Glossary
Apprise
Section titled “Apprise”The notification library ChannelWatch uses to deliver alerts to supported services. The built in provider pages and the Custom provider route notifications through Apprise.
Alert module
Section titled “Alert module”One of the main alert categories ChannelWatch can monitor and notify on. The docs cover Channel Watching, VOD Watching, Recording Events, and Disk Space as the alert modules in v1.0.
Canonical DVR ID
Section titled “Canonical DVR ID”The stable identifier ChannelWatch assigns to a DVR server. The approved v1.0 summary describes it as being derived from the host and port, with IPv6 bracket stripping and colon detection, while preserving hostname case.
Channels DVR
Section titled “Channels DVR”The DVR software ChannelWatch monitors. ChannelWatch is an independent community tool and is not affiliated with Fancy Bits LLC.
Channel Watching
Section titled “Channel Watching”An alert module that notifies when someone starts watching live TV on a Channels DVR server.
Debug bundle
Section titled “Debug bundle”A local zip archive used for troubleshooting. The debug bundles page describes it as a sanitized support artifact that gathers diagnostic details while excluding sensitive files such as the raw database and encryption.key.
Disk Space alert
Section titled “Disk Space alert”An alert module that monitors free storage on a Channels DVR server and can send warning or critical notifications when configured thresholds are crossed.
Short for digital video recorder. In these docs, it usually refers to a Channels DVR server that ChannelWatch connects to and monitors.
Encryption key
Section titled “Encryption key”The local key file at /config/encryption.key used by ChannelWatch to encrypt and decrypt DVR API keys in settings.json using Fernet (fernet: prefix). The key should be protected with restrictive file permissions for effective at-rest protection.
Health probe
Section titled “Health probe”An HTTP endpoint used to check whether ChannelWatch is up and ready. The docs cover the general /api/health endpoint and the Kubernetes style /healthz/live, /healthz/ready, and /healthz/startup probes.
Short for multicast DNS. ChannelWatch uses it for local network DVR discovery, and the docs note that host networking is required for discovery to work while bridge mode returns an empty result.
Notification provider
Section titled “Notification provider”A delivery destination ChannelWatch can send alerts to, such as Pushover, Discord, Telegram, Slack, email, Gotify, Matrix, or a Custom Apprise URL.
Notification routing
Section titled “Notification routing”The per-DVR rules that control which configured notification channels receive which alert types from each DVR.
Prometheus metrics
Section titled “Prometheus metrics”The labeled time series ChannelWatch exposes at /metrics for scraping by Prometheus and related observability tools.
Short for role-based access control. ChannelWatch now exposes RBAC and session-based security surfaces; check the security docs for the current enforcement scope, fallback modes, and deployment caveats.
Recording Events alert
Section titled “Recording Events alert”An alert module that tracks the recording lifecycle on a DVR, including scheduled, started, completed, cancelled, and stopped states.
Session state
Section titled “Session state”The per-DVR tracking state ChannelWatch uses for active viewing sessions and related alert continuity. The approved v1.0 summary notes that legacy session state can be adopted during migration and archived afterward.
Short for Server Sent Events. The approved v1.0 summary describes ChannelWatch’s monitor as an async SSE monitor used to follow the Channels DVR event stream in real time.
Stream Counting
Section titled “Stream Counting”A sub feature of Channel Watching, not a standalone alert module. When enabled, it adds the current stream count to internal log output for Channel Watching events.
VOD Watching
Section titled “VOD Watching”An alert module that notifies when someone starts playing recorded content or another DVR library item.