up.

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A lot of these sources have the same channels (duplicates). As far as quality/reliability, is there a 'best' source(s) or 'worst' in general??

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