HACK: Use Channels DVR as a Plex tuner

@tmm1 any chance of adding additional image aspect ratios (2x3) as that is what suits plex’s layout?

Plex has the same guide data (gracenote) but they always seem to get a lot more errors in their guide.

Understandable if you don’t want to add, but just thought since this is for plex you may consider adding the images to suit.:slight_smile:

Channels doesn’t have that aspect for tv shows.

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Is this feature still working with the current release of both applications?

I've installed the newest versions of Channels DVR and Plex Media Server, but I'm unable to complete the integration.

Does this functionality require specific versions, or should it work with the latest releases?

Which part is not working? What is happening?

Plex Version: 1.41.5.9522 (Up to date)
Plex Version

Channels DVR Version: 2025.03.20.0031 (Pre-Release, Up to date)
Channels DVR Version

The Configuration Issue
When attempting to integrate my Channels DVR with Plex, I encountered an error. After copying the M3U URL directly from Channels DVR and attempting to add it to Plex as a tuner device, the system failed to recognize the connection.

The error message indicates: "There was a problem adding the device" with reference to the Channels M3U URL. Despite the system continuing to search for available devices, the connection cannot be established.

Are you sure the IPs can talk to each other?

@tmm1 i want to bring this up again as i'm unsure if it was missed

Passing through a channel collection passes through virtual channels too even though they can't be watched

Doesn't this fix it?

yes, but that pre-release came out 4 hours after his post

haha yeah

Thanks devs for the fix :slight_smile:

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Fix works great

At this point the only ask I have left is keeping the order of the channel collection

I know this would require reordering the channels but this would also fix the weird plex interaction with xml that has both whole numbers and x.x numbers which is still a problem on plex’s end

Thought I'd ask this here since it will probably take forever to get a response from Plex. When switching from Plex guide (with live TV playing in upper-right) back to full screen, there's a noticeable delay where screen goes black for 2-3 seconds.

Just wondering if anyone else has this issue?

how are you guys getting around authorization for the m3u url? The url generated works in a browser as long as the browser has been authorized already with Channels DVR. But it doesn't work anywhere else (prompts for authorization)

Are you running the Docker version of CDVR? If so, you might try using host mode networking.

Yes. Immediately after posting, I figured it might be because of docker. I did a few quick tests from the the terminal and realize the URL doesn’t get the 403 via the container IP from the container IP network. I’ll mess around with it a bit — don’t want necessarily open it up more then I need to — I just need to make the plex and channels dvr to share the same docker container network.

So this actually works now. Not sure if this was a change Plex's end or Channels end. But I currently have 2 seperate tuners with 2 seperate tuner counts - which match the assigned tuner count set in channels. I assume because of that reason, this was updated in the background and not noted in any release.

Very stoked with that though, thanks Channels team.

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Hi tmm1,
Please tell me one thing if you know, i install plex and add channels dvr tuner like you explain, but I always have the error s1001 (Network).
So I try to add the codecs as you described but my fresh plex install have a different numbers folder, my is this one 3e1b2b0-942daf2dc73f6618466d358d-linux-x86_64, what do I have to do in this case, your post is from Dec 24' and maybe something has been change in the server folder structure.
Can you please give me a explanation of what do I have to do in this case to remove this error?
Thank you

Follow the steps using the numbers in your install

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Ok thank you, just one more thing when we do this the transcoding is from channels or plex, what is the best plex configuration to use channels tunner?

I'm still get the s1001 (Network) error, one question, in my codecs number folder I don't have any codecs, I only have to download the libaac_encoder.so or all of them?

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