I use a VPN.
It had never had an issue before except when trying to run Channels (S9+, Shield TV, etc.) as if the VPN was active then Channels would just show the spinning circle forever and not get to the menus. Fair enough.
I had 70 plus channels showing on SlingTv and similar numbers on Philo (the latter a sort of test to see how many more TVE channels I could get, but not really worth the extra $20).
Channels were not working properly so I decided to do a rescan. The rescan resulted in a loss of some 20 plus channels from each.
Further, the remaining channels mostly do not work showing a variety of issues as per the example extracts from the log below.
Has something changed with Channels or TVE in the past 24 hours? My gut feeling is the latter and VPN/country restrictions are now being enforced when they were not as late as yesterday night.
Log's extracts: (FYI I have not included errors which are clearly related to the VPN/location)
2019/10/28 22:02:16 [ERR] Failed to start stream for ch6024: TVE: Could not fetch playlist: : Get : unsupported protocol scheme ""
2019/10/28 22:02:26 [ERR] Failed to start stream for ch6020: TVE: Could not fetch playlist: : Get : unsupported protocol scheme ""
2019/10/28 22:02:36 [TNR] Opened connection to TVE-slingtv for ch6052 USA
2019/10/28 22:02:39 [HLS] Probe failed for live stream after 3.054482546s and 0 bytes
2019/10/28 22:02:39 [HLS] Starting transcoder for channel 6052 from 192.168.1.44 (encoder=h264_vaapi, resolution=, deinterlacer=hardware, bitrate=10000)
2019/10/28 22:03:04 [ERR] Error during stream TVE-slingtv ch6052 USA: Failed to download file: https://tveusaeast-x.akamaized.net/live/ephemeral/qQGdgVWH4kBpaso8tgQ1xyibM1VPLmDX/usaeast-x-dist/4296k/hhZxEtyiANS/157231/segment_157231839.ts: 403 Forbidden
pipe:: could not find codec parameters
2019/10/28 22:03:09 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch6052-dANY-ip192.168.1.44 @ 0s
2019/10/28 22:03:09 [TNR] Closed connection to TVE-slingtv for ch6052 USA
2019/10/28 22:03:16 [ERR] Failed to start stream for ch6022: TVE: Could not fetch playlist: : Get : unsupported protocol scheme ""
2019/10/28 22:03:55 [TNR] Opened connection to TVE-slingtv for ch6054 SYFY
2019/10/28 22:03:58 [HLS] Probe failed for live stream after 3.01861461s and 0 bytes
2019/10/28 22:03:58 [HLS] Starting transcoder for channel 6054 from 192.168.1.44 (encoder=h264_vaapi, resolution=, deinterlacer=hardware, bitrate=10000)
2019/10/28 22:04:13 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch6054-dANY-ip192.168.1.44 @ 0s
pipe:: could not find codec parameters
2019/10/28 22:04:13 [TNR] Closed connection to TVE-slingtv for ch6054 SYFY
2019/10/28 22:04:21 [TNR] Opened connection to TVE-slingtv for ch6054 SYFY
2019/10/28 22:04:24 [HLS] Probe failed for live stream after 3.022073466s and 0 bytes
2019/10/28 22:04:24 [HLS] Starting transcoder for channel 6054 from 192.168.1.44 (encoder=h264_vaapi, resolution=, deinterlacer=hardware, bitrate=10000)
2019/10/28 22:04:48 [ERR] Error during stream TVE-slingtv ch6054 SYFY: Failed to download file: https://tvesyfyeast-x.akamaized.net/live/ephemeral/Qr3dGP1HoA38PSJxHQKZYqfD53O9lZ6D/syfyeast-x-dist/4296k/vbcXWSDfrOc/157231/segment_157231853.ts: 403 Forbidden
pipe:: could not find codec parameters
2019/10/28 22:04:52 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch6054-dANY-ip192.168.1.44 @ 0s
2019/10/28 22:04:52 [TNR] Closed connection to TVE-slingtv for ch6054 SYFY
Thanks.