Why the web console cannot see your channel list

You add a playlist in the web console, everything saves correctly, and then the console cannot tell you how many channels it has, cannot show you the list, and cannot test whether a stream plays.

That is not a missing feature. It is the same design as everywhere else in the product, met at the point where it is most surprising.

What the console stores

The console stores the definition of a source: a name, an address, credentials if it needs them, and which profiles are allowed to use it.

It never stores what the source contains. It does not download your playlist, does not count your channels, does not read your program guide and does not open a stream.

Why it works that way

To show you a channel count, our servers would have to fetch your playlist. To test a stream, they would have to open it. Either one would mean our servers holding a record of what you watch, which is exactly what the content-blind design exists to avoid.

So the console does the part that genuinely needs a server, which is agreeing across your devices on which sources exist, and leaves the content to the devices that play it.

Where to look instead

Your channel list appears in the app on each device, because that is where the playlist is actually downloaded and read. Open the app, and the list is there.

If a source looks configured correctly but no channels appear on any device, that is a real problem worth reporting. Start with is it the app or your source?, which separates the case where the source returned nothing from the case where the app failed to read what it returned.

What this means for support

Support sees what the console sees, which is the definition and not the contents. When we ask you what the app is showing, it is because that is genuinely the only place the answer exists, not because we have not looked.