Having the starting channel number for a source would prevent sources from stomping on each other during source deletion/addition. It would also allow easily to keep track of sources. The default numbering scheme is not perfect.
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Yeah, this is literally a weekly activity with the Custom stations. Oh, I got a new one, time to go through every single source to see which one added it and decide if I want to favorite/hide/nothing the station.
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I'm sure they (the networks) couldn't care less since they want you to watch it via their method.
I think you've misunderstood what is happening with me. This is about ignoring channel numbers from m3u...
... and seeing "Oh great, I have a another new station!"
Which one of my eight custom sources does it belong to? Oh look, I found it on Pluto between two numbers that are nowhere close to each other!
If only I could say "Start this source at station10,000, start this one at 20,000..." within Channels, then it would be easier to figure this out. Just a nice addition, nothing critical. Also, nothing to do with the networks and everything to do with how Channels assigns station numbers when you ignore what is coming from the m3u.
And yes, I know I can do this myself if I put numbers into the m3u that I prefer. And I do do that for streams (80,000) and EPlusTV (90,000). Yes, I am aware that if I used https://nocords.xyz that I could at least do this for Pluto with the ?start= variable, but I'm already maintaining my own Dockers so I might as well keep trucking.
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Another example is a custom 10 entries source with channels say 9001-9010 followed by other sources. When another channel is added it doesn't get 9011. This one is already taken. It gets 9734. Now you have to travel through a few hundred entries to find another channel from the list. 
Initial support in new prerelease
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So I took a source that already existed and added this setting...
... but the station numbers remained the same, even after manually reloading the m3u. Is this only for when adding a source as new and when stations get added to an existing source? Is there not a way to update an existing source without completely removing and adding again?
If it is possible to get a source to update to the new numbers, that would be very helpful, but I'm also concerned about downstream impacts. For instance, let's say I've already put favorite/hide settings:
Will those be maintained or will everything be lost because because they are "new" stations.
The same thing with Channels Collections...
Will I get the dreaded "This channels *** no longer exists" message?
Trying to gauge how much rework I have in front of me if I want to implement this for my existing sources!
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I confirm the same behavior and I have the same questions.
I think it works during the very first move but then it gets stuck. We should be taking backups before playing with this ....
Okay, after this...
I can confirm this works with no issues. I changed the starting channel number and everything stayed as it was before except the station number itself:
I even changed the number a couple of times and it worked perfectly fine. You can see when you change the number, it immediately does a reindex of the m3u.
FYI, if you have already saved a number in there during the prior build, you need to change it once and save. Just make it something else, save, put it to what you want, and save again. All was well. Now to do a backup before I test with my real sources!
Awesome stuff, @tmm1!
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