Channel Stream Probe & IPTV Checker

The Channel Stream Probe & IPTV Checker scans your channels to verify stream health, detect problems, and automatically populate the quality badges (resolution, FPS, audio channels, bitrate) shown across the app. It’s the fastest way to find dead channels and clean up your TV guide.

Launching a Probe

The probe modal can be opened from several places:

• Settings → LiveTV → Channels → Launch Channel Probe — the full tool with all scopes.
• The EPG toolbar — the Stream Probe button in the guide, pre-scoped to what you’re currently viewing.
• Right-click a category in the channel strip → 📡 Probe Category Streams… — instantly probes just that category.

Choosing What to Probe

Pick the source playlists and categories you want to scan — or select everything. Then choose a scope (Target Channels):

Scope	Probes
Enabled Channels Only	All currently enabled channels
Enabled Channels Missing Badges	Only enabled channels that have no metadata badges yet — ideal for filling in badge gaps without rescanning everything
Dead / Disabled Channels Only	Only channels that previously failed or are disabled — great for re-checking after a provider issue
All Channels (Including Dead / Disabled)	Everything, including channels you’ve disabled
Failover Channels	Members of your failover groups, with a sub-filter: All Failover Channels or Failover Channels Missing Badges (only members without metadata)
Sports Linked Channels	Channels linked to sports teams, with a League filter to narrow to specific leagues

Probe Options

Auto-fill Quality Badges

Saves detected resolution, FPS, audio channels, and bitrate straight to the database so badges appear in the EPG, overlay, search, failover, and sports views.

Measure Bitrate

Captures the stream for a few seconds per channel to measure video bitrate and query audio bitrate. Adds a few seconds per channel, but gives you the full bitrate badges.

Concurrency

How many streams to test at once. 1 slot is the safest for providers with connection limits — using more opens multiple simultaneous connection slots with your IPTV provider.

Timeout & Retries

Per-channel timeout in seconds, plus automatic retries when a stream initially fails or returns dead.

During a scan you get live progress (channels tested, per-second rate, ETA) and can Pause, Resume, Stop, or Run in Background while you keep using the app.

Reading the Results

Every channel gets a Health Score and a Status:

• Alive — stream responds correctly.
• Dead — no response; stream won’t play.
• Geoblocked — stream is blocked in your region.
• DRM — stream requires DRM and can’t be played.

The results table shows Quality, FPS, Video/Audio codecs, Video/Audio bitrate, Latency, and a Diagnostic Detail column with the underlying error. Each row has actions to play a preview or re-probe an individual channel.

Filter tabs break the results down instantly: All, Alive, Dead, Geoblocked, DRM, and by quality tier (4K, 1080p, 720p, SD) — plus a search box to filter by channel name.

Bulk Actions

• Disable Dead Channels — one click disables every confirmed dead channel so they’re hidden from your TV guide (with a confirmation first).
• Re-enable Alive Channels — after a scan, re-enable channels that are verified alive again.
• Rerun Dead — re-test only the dead and failing streams from the current scan.

Tip

Use the missing badges scopes first: they skip channels you’ve already probed, so regular maintenance scans only touch the channels that still need data.

Sorting Groups by Quality

When probing Failover Channels or Sports Linked Channels, you can sort the group by quality — reordering channels within each group so the best one (highest resolution + bitrate) becomes the primary channel (priority 0).

• Sort by Resolution (highest first, bitrate breaks ties) or Bitrate (highest first, resolution breaks ties).
• A preview shows the new order before you confirm — existing channel priorities are rewritten, so make sure the preview looks right.

Exporting Reports

The probe can export its diagnostics in three formats:

• CSV Spreadsheet (.csv) — a table of channels with resolution, codecs, FPS, and latency, for spreadsheets.
• JSON Diagnostics (.json) — complete scan diagnostics with score breakdowns and metadata.
• M3U Playlist (.m3u) — a clean playlist containing only verified working streams, ready to drop into another player or share.

Note

Badges filled by the probe are controlled by Settings → LiveTV → Metadata Badges (which badges show, FHD/HD vs 1080p/720p labels, the “fps” suffix) and the Avg Bitrate location setting (EPG, overlay, search, failover, or sports). The Resolution filter in the EPG grid only shows channels that have been probed — so probing is the first step to using it.