This is an ongoing issue for years now. Channels DVR server is Rock Solid... Period... But the player is real bad especially remotely. So this leads me to the Tivimate question... Tivimate is the Best Player there is Hands down and works amazing with channels dvr. I know we can simply add the m3u and xml from channels DVR to tivimate locally (should be a clickable link in web gui) easy peasy but remotely we need the auth token which is very hard if not impossible to find and no documentation how to implement it with the m3u and xml. So My Question and Request is for a simple clickable link or dropdown in the webgui to download the m3u and xml for local 3rd party playback and also links that include your token in the m3u and xml for remote 3rd party remote playback. Tailscale works but it doesn't have the throughput to playback high bitrate content. It cannot be too complicated to script and code it and would help many and boost your sales by doing so and would retain subscribers so I ask on behalf of many channels DVR subscribers to please implement this huge benefit to all... Thank You for your consideration
While you wait for this to be implemented(I wouldn’t hold your breath) this is how you do it.
M3u
https://xxxxxxx.u.channelsdvr.net:8089/devices/ANY/channels.m3u?codec=copy&session=copy and paste token here
Guide data
https://xxxxxxx.u.channelsdvr.net:8089/devices/ANY/guide/xmltv?duration=604800&session=copy and paste token here
Getting the token is pretty easy, from a pc OUTSIDE your home network, in chrome go to my.channelsdvr. Login. Hit ctrl,shift,i
Click on “>>” choose application and finally cookies.
Your personal u.channelsdvr.ne will show in the address bar after logging in
Personally I’ve never had a problem with using Tailscale and I think it’s a better solution as I’ve used both ways before.
Thank you, I'm going to try that to get the token. I've only tried from my own network that may be why I couldn't find the cookie
Found it in the logs. Will implement and test thanks again
One last question, does the token ever expire or change and is it possible to force it to create a new authorization token? Idike to change it every so often or to kill a box if needed. Thank You in advance for any help with this. This is very important for me
I’m not sure on the exact number of days but it does expire around 25-30 days.
After testing I wonder if the token ever changes or does just the device id expire as I find each box (client) has a unique device id it seems more logical the device id expires requiring you to reauthorize which gives the specific device (client) id access and the token remains the same for every client added. And if that's the case from a security standpoint it would make sense that there should be a way to force a token change since if ever someone used the web player and then someone got the token from the cache without using "&dvr_client_id=xxxxxxx" attached at the end makes any device the token is added to will never expire unless the token changes and after years of using channels DVR server I have never seen channels want every device to reauthorize at same time it's always random which leads me to believe this is how it works. So that is a major security issue to me. If someone can help with my endeavor I truly appreciate it. I hope someone can shed light on this and provide a workaround to force the token change. Thanks again
Ok after more testing and discovery and searching through data folder files I've learned that each client (device) gets a unique token( copying from a moving log ain't easy lol) that I was able to figure out once I located the log files and pem file. What I haven't been able to locate so far is the file that ties the device id to the clients so to figure out which box gets which token which would make things so easy to make custom m3u for each device/client instead of picking one of the tokens and using for all boxes which is bad if you want a box or boxes to drop off when their token expires instead of all devices going dead at same time so as to stagger updating tokens per box as they expire. If anyone can help with where the file and name of the file that matches device id to client id it would be awesome. Thank You in advance
All I know is I always had to after about 30 days copy and paste a new cookie token into the url after session= otherwise it quits working. This was when I was feeding one channels server to another channels server. I can’t see it being any different when going from a channels server to a tivimate.