FastChannels - FAST Channels aggregator/manager

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#2489

Heya, this is just a sort of public service announcement for the project:

After inspecting the data from FastChannels, it looks like the data for these airings is pretty bad.

All the airings are set to Season 1, Episode 1. Additionally, the program IDs are bad too:

Big Brother Camera 1/S1E1

Channels DVR Server reads this as them all being the same airing. The oldest bug that community projects can commit.

Without unique identifiers, Channels DVR Server can't do much. So it's important they get unique IDs. Obviously, these airings are definitely edge cases as they just air CONSTANTLY. So they're tricky.

My old (inactive) Pluto project creates programIDs like this:

pluto/64bf2449e4391c0008d16a89/20260812180000-+000

Using the airing date/time, keeping them unique. Additionally they have no season/episode numbers at all, as these airings dont.

I suspect that FastChannels is defaulting to Season 1 and Episode 1, when it can't resolve them. This should be corrected to just be nil, not 1. Additionally, it seems to be building programIDs off of this metadata which isn't guaranteed to exist, which is a recipe for failure too.

I hope this helps.

3 Likes
#2490

Yeah...Pluto guide data has never been great and I generally try to avoid using it when I can even going back to your old tool. If you can map these channels to gracenote, then do it. Relying on these FAST sources data is not a good idea unless theres no gracenote data that exist for said channel (ie. FOX Sports on Tubi)

#2491

I'm sure that this is why the v5.0.0 FastChannels guide data showed different programming for some of those generic feeds. (and why my recordings were occasionally not the same as the guide was showing)

Now that I have the Gracenote id fields populated in FastChannels, I'll see if things match up more closely. My PBS feeds from pbs-vlc-bridge and SLM seemed to correlate well. I expect that will be the case with FC as well. I'll be happy to report if I notice any differences.

Thanks!

2 Likes
#2492

Great feedback - appreciate it. I'm going to implement your suggestions.

When I was making up the XML data from imperfect upstream provider data, I knew it would never be as good as Gracenote, but I didn't realize the implications of the fake Season/Episode data. This should help people with their series recordings with CDVR.

3 Likes
#2493

When do you plan to push out the update? It will def help me with Big Brother Channels on Pluto. =)

2 Likes
#2494

You record Big Brother? Creeper! :joy:

I think I’ll have to update most of the actual scrapers. I’ll get crackin’!

1 Like
#2495

Just call me creeper Jack. I love recording them and going back and watching all the madness! =)

#2496

I didn't realize it until I saw the post in the Analog TV Simulator thread that FastChannels supports HDHomeRun. Does it support multiple HDHRs? I didn't see a way to add more than one.

1 Like
#2497

Just one. I suppose I could add support for more than one, but haven't had much interest from anyone. It was just a fun hack to add it - not a ton of value in it since CDVR handles HDHR natively.

#2498

I was going to ask if it does anything different than CDVR, but I figured it was mainly to centralize channel management under one platform. I was going to play around with it when I got a chance.

1 Like
#2499

Was checking out the PBS feeds and it looks like the guide data is incorrect for a lot of the subchannels, the data for subchannel 1 is listed as the main PBS channel data instead of Create, World etc. There is no main PBS channel feed in all those channels from what I can see.

#2500

just to confirm- gracenote EPG data, or the scraped stuff?

#2501

I'm assuming it's the scraped stuff:

1 Like
#2502

Using the guide data in the FC console. I haven't tried those channels with the gracenote feed.

#2503

got it.

Like @babsonnexus said, it's likely upstream issue. I'll take another look at it - maybe if nothing else, I could re-name the sub-channels PBS World, or PBS Create?

#2504

I have a few questions.

At some point in updating to FC v5.0.2 or v5.0.3, my PBS channels started auto populating Gracenote id #'s. Likely because I have the "Auto-assign Gracenote IDs" option enabled in FC Settings.

Screenshot 2026-08-13 4.36.59 PM
Screenshot 2026-08-13 4.36.59 PM1861×573 131 KB

Where are these ID numbers coming from?
Are they from scraped data for each channel?
If so, can they be assumed to be accurate?

With these automatically assigned Gracenote IDs, is this the GN guide info we are seeing when viewing the guide through the FC GUI?

Screenshot 2026-08-13 4.44.42 PM
Screenshot 2026-08-13 4.44.42 PM1861×573 177 KB

#2505

No. In that guide view you're viewing the FastChannels scraped EPG.

#2506

From our friend @babsonnexus work. I merged his mapping he did on SLM into the community sourced Gracenote IDs. If they’re wrong, publicly shame him :joy:

1 Like
#2507

I'm pretty confident that @babsonnexus matched Gracenote IDs up carefully. I have used Playlist Manager from within Streamlinks Manager for my PBS feeds for quite some time. Most, if not all of my recordings have matched up well.

Before SLM, I couldn't make much sense of PBS gracenote info. Every time I thought I had a good match, a couple of oddball local shows would come on to prove me wrong.

#2508

Source Samsung TV Plus is out of scraped guide data.
Notified Matt

1 Like