Edit a channel's broadcast source?

Live TV & DVR
1

Server Version#: 1.21.0.3711
Player Version#: N/A
Tuner Make/Model: HDHR Connect
Guide/Lineup name: N/A
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name: WOIO 19

In the Cleveland area WOIO channel 19 has two transmitters. One near Cleveland (physical channel 10) and one in Akron (physical channel 18). See: https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=print_station&facility_id=39746

Well, I live halfway between Akron and Cleveland. While channel 10 provides the stronger signal and that’s what I have my antenna pointed towards, every few days Plex will automatically switch over to using the Akron channel 18 signal instead, I’m guessing because it ran a channel scan on it’s own. That signal on 18 is weak enough that the channel is unwatchable, but Plex apparently thought it was good enough to switch WOIO’s source over to that. I usually don’t know it has switched until I try to watch something I had recorded the previous day and it’s just a garbled useless mess. So I will then run a manual channel scan and it will go back to using the stronger channel 10 source, so the problem is fixed… for a few days, until Plex changes it back to 18.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to edit a channel’s signal source and make it stick?
Before I used Plex for my antenna, I used Windows Media Center, and that let you do so. I’m not talking about going to Manage Channels and changing the channel in the drop-down, that doesn’t let you change the actual broadcast signal to use.

Or maybe I can force Plex to never run a channel scan unless it’s told to?

Or any other ideas? Help!

2

Using a browser you can access the channel list to favorite/block channels on the HDHR device itself. Once you do this it won’t be picked up by Plex. On your home network go to http://my.hdhomerun.com

3

Thanks for the input, but that would only let me block channel 19 entirely, and I don’t want to do that.
I want to block channel 19 from using physical channel 18 as it’s broadcast signal source (and only use physical channel 10).

4

Plex makes a request of the tuner to tune a specific virtual channel. You can see this in the logs when Plex starts a recording for a channel:

Dec 15, 2020 14:00:01.093 [14688] DEBUG - [Grabber/ac24b50f8565fb6d0d8c98d8559cf9785664303a] Grabber: Going to record for 3599 seconds, final URL is http://10.0.1.22:5004/auto/v25.5

The v25.5 is the virtual channel Plex is requesting. Unfortunately, there is not much Plex can do since it is dealing strictly with Virtual Channels. The way Plex connects to an HDHR is discussed in the SiliconDust HDHR HTTP Development Guide.

It seems that SiliconDust has had other requests for a similar situation: https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=74477. I would say you might have better luck reaching out to SD but this post is from July.

6

Thank you! That’s all very good information that I didn’t know. I just assumed it was Plex, didn’t stop to think it may be the HDHR changing things behind the scenes.

I’ll mark this as the solution.