Network Tuner Recovery Isn't "Graceful"

The other day my networked instance of my Hauppauge Colossus suddenly went missing, which I found only because I could no longer tune the cable box. The server still showed the tuner as installed, but "functioning" was "false". I teared my hair out trying to get it working...rebooted network tuner, rebooted server, power cycled everything, even removing then re-adding the tuner. Nothing got it back. When I looked in the Sage.properties (on the SageTV server), I noticed there were two entries for my Colossus, one under the DNS name (in my case, interocitor.local), and second under the (then current) IP address (in my case 192.168.1.14). This apparently confused the SageTV server to no end when in reality either should have worked. Ultimately I ended up removing both entries, rebooted my router, server, and Colossus server, then re-added the Colossus as a network tuner. As of now it's successfully detecting and using the DNS name until it hiccups again (at least I know what to do now), but it seems like there needs be a better way to alert the user to an issue and identify the same network device through IP and DNS name changes. Just some thoughts on how this might be done or for discussion:

- Assign a unique ID to the network tuner server. Identify and use this rather than IP/DNS name to recognize that the tuner is one that is previously installed and configured.

- Post a system message when the SageTV server cannot locate a network tuner. I missed a few recordings because I didn't realize the tuner was off line...the only error produced was that it couldn't record 'X' due to conflicts.

- Detect and display tuners when entering the input configuration screen. The fact that it kept showing up as valid device (apparently due to "stale" info in Sage.properties?) was a huge red hearing because it made me believe the network tuner was functioning. The only way to tell if "Functioning = false" was after the tuner was installed and configured.