I have been having the interrupted recordings as well. Another problem for me is in live viewing of Frndly channels. Nearly every time there is a commercial break, my live feed drops out to a black screen with status bar across the bottom. I have to exit to the guide and relaunch the channel to get it playing again. It has been driving me nuts for days, thinking it was something on my end.
Yeah it’s been happening several days now. Even on the official Frndly app. Hopefully @rpaulmerrell news of Frndly working on it will pan out and these drops will stop in the next day or two.
Friendly Chat support is responsive.
I will check with them soon.
They are losing a lot of impressions.
What if a person does not have a background in IT? I downloaded both Docker and Python and did a copy/paste of the script provided in Channels community into Python (not even sure it is correct) but have zero idea of what happens next or how to make a m3u file. Should I just give up now? Clearly, I'm over my head.
Hi everyone,
Looks like FRNDLY got Ad insertion back up and operational.
Just saw two ads inserted successfully.
Well @BAB I can’t help much with a python install. But some of this may help.
First check out the official instructions that can be found at https://www.matthuisman.nz/2021/11/frndly-tv-for-channels.html
Second find out if whatever you already did with Python is running correctly by going to the frndly-for-channels status page at http://host_ip:8183 where host_ip is the address of your server that is running the python script. This page is where you can can see if it is working and also view the links needed for Custom Channels in ChannelsDVR. If you get an error going to that page then your python setup was unsuccessful. And that is as far as I can help with that. You can continue to try the Python method (other talented people here will help) or, since you said you already installed Docker, go that route as described in the official instructions linked above.
If the status page is working than you just need to setup custom channels in ChannelsDVR.
It is best to use the double source method to add frndly-for-channels to Custom Channels. You need to setup two sources to get EPG data for all the channels.
Source 1
Go to ChannelsDVR Setting > Add Source > Custom Channels.
Set Nickname: whatever1
Set Stream Format: HLS
Set Source: http://host_ip:8183/playlist.m3u8?gracenote=include
Set Options: Refresh URL Daily
Set XMLTV Guide Data: None (do not add a link)
Save
Source 2
Go to ChannelsDVR Setting > Add Source > Custom Channels.
Set Nickname: whatever2
Set Stream Format: HLS
Set Source: http://host_ip:8183/playlist.m3u8?gracenote=exclude
Set Options: Refresh URL Daily
Set XMLTV Guide Data: http://host_ip:8183/epg.xml?gracenote=exclude
Save
The always diligent @chDVRuser has some screen caps of this custom channels setup above:
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Yeah, that seems to be the case. Thanks for keeping up on this, @rpaulmerrell and @Absenm . I have been watching the Weather Channel through Frndly on Channels DVR. It dropped out only once during a commercial earlier this morning. Fortunately, it has been solid since then.
Looks like the got it fixed. Over the past 4 hours I have made 5 Frndly recording with zero interruptions. And LIVE did not cut out at station ID on METV like it has constantly for the past several days. Cross your fingers I think they got it.
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with latest docker image, the http://127.0.0.1:8183 page will now give you the two playlist urls / epg url to use in Channels.
I have updated my blog post to say to view that page for configuration.
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As somewhat of a joke, gracenote seems to have given up trying to give details on GAC family christmas movies.
They're all the same drek, anyway (sigh).
I have switched to the new docker.
I'm using gracenote data for 35 of the 41 channels.
I have entered the previous details in a separate source so that the channels not included in gracenote have some listings.
the display on the tv as it relates to what is on now looks much better.
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if its found GAC family christmas movies gracenot is going to continue to be "no good", then I can remove it from my online file and it'll start using the local generated epg instead
as long as you have both sources setup
nah, it's just this endless (crappy) movie marathon. I submitted a req with zap2it comparing their data to frndly, which has all of the movies.
Actually everything else on GAC Family looks okay. Its just that when GAC Family does a christmas movie marathon the gracenote just calls each the movies the same title "GAC Family Christmas Movie" instead of the movies actual title. Its just specific to one event one that channel.
sorry - is gracenote wrong or not?
I said if its proven to continue to be wrong - we can change the docker container to use the epg provided by frndly-tv for it
How long has it been wrong for?
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gracenote is good
oh right - does frndly tv website have the movie names in the main epg view? (not after you click it)
The real fix to all of this is for someone to write a proper Frndly TV EPG scraper that gets each programs full data. Then we get rid of gracenote and just use that.
Nope. Just "GAC Family Christmas Movie". 
Maybe GAC hasn't even decided what to air yet. Maybe there is some bloke in there working the weekend shift with a few DVDs.
The next marathon is Saturday.
I was going to suggest that for the gracenote-less channels so we could get descriptions to boot. Otherwise, the gracenotes work awesome for those channels that have them. Sadly I don't have the skills or talent to write a scraper. lol.
Yes, it does have the Movie Title there.
But there's no release year and the description/summary just says "Great American Christmas in July, a marathon of Family Christmas Movies."
So you would have to lookup the movie on TMDB/IMDB to figure out what it is.
I think @Absenm meant that's what Gracenote shows for the Movie Title.
Oh, well. The Gracenote guide data is good for the rest of that channel, so no point in removing the station id.
Does it need to be in py3 or is node okay?