Monitor · BGPVR Operator guide

See what needs you

Now › Needs attention lists every open alert, Problems first (red, the word "Problem") then Warnings (amber, the word "Warning"). Problem: no signal on a tuner in use, more live streams than your licence allows, a disk over 98 %. Warning: C/N under 5 dB on a tuner in use, a disk over 90 %, a channel that failed its last 3 stream checks, over 90 % of the licensed streams. Each line goes away by itself once the cause is fixed; "Open System" goes to the tuner or disk. With nothing open it says "All clear".

Read the four numbers

Watching now: everyone playing something, live TV plus recordings and films, and the share of the streams your licence allows (live TV only). Tuners in use: in use of all switched-on tuners. Channels on air: from tuners and from other sources. Going out now: the bits per second sent to live viewers.

Find a viewer

Now › Who is watching: viewer, what they watch (Live TV · Tuner N, IPTV relay, a recording or a film), device, address and country, for how long, the picture (Smooth, "N drops" amber up to 50 and red above, Slow network) and the speed. Filter All / Live TV / Recordings and films, or type a name, channel or address in Find. 50 rows at a time, "Show 50 more" for the rest. Each row has its kind tag and a live channel its source; Details opens the Details window (below).

The Details window and the kind tags (2.9.416)

Each row in Who is watching (Monitor › Now and the Dashboard) has a tag with an icon and a word: Live (green), Recording (red), Film (violet), Series (blue), and a live channel always names its source: DVB · Tuner N, Direct or IPTV relay. Details opens one window with three tabs. Overview says how the stream is doing in one sentence (Smooth, Slow network, Starting, or Losing data with the drops at the server), with the viewer, how long they have been watching, the speed and their connections. Connection: the address and network, the speed, what was sent, the account's connections and its other channels, and for a tuner channel the signal (quality, C/N, strength, lock). Session: when it started (in your own time), the delivery mode (HLS, MPEG-TS or HTSP), the player's user agent and the DVB IDs. The state next to the title stays on every tab. "Check the source signal" records about 6 seconds of the source and shows the result in the window; it is the main button while the stream is losing data. "Open the account" opens the viewer's account (a viewer without an account has none). Esc, a click outside or ✕ closes it; on a phone it slides up from the bottom. "Not measured" means the server has not counted that figure for this stream; it is never shown as 0. A player that asks for the same channel again (an app reloading its playlist) stays one session: its start time and the data sent carry on. In Bulgarian, counts are grouped with a space (1 284).

Read the Speed column (2.9.406)

Speed is what the server really sends that viewer, measured over about 10 seconds, for every kind of player (Kodi over HTSP too). It shows — until it has been measured (10 to 20 seconds after a stream starts or after the server restarts) and when nothing has come from the stream for 30 seconds. Going out now adds up the measured speeds. The same figure is the bitrate in Details.

Stop a stream

Stop on the viewer's row (was Kick on the Dashboard). The page asks first ("Stop stream" or "Keep watching"); the stream ends on their device now. They can start it again: to keep them out, disable the client. Recordings and films have no Stop: they never count against the stream limit.

Check the tuners and the signal

System: a card per tuner with its state in words (In use, Free, No signal, Weak, Off), frequency, channels and viewers on it, C/N in dB, signal % and lock. Below 5 dB the picture breaks up. "Frequencies on air" shows how channels share a tuner: one tuner carries every channel on its frequency. Then time-shift buffers, storage (used like df shows it) and graphics cards (busy %, memory, temperature, the persistence-mode note).

Read the Timeshift card (2.9.498)

System › Timeshift shows each buffer with its mode, in the same icon and word as the Channels page: Always with its rewind window (for example "Always · 2 h"), or While watched. A While watched buffer says "Kept alive by 2 viewers" while people use it, otherwise, while it runs, "Last used 5 min ago · stops after 30 min unused" (the server stops an unused one after 30 minutes unless that was changed). MAG boxes are not counted as viewers (they do not say who is watching), so a buffer only they use shows Last used. Under it is ffmpeg's last line: red only for a real error since the last segment was written (a refused connection, a 403 or 404 from the source, a timeout), grey for an ordinary line such as "Opening ... for writing". Hover it for the whole line. An address in that line shows at most its host (or only its scheme when the host is unclear), never a user name, password or token. Up to 12 buffers are listed, and a line under them says how many there are in all. Clear idle (shown while a buffer is not running) deletes the buffers no ffmpeg runs for and says how many it cleared and how much space it freed. Clear idle is permanent: the rewind history of those buffers is gone, running buffers are left alone, and every console login may use it.

The Technical tab (2.9.498)

Monitor › Technical holds the groups of the old Live Status page: AI Queue, Hardware Pool and Exposed Hardware, Storage (which paths the server and the AI helper can see), Stream Health with its settings, and Security. It asks the server every 10 seconds while it is shown. Each group is explained in the section "Monitor: Technical tab". It replaces the old Live Status page, the link to it at the bottom of System and its Edit Layout (drag and hide cards); old links and bookmarks open this tab.

Notice a problem from any page

While an alert is open, the Monitor item in the sidebar carries a dot: red with "!" for a Problem, a small amber dot for a Warning (screen readers hear "N problems need you"). The Dashboard says the same at the top, "3 problems need you — Open Monitor". Neither blinks; both go away when the alerts close.

See how each live stream is delivered (2.9.444)

Who is watching now names the delivery next to the source of every live stream: HLS or Raw TS, on Monitor and on the Dashboard. Films, series and recordings do not show it yet: the server does not record how they are delivered.

Recordings, films and series in Who is watching (2.9.451)

A recording, film or episode row now says how it is delivered and what the server knows of its picture, for example "HLS · 1080p · H.264", "Original file · 4K · HEVC", "Light 720p · 720p · H.264" or "Raw TS · 576i · MPEG-2" (the resolution comes from the file's stored probe; the frame rate is not stored, so it is not shown). Speed is measured from the bytes the server sent, the same way as for live channels, and shows after about 10 seconds. A film or recording played as the original file is sent straight by the system, so it has no speed while it plays: the cell shows "—" and its tooltip says why and what the file needs. The device shows the app version the player sends.

Warning when a graphics card is busy (2.9.461)

Monitor shows the warning "Graphics card busy" (and the server log says so once) when a graphics card's video encoder has stayed above 70 % for 5 minutes. The cards encode the streams for the web TV and the Apple TV app and build films and recordings; past that point new viewers of those streams may stutter. One HD viewer is about 7 % of a Tesla P4's encoder, so the warning means about ten such viewers at once. It goes away by itself as soon as the load drops below 70 %. Open System to see each card's load. Viewers on direct streams (the Android app, MAG boxes, Kodi, Xtream players) do not use the encoder.

Open a viewer's summary (2.9.476)

Click a viewer's name in Who is watching (here, on the Dashboard, in Recent activity or in Analytics). The summary has three tabs, Overview · Watching · Devices, and the period 1d / 7d / 30d / 90d applies to all of them. Overview: time watched on Live TV, Films & series, Recordings and Catch-up, then Plays, Channels and Last seen with the device, and the three latest plays. Watching: every play in one list, newest first, with its kind tag, how long, and the device with its app version; a family member's play says "by <name>". Click a row for that play's Details window: a stream that is still running opens the live one (with Check signal); an ended play shows what the server kept. Devices: each app, box or browser of the account with its version and when it was last seen. "Open account" (top right) opens the client. Catch-up counts the XC time-shift plays from 2.9.476 on; older plays read as Live TV. Admins only, with Advanced Analytics.

Live+ channels on Monitor (2.9.482)

A running Live+ channel is listed under the channels on air, also when nobody watches an "Always on" one: "Live+ · GPU 0 · encoding" (or "idle") and its viewers.

Watch out

Staff logins see shortened addresses (192.0.x.x); admins see them in full. Stop needs the Manage clients permission; without it the button is not shown and the server refuses it.
A viewer counts while the server heard from their stream in the stale-connection window (90 seconds by default), the same rule the licence limit uses. An ended session goes into the viewing history about 5 minutes after it stopped (a background job every 30 seconds); opening a page no longer changes anything.
The alert rules are fixed in this release; settings for them come with the Telegram and app alerts.
Monitor asks the server only while its tab is shown and the browser tab is visible: Now every 5 seconds, System every 10 seconds. The sidebar dot is checked once a minute on other pages.