Kodi 21.0 Omega/NextPVR 21.1.0 PVR & Live TV Group Manager

[mvallevand]

There is more going on here, it sounds like the oid is changing not just the channel name.

I created a Kodi only channel group "Test group" and added 3 stations.  I then when into NextPVR and manually renamed two of them and the two names in the group were changed in Kodi without have to do anything.

Martin

[sub]

There is more going on here, it sounds like the oid is changing not just the channel name.

I think he is saying this is happening after doing an 'Update Channels'.

There is no real channel identifiers in m3u files for us to track channels. We've pretty much only only got the name or url to go by, and the url is known to often change. Because of this, NextPVR only really knows if it already a channel if the channel name is the same....so if he changes the name in NextPVR, and updates the channels (and hit's save while it's ticked), NextPVR wont know it's a channel it already has, and a new channel will be created. I might be able to store the original m3u channel name somewhere, so that changing the channel name in NextPVR wont make it loose track of the association.

[mvallevand]

Right what I am saying is he shouldn't be renaming it in NextPVR and expecting a rescan to update the URL since it can't be ticked as an update.

What I hadn't considered was if the name isn't in the m3u file after a rescan is it automatically deleted?

Martin

[sub]

What I hadn't considered was if the name isn't in the m3u file after a rescan is it automatically deleted?

No, it's just left there unchanged in NextPVR. It doesn't automatically delete channels.

[mvallevand]

As long as he follows the suggestion to only tick changes to add new stations, or accepts that if the URL changes on a renamed (in NextPVR) station he will lose scheduled recordings and groups in NextPVR and Kodi he should be ok then

A future enhancement to the NextPVR IPTV channel_mapping table could be to include the m3u name to allow for renaming the station in NextPVR. Some IPTV names are really ugly. Using just the guideID which may not even be present is not that safe.

Martin

[sub]

I've made a change for next build, so that NextPVR is storing and using the original channel name, so better able to cope with an IPTV channels being renamed then updated.

[bouilliabai]

Heh, seems I missed a lot of the fun going offline and doing some real work for a change.

First off, a big thanks to you both for a willingness to look into issues users are experiencing. Most of us don't know what we're doing in the first place, and it takes quite a bit of patience to find any value in our mantric mutterings.

Per #2 and #3, regardless of whether the results in Update Channels are Saved or Canceled, some or all ticked or unticked on Save, channels that no longer appear in an m3u for a given IPTV service are, in fact, deleted from the NextPVR channels listing, and in turn, the Kodi channel manager. However, they remain in custom channel groups created in Kodi until manually removed, at which point they are no longer offered. Perhaps this latter behavior has been addressed in the Kodi patch referred to earlier, but which I've yet to find online to check out. I do have some fairly recent nightly updates running, but if that's where the patches are appearing, they must not be recent enough versions.

Similarly, channels with names changed in NextPVR are deleted by Update Channels, whether Saved Or Canceled, and if ticked and Saved, new channels with the channel names given in the m3u are created. Kodi is not resilient to this and sees them as new channels as well, with all customizations lost.

As I understood it, the advice was to Update Channels, then Cancel to update only the URLs. It stands to reason that this would not work for channels renamed in NextPVR since they are deleted by that process. It hadn't occurred to me that scheduled recordings would be affected as well. There are a lot of moving parts to consider here.

In a scenario where the channel number changes in an m3u, #4 describes the outcome. One thing I didn't try is changing the channel number first in NextPVR, then ticking and saving on Update Channels. If channel identifiers aren't stored as indicated above, it's possible that NextPVR would see it as a new channel as well. Channel number changes in NextPVR propagate to Kodi's channel manager, and are reflected in All Channels or any other group mirrored from NextPVR, but in custom groups created in Kodi's group manager, the old channel number remains until the channel is cycled out of its custom group(s), then back in and saved.

Agreed that a basic issue in tracking channels is the inconsistent usage of channel attributes in their definitions. In the Pluto extra, tvg-id is defined by the slug listed on the API. On Matt H's lists, channel-id seems to be the primary identifier, with tvg-id sometimes being a substring of channel-id, and in one case not appearing at all. Spot checking a few of the 3rd party playlists on AP SAT TV shows that only channel names and URLs are defined. The names may be "ugly", but it may be the only viable attribute by which to track channels.

[mvallevand]

Sub was incorrect earlier since files removed from the m3u will be lost on a save, but the future change to use the display name as the key and not the NextPVR display name will allow you to edit names. If they aren't in the m3u it makes sense to delete them.

I mentioned more than once that you need a consistent provider for your m3u files, and that would include mjh m3u files. Hopefully the display name is more consistent than tvg-id. I already got sub in trouble asking for him to prefer the tvg-name (he had to revert back to display name)

Don't expect any magic bullet expecting the m3u channel numbers to be part of the update process, just the add. It would make no logical sense to do it that way. However changing a channel number in NextPVR doesn't affect the oid or any of the logic in NextPVR or Kodi based on the oid.

The tvg-id on my extras is there because as I noted I don't know how sub updates extras but I avoid updating them in a scan, I just add (and manually delete). You can still rename and renumber in NextPVR without changing an oid.

Martin

[sub]

Sub was incorrect earlier since files removed from the m3u will be lost on a save, but the future change to use the display name as the key and not the NextPVR display name will allow you to edit names. If they aren't in the m3u it makes sense to delete them.

Yeah, I was wrong in this one. I forgot I had added logic to remove IPTV channels that were no longer available in the m3u.