Release v0.22.0

[4gray]

v0.22 is one of the biggest IPTVnator releases so far. The embedded MPV player expands from macOS to Windows and Linux, detail pages for movies and series got a full redesign, and the app can now enrich your VOD & series content with TMDB metadata — posters, cast, trailers and more. On top of that: a built-in desktop updater, global search across all your sources, and a reworked live EPG timeline.

---

✨ Highlights

• Embedded MPV player now available on Windows and Linux (experimental)
• TMDB metadata enrichment (opt-in): plots, cast, trailers, similar titles, actor pages
• Redesigned VOD & series detail pages with a browse ↔ watch layout and season tabs
• Desktop auto-updater — the app now updates itself from GitHub releases
• Global search across all sources, including M3U playlists
• Live EPG panel reworked into a timeline with an optional vertical list view
• Catch-up/archive playback improvements for Xtream
• Custom title bar with window controls on Windows and Linux
• Extensive Electron security hardening

---

🎬 Embedded MPV Player — now on Windows & Linux (Experimental)

The embedded MPV player introduced for macOS in v0.21 is now available on all three platforms:

• Windows: libmpv rendering directly inside the app window (bundled, no extra install)
• Linux: playback via the system mpv player embedded into the app window (X11/XWayland; requires mpv on PATH)
• Series navigation (next/previous episode) inside the embedded player
• Switch to embedded MPV directly from the command palette
• Stability hardening across the board: EOF detection, safer polling, better error visibility, and the display no longer goes to sleep during playback

The macOS embedded player also received a round of fixes and polish based on v0.21 feedback.

---

🎞️ TMDB Metadata Enrichment (opt-in)

Movie and series detail pages for Xtream and Stalker portals can now be enriched with TMDB data:

• Plot, genres, ratings, director and cast with photos, artwork and YouTube trailers
• "Similar" rail: TMDB recommendations matched against your catalog — across all your portals
• Trending on the dashboard: a TMDB-powered trending rail with enriched hero artwork
• Real episode names, descriptions and stills for each season
• Actor pages: click any cast member to see their bio and filmography, linked back to your catalog or portal search
• Localized to your app language (falls back to the original language when a translation is missing), cached locally

Enrichment is off by default and requires a personal TMDB API key (free registration at themoviedb.org). Enter your key and enable the feature under Settings → Metadata (TMDB) — titles are sent to TMDB for matching.

---

📺 Redesigned Movie & Series Detail Pages

Detail pages now have two states:

• Browse: hero section with poster, metadata and actions, episodes below
• Watch: the hero collapses, the inline player takes the full content width, and details move below the episodes
• Season tabs with smart auto-selection (jumps to the season you're watching or resuming)
• Grid/list toggle for episodes, remembered across sessions
• Esc or "Close player" returns to browse without losing your place

---

🔄 Desktop Auto-Updater

• IPTVnator now checks GitHub releases and can update itself — no more manual downloads
• Release notes for the current version are shown in the settings
• Fixed a crash in the packaged updater (IPTVnator CI appimage fails to start since a few days ago #1103)

---

🔎 Global Search

• New workspace-wide search across all your sources — Xtream, Stalker and M3U playlists
• Fixed live search (Ctrl+F) opening the wrong channel or category

---

🗓️ EPG & Catch-up

• Live EPG panel reworked into a horizontal timeline under the player
• New optional vertical list view for the live EPG panel
• EPG sources can now be scoped per playlist
• Compressed XMLTV responses are now decoded correctly
• Catch-up (Xtream): active archive playback state shown in the EPG, timeshift URL variants resolved automatically, stream output format auto-selected, active archive program highlighted
• Catch-up "Watch" button now works from the unified live tab, with clear errors when a stream can't be resolved

---

🏠 Dashboard

• Configurable dashboard rails — choose what you want to see
• New "Recently added" live channels rail
• New "Trending" rail powered by TMDB (when metadata enrichment is enabled)
• Faster startup and rail loading

---

📡 Xtream & Stalker

• Sort and filter the VOD/series catalog by IMDb rating
• New "all channels" grid for Live TV
• Improved compatibility with more portal variants
• Stalker: full playlist loading for authenticated routes
• PWA: Xtream connection details are now saved properly

---

🖥️ UI & Desktop

• Custom title bar with window controls on Windows and Linux
• Live channels sidebar no longer shares its width with the navigation panel
• Sources page visual polish

---

🔐 Security

• Extensive Electron hardening: stricter renderer isolation and navigation rules
• Scoped trust controls for EPG sources
• Blocked private-network redirects for portal probes

---

🧰 Under the Hood

• Large test-coverage push (unit + E2E) and CI now enforces lint and file-size limits on every PR
• Major internal refactorings: typed Electron bridge contract, split EPG/player services, dead code cleanup
• Dependency updates: Angular 21.2.17, axios 1.16.0
• Remote control: volume now applies to built-in M3U players

---

Full Changelog: v0.21.0...v0.22.0

---

This discussion was created from the release Release v0.22.0.

[rawiqa]

🔥❤️✅

[donchi40]

Running the 0.22.0 on windows... selected embedded MPV player... here is the display... am I doing something wrong?
When I select video.js, it plays correctly in the video frame...
I understand it's experimental, but just wanted to ensure I'm not missing a setting.

[4gray]

Thanks for testing, it's definitely a bug.
Just to understand the issue a bit more:
Does it always happen like this, or only after switching channels or navigating back? Can you close the app and reopen it again? Does that temporarily solve the issue?

[donchi40]

OK, closed and restarted the app... same issue.
It happens on all the channels I selected, even if I click back on a previous channel.
It happens when I click a channel from a different playlist.

[donchi40]

Update to add, if I try to go full screen, this is what I get:

[donchi40]

Not sure on this one... if you want me to open an issue on it, just let me know...
When I installed 0.22.0, on startup, it started to import my epgs... due to 2 of them being in local podman containers, I got the pop-up about allowing them, which I did, and it continued the import...
Once it was finished importing, I went to Settings and was surprised to see that my EPG sources were not listed...
Here's the screenshot:

I added one of my epgs and here's the screenshot, I'm taking it to mean it's already in there but now needs to refresh?