Is it possible to do TVE Healthchecks?

Channels DVR Server TV Everywhere
#1

Every once in a while my locals over TVE disconnect and have to be rescanned (XFinity). When this happens any passes set up for the TVE locals fail with errors that they are unable to tune. When I manually tune to those channels I see some status in the logs that show ChannelsDVR was unable to tune or that the stream was unable to be sniffed for content type.

Is it possible to use the API to check the status of the TVE tuners on a cronjob, possibly a curl invocation that would return if the streams were in a healthy state? At least I could set up an alert or a pushover to let me know and that I should check for any passes that would fail and set them to use another source (OTA).

My OTA is in a different time zone than my TVE so setting passes to use both the OTA and TVE isn't going to work out.

As an additional FR, being able to kick off a pushover alert when a recording failed would be awesome as well.

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#2

It is interesting how my home based DVR computer system of a decade or two ago, a piece of hardware/software that used to run without any form of human intervention for months on end, has turned into something that a human has to actively babysit weekly, even daily at times.

That said, I'm not sure how one would implement such a feature without it becoming a burden on the various networks, to the point where Channels DVR automates authentication and starts timing out some services (which some TVE networks do when they recognize too much strange activity).

As an aging person, I wonder if the younger generation can even imagine a system that operated efficiently for months, or even years on end without user intervention. All of this is now bunk in the name of "progress," "advancement," and perceived "security."

Progress, it would seem, doesn't favor the human.

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#3

Channels DVR doesn't need babysitting. Unless you want to install new betas, it just runs forever. OPs issue is with TVE stream authentication, which is not reliable.

#4

Agreed. TVE stream authentication is not reliable, and affects the user experience.

#5

I have thought about this too. I could see benefit to having each the channel checked once a week to see if it’s tuning successfully. If not, send a notification of some kind. Of course, that would require a notification engine of some kind as well.

#6

I agree with you ... I do not want to babysit a DVR ... But with TVE you have no choice ... there should be an alert on the clients as soon as a recording fails .. I want to know as soon as the first recording on the schedule fails on all clients ... I do not want to sit with the webserver open and browsing recordings.

BTW Just moved finally have everything connected. Glad I had no problems with XFINITY and my Primes were plug and play. I just hope they do not fail and I have to go exclusively to TVE.

#7

My tve authentication has never failed in 3 years with two providers, optimum and Verizon. Just the occasional url change from the provider that has to be fixed by an update.

It’s been flawless.

#8

XFINITY and Youtube are a pain in the butt. You are one of the lucky ones.

#9

I'm with you there. I have a TiVo Bolt and HDHR Prime on Xfinity cable. TVE is only used to record a couple channels that are in SD resolution in my cable package.

I setup a weekly task running every Sunday afternoon that creates short 10 minute manual recordings for the week at the same time each day on the two TVE channels I use the most. So now I check everyday to see if the recordings failed. It's a PITA.

#10

FYI, this is how I am attempting to solve this-