Features

Features

Core, always available:

• Multi-folder channels — merge several folders into one channel's loop; add/remove them independently without rescanning the rest
• Sub-channels (opt-in) — switch on ALLOW SUB-CHANNELS at the bottom of the LINEUP tab and a channel can sit at 7.1 / 7.2 the way a digital broadcast sub-channel does; type 7, ., 1 on the keypad to tune one. Off by default, so ordinary channel numbers keep stepping by whole numbers
• Time-grid guide with half-hour columns, a live "now" line, channel icons, filtering
• Seven-day program search and local reminders directly from guide results, with a pending-reminder list you can edit, optional auto-tune when one comes due, and a desktop notification for the case the app is running behind another window
• Schedule-drift correction — a periodic check that the picture is still at the point the schedule says it should be, easing it back after a machine sleep or a long stall
• Display wake lock — keeps the monitor from sleeping while the set is powered on, including on still-picture states like a plugin channel, a NO SIGNAL card, or the guide
• Air checks — mark the moment you're watching with X, then jump straight back to it from the TV menu; nothing is recorded, a mark is just a channel and a point in time
• Channel SCAN — the old cable-box SCAN button: hold on each channel for a few seconds until something's worth stopping for, and any key stops it
• Viewing history — a log of what actually aired, kept in its own file rather than in your channel config, with estimated watch time and most-watched channel/program
• Media keys — the OS now-playing overlay shows the channel and program, and a keyboard's next/previous track keys change channel
• Poster frames without a metadata match — the program details card falls back to a frame pulled out of the file itself when there's no matched poster art
• Channel icons — assign an image per channel, or use the auto-colored number badge
• Dayparting — give a channel time blocks that swap in a different folder by hour (cartoons 6am–8pm, something else overnight); guide and playback both follow
• Commercial breaks — a box-wide default bumper folder and interval, overridable per channel (its own bumper folder, its own interval, or timed before/after each show instead of on a timer) and per schedule block (different ads for specific hours, or a block used purely to carve out an ad-free/ad-different stretch of the day without changing content)
• Interactive Show & Ad Flow Builder — a timeline canvas for scripting exactly when interstitials fire around a piece of content, with its own simulator
• Air Check resolver console — inspect source, schedule block, show position, break policy, eligible interstitials, and adjacent boundaries for any channel and time
• Safe playback-order editor — natural/reverse/folder sorting, seeded shuffle, and drag ordering with a live-impact preview before the channel is re-anchored
• Portable channel packages — export/import one channel with only its related flows, presets, pool entries, and conflict-safe id remapping
• Per-channel broadcast identity — optional theme, tune/static treatment, accent, and no-signal copy overrides that inherit box defaults unless explicitly changed
• Opt-in library synchronization — startup/periodic source polling for additions, missing titles, and unambiguous renames; automatic removal remains separately opt-in
• Video Splicer (LIBRARY › SPLICER) — cut a taped or ripped compilation into separate episode, commercial and bumper clips by finding black frames, silence, hard picture changes or a recurring logo card. A cut editor with a player and timeline lets you move, add and drop cuts, name and number episodes, and skip commercials that aired twice; clips start on the exact frame without the dead air of the break, and go straight onto a channel or into the ad pool. Runs queue in the background; clips can also be joined back into one file. Needs FFmpeg (the FFmpeg Transcode plug-in); the same tools run from a terminal too (main/splicer/README.md)
• Compared and pinned backups — preview meaningful differences before restore and keep important snapshots out of automatic rotation
• Up-next banner ~45s before a program ends
• Channel logo bug in the corner, like a network watermark
• Live overlay layout editor — drag and anchor the logo and viewer cards over the running channel, resize with handles, and optionally snap to 1–10% grid increments
• Theme-scoped guide genre colors — opt-in palettes for movie, news, sports, kids, and any custom taxonomy genre; selected programs keep the theme's own focus treatment
• Animated hint bar — optional slide-up/slide-down transitions with independently adjustable reveal and hide timing (and automatic reduced-motion handling)
• Auto-curation — tag content by facets (era, mood, rating, etc.), then let day-part templates and a scheduler assemble channel lineups from the pool automatically
• AUTO display mode — simulates an era-appropriate resolution/aspect ratio per file or per theme, with a curvature slider and CRT bias controls
• Power & auto-standby with a CRT collapse/warm-up animation
• Synthesized sound effects (channel click, volume tick, power thunk) — no audio files
• Automatic codec repair — files Chromium can't decode are transcoded to H.264 once via ffmpeg; the original moves to _originals_backup/, never deleted
• Undo/redo, a command palette (Ctrl+K), full keyboard nav, and OS drag-and-drop on the setup screen
• Background auto-update — checks, a settings panel to choose the policy (silent / prompt-first / off), and a guided install flow that preserves your channel library
• Plugin channels are listed and editable too — the Channel Setup screen's channel list has a PLUGIN CHANNELS section for every plugin-provided channel (Digital Music, Party Channel, Guide Channel, Public Access, etc.), where you can rename it, give it a different channel number (where the plugin allows it), and set its display overrides, right alongside your own channels
• Plugin developer diagnostics — registration/capability inventory, bounded main and renderer logs, reload status, and redacted JSON support bundles
• 23 themes spanning six decades of TV/cable-box UI — from a 1978 wood-console set through dense SD grids, metallic late-2000s menus, widescreen preview guides, and modern streaming design languages. Themes can change guide density, preview composition, focus behavior, palette, SFX, and (where it fits the era) a physical border/bezel image.

Shipped as plugins (install/remove from the PLUGINS tab — drop a folder in, or install a .zip — or write your own, see PLUGIN_DEVELOPMENT.md):

• CH 0 — Video In: shows a window/app running on this machine (KaraFun, PiKaraoke, anything) as a channel, like a real AUX input
• CH 1 — Preview Guide: branded header, live clock, and a scrolling now/next listing of every channel
• CH 2 — Public Access: a community bulletin board cycling text slides you write
• CH 3 — Local Weather: a synthetic forecast barker channel, or a real one via NOAA
• CH 100 — Channel Mosaic: a paging grid of what's airing on every other channel right now. Every tile is a paused frame seeked to that channel's live position, not a live feed, so a full page costs a fraction of what a wall of pictures would
• CH 51 — Classified Intercept: a fictional radar-and-satellite log channel
• CH 96 — Shopping Network, and CH 98 — Pay-Per-View: interactive fictional cable-channel experiences
• CH 99 — Teletext Arcade: a parody teletext-style teletext service, plus a playable Snake game
• Closed captions — sidecar .srt/.vtt or embedded subtitle streams, via the native <track> API, styled per-theme
• Breaking news overlays — random or on-demand, four visual styles, TTS readout
• SMPTE test pattern in place of a plain "no signal" card
• Screensaver — an idle-state overlay after a period of no interaction, themed per guide era
• Ticker — a bottom-of-screen scrolling text strip
• Vintage audio texture — ambient tape hiss/static/carrier hum tied to the active theme
• Party Channel — an opt-in, paired LAN guest page (photo/video bulletin, TTS announcements, soundboard, trivia, caption contest, vote-for-next, check-in wall, visual effects)
• Cast to TV — casts whatever's currently airing to a Chromecast/Google TV device on the LAN, kept in sync with the live schedule
• Companion App — turns a paired phone on the same WiFi into a remote and mobile setup surface; it also provides the API used by the Android companion app
• TMDB metadata matching for the TITLES tab (needs a free API key)
• FFmpeg Transcode — codec-compatibility fix-up (see "About RerunTV" above); resolves a system-installed ffmpeg from PATH or a custom path you set under DISPLAY & SYSTEM → FFMPEG