Changelog

Changes to the TVIP TMS project are fixed from 2017, previously the project was called TVIP Middleware (version 1 and 2) and did not have a public version. The changes from 2017 to 2023 can be found on this page.

09.12.2024

New features

Admin UI:

  • Added support for client application branding.

  • Standard branding settings can be set in the edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/branding/<branding_id>).

  • Non-standard branding settings can be set in the provider edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/<provider_id>) under the “branding” and “localizations for branding” tabs.

Improvements

Admin UI:

  • New fields added to the USER_MESSAGE edit form: “System URI”, “image URI”, “image width”, “image height”.

  • Added “Use as push notification” switch to the USER_MESSAGE edit form to support push notifications. To send a push notification you need to:

    • Have a server installed to send push notifications. Contact technical support for advice.

    • Set the message type to “Confirm”;

    • The “Instant” flag must be set to “false”;

    • The “Use as push notification” flag must be set to “true”;

    • The “Post Before” field must be checked off

    • Fill in the fields “System URI”, “Image URI” (optional).

Search:

  • Added support for promotional content.

Fixes

  • Fixed handling of pending messages and messages with TTL. Added support for URIs and image URLs in messages.

25.10.2024

Fixes

TVIP API: fixed bug that caused the list of preferred providers to be displayed incorrectly in some cases

16.10.2024

New features

Promo Channels

Support for promotional channels has been added. They will be displayed to the client if the following conditions are met:

  1. In the provider edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/<provider_id>), the “Show promo content” flag is set to “true”.

  2. In the tariff editing form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/tariffs/<tariff_id>) the “Offer the package and its channels to users” flag is set and the client is not subscribed to this tariff.

  3. In the tariff editing form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/tariffs/<tariff_id>) the flag “Ban promo channels” is set with the value “false” for the tariffs to which the client is subscribed.

Admin UI

  • Obsolete sections have been removed from the channel editing form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/channels/<channel_id>): “Type”, “Aspect ratio”, “Encrypt”, “Description”, “Channel website”.

  • From the provider editing form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/<provider_id>) sections were removed: “Auth key”, “Flussonic auth enabled”.

  • From the form of tariff editing (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/tariffs/<tariff_id>) sections have been removed: “Public”, “Show on website”.

  • The “Code” section has been removed from the tariff settings editing form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/tariffs/<tariff_id>/tariff_settings/<tariff_setting_id>)

  • Advertising banners: it is now possible to set up an advertising banner for any tariff via the “Advertising banner” tab in the tariff editing form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/tariffs/<tariff_id>).

  • Media rules: added ability to specify whether to use media rules when calculating links for LIVE/DVR streams via the channel edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/channels/<channel_id>).

  • Promo content: in the provider edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/<provider_id>) you can specify whether the provider allows the display of promotional content to clients.

  • Tariff prices: added the function of setting the provider’s tariff prices. The settings are available on the “Charging” tab in the ISP editing form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/<provider_id>).

  • Promos for tariffs: in the tariff editing form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/tariffs/<tariff_id>) you can specify whether to offer tariff channels as promos, and also set a complete ban on showing promo channels for tariff subscribers.

Improvements

Commands: obsolete commands stored for more than 3 months will be automatically deleted in lazy mode.

EPG: added the ability to specify the retention period of an EPG archive imported from an external data storage. Details can be obtained through TVIP TMS technical support.

Search: improved search by phrases (two or more words).

Statistics: Optimized cleaning of channel viewing history.

Media rules: updated the logic for calculating links for LIVE/DVR streams of channels, taking into account the “Use media rules” property from the channel edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/channels/<channel_id>).

Web Sockets: improved performance and reduced memory consumption.

06.08.2024

New features

Admin UI: API access to Admin API or Provider API may be limited by specifying the appropriate sub networks in TVIP TMS configuration. If you need such limitations, you may ask more details on how this may be done via TVIP TMS technical support.

Admin UI: Added the feature to setup the advertising banner for any channel. This may be done via ‘Advertising banner’ tab on the channel edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/channels/<channel_id>).

Admin UI: Provider contact information may be added via provider edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/<provider_id>). This information may be used as well as the provider contacts to make them available for TVIP API clients.

Admin UI: Since this release the provider may specify how long the statistics data must be available. This may be managed via provider edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/<provider_id>) in section “Device statistics depth”.

Admin UI: Tariff attributes have been extended with reference information like a link to tariff description. This information may be updated via tariff edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/tariffs/<tariff_id>) in “Extra” section. These data may be used as extra information for TVIP API clients.

Admin UI: Viewing history may be found in ‘Channel viewing history’ tab of channel edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/channels/<channel_id>).

General: Channel has been extended with ‘Media type’ attribute. It has two options - ‘Radio’ and ‘TV’ - and allows to specify if the particular channel provides video stream or audio stream only.

Platform API (experimental): Now it’s possible to update the channel data via new Platform API. Please, pay attention that updating the channel is possible in a very limited manner. We’re still researching what channel attributes may be changed not by Admin UI, but Platform API.

Improvements

TVIP API: Deprecated fields have been removed. This may affect TVIP API clients with old firmware version more than 3 years old and previous version of TVIP API web portal. Please, consider to update the STB firmware or begin to use new TVIP API web portal in such cases. You may ask more details via TVIP TMS technical support.

Media rules: In order to add extra relation between Media actions and Media servers - ‘Media tags’. These tags may used to find out what media server must be used to get media - not only by priority, but by matching these tags.

Media rules: Media action has been extended with ‘channelTag’ attribute that allows to apply action to all channels that are included in the particular channel tag.

Admin UI: When inserting or updating the account or device subscription, only enabled tariffs will be available for assigning on device subscription edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/device_subscriptions/<device_subscription_id>) or account subscription edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/account_subscriptions/<account_subscription_id>).

Admin UI: Since this release media rules contain extra condition - ‘Provider network settings’ - that may be specified via edit form of media rule. It allows to define the media action apply policy for TVIP API client devices depending on whether these devices work from the provider network or not.

Fixes

Admin UI: Fixed an issue where a channel may not be deleted through the admin UI. We recommend using this feature with caution. We recommend disabling a channel rather than deleting it. Only delete channels when absolutely necessary.

Audit: Fixed the issue when massive changes in settings via Admin UI may affect the entire performance of TVIP TMS instance. We’ll continue to improve performance of this feature as well as its accessibility via Admin UI in next releases.

Media rules: Fixed the issue when the allowing or prohibiting the TV archive was ignored during dynamic generating the channel URL’s by using media rules.

26.04.2024

Fixes

TVIP API: Fixed the rare issue when some TVIP API clients may not receive list of channels, nevertheless all necessary settings have been made and TVIP API clients have been authenticated and authorized successfully.

TVIP API: After installing the last release, some TVIP TMS instances may have issues, mainly, in operation of TVIP API clients with TVIP TMS via Web Sockets due to instability and unexpected unavailability of related services of TVIP TMS platform. This hot fix update will solve this issue.

02.04.2024

Important Notes

Please pay attention that the Media rules feature is still experimental and may contain some unknown issues.

New features

Media rules (experimental). We’ve released support of dynamic channel live and timeshift URL’s. These URL’s may be generated based on media rules and actions. Now you may specify how to generate channel URL for some groups of your TVIP TMS client devices. These groups may be organized by using parameters of media rules (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/media_rule_sorting). As a result, now you have two options how to setup channel URL’s:

  • static configuration by using channel edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/channels/channel_id) and DVR server edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/dvr_servers/dvr_server_id). It’s used by default and provide backward compatibility with your current channel settings.

  • and dynamic configuration that may be specified using ‘Media rules’ section in Admin UI and ‘Media Items’ tab in channel edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/channels/channel_id). Please, pay attention that the dynamic URL configuration will be used only if static configuration (mainly, empty ‘URL’ field in channel edit form <server.url>/admin/dashboard/channels/channel_id).

Rules of generating the channel media URL’s may be specified in flexible manner and allow to use some template fields (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/media_patterns/media_pattern_id). Also we’ve provided some predefined patterns that may be used ‘as is’ or as example for your own pattern.

Improvements

General: We’ve updated the framework and related libraries to fetch all up-to-date performance and security updates. Some libraries that have serious vulnerabilities have been removed or replaced with good ones.

General: In some cases TVIP TMS may have issues when connecting the event broker server (RabbitMQ in the current release). We’ve made some optimizations that reduce load to the event broker, as well as increase stability in connecting and reconnecting the server.

General: Default logging settings have been changed. Now ‘application.log’ file will contain no other log messages, but only TVIP TMS related errors from the particular service. It may help in researching the accidents with TVIP TMS.

Profile: Fixed the issue when number of account profiles may affect TVIP TMS instance performance due to its large quantity.

Known issues

Media rules: This issue relates to use cases with tariffs that have no ‘Archive’ tariff settings only. This use case means that timeshift is not allowed for TVIP API clients that are assigned to such tariffs.

Please pay attention that in case of using the dynamic channel URL configurations TVIP API clients with these tariffs will be able to still use timeshift regardless of absence of ‘Archive’ tariff settings. We’ll fix this issue in next releases.

27.02.2024

Improvements

General: Default data for new TVIP TMS installations now contain default network 0.0.0.0/0 for default provider.

File: Some changes have been applied to reduce possible memory leaks.

Fixes

General: Some changes have been applied to correct the TVIP TMS logging.

General: Fixed the issue that some provider and account statistics may not be stored due to database storing limitations.

Admin UI: Fixed the issue that channel may not be removed using Admin UI. Please, pay attenation that deleting the channel leads to delete all the related data like EPG items.

Admin UI: Fixed the issue when the device edit form shows empty IP address if device connected without auth and provider “Allow to create new device upon request” option is enabled.

25.01.2024

Fixes

EPG: Fixed the issue when EPG import may be failed in some cases if EPG localizations are used.

EPG: Fixed the issue when DVR server URIs with composite path may cause a failure of DVR preview feature.

29.11.2023

Improvements

Some new restrictions have been applied for creating the new account and device subscriptions. If any subscription with the same tariff exists and effective time periods of new subscription and the existing one are overlapped, creating the such subscription will be declined with error. This behaviour is valid for Admin UI as well as for Provider API integrations.

EPG: Short EPG feature has been improved. Now it’s calculated in a dynamic manner and depends on datetimfes of current EPG items in the channels being requested. It’s especially important fix for EPG that contain short-timed items with a few minutes in duration.

TVIP API: We noticed that changing the channels or subscriptions may cause excessive CPU load. Some optimizations have been applied to remove this effect.

Fixes

Admin UI: Fixed the issue when audit records do not contain the correct name of admin who performed the action. Now audit records show the correct name.

Some deprecated table columns have been removed and translations of some field names have been fixed.

Fixed the issue when fixed EPG images may not be displayed in Admin UI in some cases.

VOD genre localizations may dissapear in some changing scenerios. Now it’s fixed and genre localizations will be displayed correctly.

Incorrect validation has been fixed when creating any deffered command and specifying the post after and valid until date times.

Now all audit records are being fixed in UTC and disaplyed correctly. Anyway, older audit records may show incorrect datetime of the action.

Account networks: Fixed the issue when access networks may be fetched or changed by admin that has no right for this action.

EPG: Fixed the issue when single EPG item localizations may be displayed in wrong language in some specific cases.

TVIP API: Fixed the issue when TVIP API clients may get access to the channel archive even if their tariff has no Archive option in tariff settings. Now TVIP API clients with tariffs with no Archive option will be able to watch TV in real time only.

Provider API: Prior to this release admins of local providers may receive channels that are not assigned to the particular provider. Now it’s fixed.

General: Fixed an issue that made it impossible to schedule a team delivery if the time of the account or device subscription date was changed.

14.09.2023

Improvements

The current update contains updated web player. It supports all new features provided by your TVIP TMS. The web player is only available for TMS Pro

Fixes

EPG: Fixed an issue for TVIP TMS installations configured with a custom default EPG locale. Before the current update, such instances could provide EPG with incorrect language for some items. The locales for EPG items have now been redesigned and this issue has been resolved.

06.09.2023

Fixes

Provider API: Validation for account/device subscriptions has been extended. As of this release, it will not be possible to create or update a subscription if there is an active subscription with the same tariff and activity period (between start and end dates or just the start date) overlapping in time.

Account Networks: Fixed an issue where a client device could lose authorization after changing or deleting the account network specified for the device’s account. This issue is only related to the client’s “Account Network” access mode.

13.07.2023

Important notes

This release of TVIP TMS 4.0 introduces the new LTS version of TVIP TMS. The new version is based on the latest version 3.x and contains all features of the previous version. The main technical goal of TVIP TMS is to migrate to the Spring 6.x framework and to continuously support new Java versions.

We have changed the authorization method for client applications, the settings are available in the section provider.

We have also added a new authorization mode to the existing ones - “Account Networks”. It allows authorization for subscriber applications in the same way that “Provider Networks” allow you to identify the provider for any client device by IP.

The “VOD from EPG” feature, which was introduced in the previous release as an experimental feature, has been enhanced to improve reliability and performance.

Known issues

We recommend installing the current release during low load periods, when user activity is relatively low. This is especially important for TVIP TMS installations that use EPG with images or a large number of channels.

After updating the TVIP TMS release, some channel logos, EPG elements and EPG images may disappear for a while.

To solve EPG related problems, we recommend to re-import EPG sources one by one. Channel related problems will be solved by the TVIP TMS itself without any further action.

New features

General: The account provider will always be used instead of the device provider in all cases where possible.

Main: The “Quick bind” and “strong security” functionality has been extended. You can now configure networks for an account in the same way as you can for an ISP. This allows you to select an account for a device based on which network the device is on. This mode of operation can be selected in the provider edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/).

Main: Resolved performance issues that could occasionally occur with TVIP API clients due to overall high volume.

Administrative Interface: The provider edit form (<server.url>/admin/dashboard/providers/) has been improved. The mode selection has replaced several checkboxes such as “Quick bind” and “String security”. The selection has been updated with a new option, “Account network”. The previous settings will be carried over automatically, so that the operation of TVIP API clients will remain the same as previously configured.

Improvements

We analyzed how TVIP TMS performs under high load and addressed current performance bottlenecks.

21.03.2023

Fixes

  • In some cases the client application could receive an empty channel list after authorization via QR code.

28.02.2023

New features

  • VoD from EPG: formation of VOD library from TV program, to use this functionality it is necessary to comply with a number of requirements to EPG provider, also it is necessary to pay attention to settings of tariff. It is also necessary to take into account that by default the “Movie” section on S-Box media centers is turned off.

  • The new attribute in Channel will allow to predefine the MPEG-TS buffer for the channel, this directive will be used by S-Box.

  • The new attribute in Channel determines which channel will be launched on the S-Box when the media center is turned on.

Improvements

  • Performance of the search service has been improved

  • Optimized operation of the command service between TMS and end devices, significantly reducing the load on the system.

Fixes

  • in some cases, devices received the same set of services after the device was disconnected from the account.

  • Corrected the date when the device first accessed the TMS.

  • in some cases, information on channel or tariff changes was not delivered in a timely manner to the end device.

  • When changing the channel name in XMLTV, the name in TMS did not change, now the name corresponds to the channel name in the EPG source.