Channels DVR Plugin

An official plugin for m3u-editor that maps Gracenote station IDs from a local Channels DVR install to your playlist channels via the DVR's /dvr/guide/stations API.

Features

• Fetches all guide stations from your Channels DVR server in a single request
• Matches channels by call sign first, then by station name, for reliable resolution
• Strips common quality suffixes (HD, SD, FHD, UHD, 4K) before retrying unmatched channels
• Normalised, punctuation-insensitive matching (case-insensitive, strips non-alphanumeric)
• Supports multi-provider DVR setups (stations from all providers are indexed)
• Dry-run support on all actions

Requirements

• m3u-editor with plugin support enabled
• A running Channels DVR server accessible from the m3u-editor host
• network_egress permission

Installation

Install via the m3u-editor Plugins page using the latest GitHub release, or via Artisan:

php artisan plugins:stage-github-release \
  https://github.com/m3ue/channels-dvr-plugin/releases/download/v1.0.0/channels-dvr-v1.0.0.zip \
  --sha256=<checksum>

Once staged, approve the install review in the UI and enable the plugin.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
dvr_host	—	IP or hostname of your Channels DVR server (without port), e.g. 192.168.1.100 or my-dvr.local.
dvr_port	8089	Channels DVR web UI port.
default_playlist_id	—	Playlists to sync station IDs automatically after each playlist sync.
overwrite_existing	false	Overwrite channels that already have a station ID.
skip_vod	true	Skip VOD channels.

Actions

Action	Description
health_check	Connects to Channels DVR and reports the number of stations found. Dry-run safe.
sync_station_ids	Syncs station IDs for a selected playlist.

Hook

Subscribes to playlist.synced. When a playlist sync completes, the plugin automatically syncs station IDs for any playlists configured in default_playlist_id.

How Matching Works

The plugin fetches all stations from /dvr/guide/stations, builds a normalised lookup (call sign → station ID, then name → station ID), and walks each enabled channel in the playlist. Matching is attempted in order:

1. Exact normalised match on the channel display name
2. Strip trailing quality suffix (HD, FHD, UHD, 4K, 1080p, etc.) and retry

License

MIT