A provider-maintained catalogue and a household’s personal organization can change for different reasons. The provider may correct sources or identifiers while the viewer renames entries and rearranges groups. If those changes live in the same file, a refresh can overwrite one side’s work.
The useful first question is ownership of each change. Source addresses and published guide relationships normally belong to the maintained dataset. Personal favourites and preferred ordering may belong in local player settings when that separation is supported.
Separate customization from source correction
A local display label such as “Evening News” can help a household, but it should not hide the channel’s actual identity in a support report. Similarly, a provider correction should not be rejected simply because it moves an entry from a familiar position. Compare the reason for the change before choosing which version to retain.
A full manual fork has a maintenance cost. Once you edit a snapshot independently, future source corrections do not automatically merge into it. That may be acceptable for a private use case, but it should be a deliberate choice with a dated original and a record of local differences.
Prepare for the next refresh
Do not automatically copy old resource addresses into a new catalogue to restore its former appearance. The source maintainer may have replaced them for a reason. Recover personal labels separately from operational values and ask about an unexplained source change when necessary.
- List which personal changes matter and where the player stores them.
- Preserve the current configuration through a supported private backup.
- Identify any hand-edited source fields that a refresh can replace.
- Prefer local preferences for personal organization where practical.
- After refreshing, compare a few essential identities and documented customizations.
Resolve a real conflict explicitly
When an update and a local edit touch the same field, keep both versions long enough to understand the difference. A three-way comparison—old source, local version and new source—can reveal whether the changes concern identity, navigation or access data. Perform that comparison privately if credentials are present.
If a local guide override was created to work around a missing mapping, revisit it after a source correction. An obsolete override can keep selecting the wrong schedule even after the provider’s data improves. Document its purpose and remove it only after checking the intended result.
A concise maintenance note should state the refresh date, the source correction accepted and the local preference restored. That is more useful than a growing set of vaguely named “final” playlist copies. The goal is a current source with understandable personal choices, not preserving every historical edit indefinitely.
Useful answers
Will a hand-edited remote-source snapshot automatically receive corrections?
No. A separate snapshot needs its own maintenance or replacement process.
Should I restore old URLs merely to recover the old order?
No. Restore navigation separately from source values that may have been deliberately corrected.
Can an old manual guide override cause problems after an update?
Yes. Recheck temporary overrides when the underlying source changes.