The present disclosure relates to a system and method for monitoring audio-video (AV) streams transported over a network. The system may include an AV probe deployed between an AV tuner and AV destination customer premise equipment. The AV probe may receive an incoming AV stream. The AV probe may generate a thumbnail stream by capturing thumbnails of the incoming AV stream. The AV probe may transmit, substantially in real-time, the thumbnail stream to a monitoring engine and the incoming AV stream to the AV destination customer premise equipment.