CHANNELS DVR with Generic Pipe Capture (PLUTO TV as well)

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Over the last day or two I am no longer able to tune channels 6108 through 6113. I call up a channel, and watch the Channels DVR web interface but there is nothing happening. Everything tunes fine with Channels DVR software (Hulu TV), just not in Sage.

I assume Channels DVR changed something with the tuning that SageTV hasn't picked up on?

They are working now with exoplayer.

[KryptoNyte]

Okay, I think I have a user error on this one. I was trying to tune them using a Hulu tuner in Sage, but it was actually the Spectrum tuner that should have had them enabled ...

Ya, that was it. All those channels are available on both services, but it turns out that Spectrum TVE tuner is higher priority tuner in Channels than Hulu TVE, so SageTV needed to be tuning with the Spectrum TVE tuner, I would imagine using the Spectrum login with Spectrum service in Channels.

[KryptoNyte]

I was wondering why the Badger football game starting at 2:30 CST today wasn't showing up in the recording schedule. The Favorite that I have setup for this is "College Football" with the keyword [Wisconsin] for first runs only.

For some reason, the guide is not showing this as a first run, so I assume that's why it's not scheduled to record. Channels DVR is configured for a similar 'favorite' with first runs only, and it is showing in their guide as first run and is scheduled. Any ideas what might be happening here?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I was wondering why the Badger football game starting at 2:30 CST today wasn't showing up in the recording schedule. The Favorite that I have setup for this is "College Football" with the keyword [Wisconsin] for first runs only.

For some reason, the guide is not showing this as a first run, so I assume that's why it's not scheduled to record. Channels DVR is configured for a similar 'favorite' with first runs only, and it is showing in their guide as first run and is scheduled. Any ideas what might be happening here?

Looks like all college games are marked as re-run

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Looks like all college games are marked as re-run

Only the games on the TVE stations. My OTA stations (still using schedules direct) show first runs correctly. I assume it must have something to do with how Sage is interpreting first run status in the lineup data it retrieves from Channels DVR?

[KryptoNyte]

Yesterday I had a power outage and my ChannelsDVR/SageTV server machine went down without a proper shutdown.

Last night I noticed that there are no more Hulu-TV channels from the ChannelsDVR TVE. I'm also using the Spectrum-TV TVE from ChannelsDVR and that is still working, I would imagine because I copied the original Hulu-TV lineup into a separately configurable Spectrum TVE lineup (as the tuner reports).

For some reason, SageTV can't fetch the Hulu-TV channels. I checked the xmltv.properties file in the SageTV folder and it is still correct. I then removed all Hulu-TV tuners in Sage and re-added them, selecting the lineup name (provider.name=channelsdvr) and when I go in to configure channels, there are no channels in the lineup.

I did check:
http://192.168.254.241:8089/devices/....m3u?format=ts

and the m3u file has the information, but I wonder if the ChannelsDVR format has changed in a manner that SageTV can't understand it:

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="6010" tvg-id="6010" tvg-chno="6010" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s62420_ll_h15_ab.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="62420" tvg-name="CCHD" group-title="HD",CC
http://192.168.254.241:8089/devices/TVE-Hulu/channels/6010/stream.mpg?format=ts

#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="6012" tvg-id="6012" tvg-chno="6012" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s60964_ll_h15_aa.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="60964" tvg-name="MTVHD" group-title="HD",MTV
http://192.168.254.241:8089/devices/TVE-Hulu/channels/6012/stream.mpg?format=ts

#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="6014" tvg-id="6014" tvg-chno="6014" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s60046_ll_h15_aa.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="60046" tvg-name="VH1HD" group-title="HD",VH1
http://192.168.254.241:8089/devices/TVE-Hulu/channels/6014/stream.mpg?format=ts

#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="6016" tvg-id="6016" tvg-chno="6016" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s59440_ll_h15_ad.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="59440" tvg-name="CMTVHD" group-title="HD",CMT
http://192.168.254.241:8089/devices/TVE-Hulu/channels/6016/stream.mpg?format=ts

#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="6018" tvg-id="6018" tvg-chno="6018" tvg-logo="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/s63236_ll_h15_ac.png?w=360&h=270" tvc-guide-stationid="63236" tvg-name="BETHD" group-title="HD",BET
http://192.168.254.241:8089/devices/TVE-Hulu/channels/6018/stream.mpg?format=ts

Any ideas as to what may have happened and how to repair?

[KryptoNyte]

I removed the HuluTV tuners from Sage once again. Shutdown Sage and OpenDCT, then copied the XMLTV import files over the original files in the SageTV folder, restarted the OpenDCT and SageTV Services, re-added a HuluTV tuner and it appears to have properly fetched the channel lineup.

[Zogg]

I'm hoping someone can help me get captioning/subtitles to work using the Channels DVR to OpenDCT method. It works fine if the recording is from an HDHomeRun unit, but I'm seeing weird results if the source is TVE.

SageTV doesn't recognize the closed captions in the file, but comskip does and can extract the captions into subtitle file (.SRT). When I look at the text in the .SRT file it looks fine.

But the subtitles don't play back properly. On a Windows client they don't show at all, neither with the LAV decoder or others. On the Android Miniclient, they do show but play very fast as if the time codes are being ignored.

Anyone see this weird subtitle problem before where they fly through very fast? Or know how to make them show up in a Windows client? (I can enable them, they just don't show on the screen)

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Zogg

I'm hoping someone can help me get captioning/subtitles to work using the Channels DVR to OpenDCT method. It works fine if the recording is from an HDHomeRun unit, but I'm seeing weird results if the source is TVE.

SageTV doesn't recognize the closed captions in the file, but comskip does and can extract the captions into subtitle file (.SRT). When I look at the text in the .SRT file it looks fine.

But the subtitles don't play back properly. On a Windows client they don't show at all, neither with the LAV decoder or others. On the Android Miniclient, they do show but play very fast as if the time codes are being ignored.

Anyone see this weird subtitle problem before where they fly through very fast? Or know how to make them show up in a Windows client? (I can enable them, they just don't show on the screen)

Sage does not handle closed Captions very well .. that is why I extract them during comskip.

[nyplayer]

As a side note this is what I did in order to have Channels DVR control Access to all tuners and M3U feeds.

I Setup a Low Powered NUC I had with Channels DVR and Tuners only no recording no transcoding ... only used as a backend.

I then pointed everything to it Including My Main Channels DVR server ... EMBY SageTV Plex etc... This way my main DVR server is not always busy serving the other DVRs.

This makes maintenance simple.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Sage does not handle closed Captions very well .. that is why I extract them during comskip.

Sage handles captions just fine IF they are from either my HDHR Prime (CableCard) or HDHR Quattro (OTA), regardless if the stream is via Channels DVR or directly into OpenDCT. I found an Elecard MPEG2 codec that works pretty well with Sage.

However, the video streams coming from CDVR/TVE look a bit odd. The captions are always in their own stream, labeled Captions 1, but isn't always the first captions stream. I.E. sometimes it will be the 3rd Captions stream, 5th stream over all, but still labeled Captions 1. And Sage won't play them at all.

The garbled extracted captions isn't consistent, and a lot of the time they are fine. But compounding the problem, the SRT files generated by Comskip don't play properly (they race past very quickly), and the SRT files generated by CCExtractor play fine but not on a Windows client from a Linux (or at least Docker) server. I see a Java error in the log file so I'm hoping this can get fixed.

In the mean time, I'm going to look at setting up a post processing script to use CCExtractor to generate the SRT file, and then Handbrake to do a quick conversion and add them back in as forced subtitles.

[KryptoNyte]

Do you by chance have an option to use an HD300 for viewing? I know it's not the real solution to the issue, but the extender does appear to do a great job with captions in my experience (even with the TVE streams coming from Channels DVR).

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Do you by chance have an option to use an HD300 for viewing? I know it's not the real solution to the issue, but the extender does appear to do a great job with captions in my experience (even with the TVE streams coming from Channels DVR).

I do not have an HD300, but besides my HTPC I can also run the Miniclient on my Sony TV which so far has worked very well (on my previous Sony, which died early, the Miniclient would hang too much to be usable). I also have a FireStick that I could plug in if necessary.

I just tested a couple of videos I processed, using Handbrake and MKVToolNix, putting the extracted subtitles back into the video file. Neither would show the subtitles on a Windows client, but with the Miniclient I could enable subs on both and they both worked.

The only problem with THAT is that once I process the video file, Sage puts it in Videos rather than Recordings.

[KryptoNyte]

It appears that Sage can no longer bring in a stream from channels from 6101 thru 6107 (Hulu TVE). Works fine in Channels DVR, just not in Sage. Any ideas?

[boukmandutty]

I just tested it and they seem to work for me, but I have YouTube tv. Are you using windows, or linux?

I would say verify first that channels dvr is sending out a feed for those channels while you are trying to watch them on sagetv.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

It appears that Sage can no longer bring in a stream from channels from 6101 thru 6107 (Hulu TVE). Works fine in Channels DVR, just not in Sage. Any ideas?

Mine are working on SageTV and feeds all come from the Same place regardless of what TVE provider you are using. Those are discover channels. Make sure your SageTVTranscoder plugin is installed.

[KryptoNyte]

Correct, only the Discovery suite, other Hulu TVE is working fine. Channels DVR never indicates that it is recording ("watching ...." in the activity area on the server).

I just noticed there are about 12 Hulu verifications codes that appeared in my email. Not sure why Channels DVR works fine, but won't attempt to stream when requested by Sage.

[KryptoNyte]

I ended up having to open a Chrome incognito window on the server and attempt a login to go.discovery.com to watch live, at which point it asked me for my Hulu username and password, then started live TV. Now Sage can properly tune those channels.

Because I was able to watch those Discovery Channels successfully all along with Channels DVR, it leaves me wondering what Channels DVR does differently to login to Discovery TVE for its own usage vs. when Sage tries to use it.

I wonder if it has something to do with a change of password. I fixed this immediately in Channels DVR when I updated my Hulu password. When I went back into Chrome, it had saved passwords for Hulu and Hulu auth, both of them old, and when an incorrect password is entered, it prompts Hulu sending an email with a 6 digit authentication code. Once I fixed the saved passwords in Chrome, it appears to be working fine. Lastly, I wonder if the incognito window that Channels DVR had a handle on had been open for so long that it didn't attempt a new password entry, because it was already authenticated under the older password.

I haven't updated Channels DVR since 11/15.

[garys255]

Hi all,

Been using SageTV in a fairly vanilla way for many years. Running it on an Unraid box via docker for a year or two but now that Charter is close to killing cablecard support, wanted to spin up a new SageTV docker and see if i can get it working with Channels DVR...

I've read through the posts in this thread and think I've got things set up correctly, but I haven't been able to get Sage successfully capture/view a TVE stream from channelsdvr.

Sage can see the new tuners i've set up, and lets me add them, but when I set one up to use SD guide data and change one of the channels to use the number from Channels, I still can't get it to tune.

Looking for ideas as to where it might be going wrong.

Here's an example of one of my tuners in opendct:
sagetv.device.110742372.consumer=opendct.consumer.RawSageTVConsumerImpl
sagetv.device.110742372.custom_channels=
sagetv.device.110742372.delay_to_wait_after_tuning=0
sagetv.device.110742372.device_name=tve01
sagetv.device.110742372.encoder_listen_port=9000
sagetv.device.110742372.encoder_merit=0
sagetv.device.110742372.encoder_pool=generic_pipe
sagetv.device.110742372.exclusive_server_address=
sagetv.device.110742372.fast_network_encoder_switch=true
sagetv.device.110742372.last_channel=6073
sagetv.device.110742372.stopping_executable=
sagetv.device.110742372.streaming_executable=ffmpeg -i http\://192.168.1.92\:8089/devices/ANY/channels/%c%/stream.mpg?format\=ts -c copy -f mpegts -
sagetv.device.110742372.transcode_profile=
sagetv.device.110742372.tuning_delay_ms=0

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by garys255

...but now that Charter is close to killing cablecard support...

Is this true? Can you post a link or some other form of documentation? I'm about to do battle with Charter, it would be good to know how close they are to killing support so I don't waste too much of my time.