Manual Getting Started

Manual: Getting Started

This page mirrors the in-app manual (the HELP tab in Setup). Words in capitals are labels you will see on screen.

Getting Started · Channels · Programming · Picture, Sound, Guide and Theme · Household, Library and System · Special and Virtual Channels · Using the Setup Screen · The Plug-ins Tab

Getting Started With This Guide

Welcome! This guide explains what everything in the setup screen does, organized by tab so it's easy to find what you need.

TIP: Use the SEARCH THE GUIDE box above if you already know roughly what you're looking for — it searches both the topic titles and the text inside them.

Don't feel like you need to read this all at once. Most people just build their first channel (see SECTION 2 below) and come back here later when they want to try something new.

NOTE: RerunTV is in beta. If something looks wrong, check HELP › WHAT'S NEW for recent changes, and report problems on the project's GitHub page.

NOTE: RerunTV is vibe-coded: an AI coding agent wrote almost all of it under the direction of the project owner, and it has not had an independent code review or security audit. See the README on GitHub for details.

2.1 Setting Up Your First Channel

STEP 1: Go to the LINEUP tab and click "+ ADD CHANNEL". A new, empty channel will show up.

STEP 2: Click "ADD FOLDER" and pick a folder of video files on your computer. The app scans it, figures out how long each video is, and builds a playlist for you automatically. A big folder might take a minute — that's normal.

STEP 3: Want more than one folder on the same channel? Just repeat step 2. You could put cartoons and movies on the same channel, or keep them on separate channels — totally up to you.

NOTE: You can rename a channel or change its number any time by clicking directly on its NAME or NUMBER in the list.

TIP: Checking "SHUFFLE ORDER" mixes up the playback order once. It won't keep re-shuffling every time the channel loops — uncheck and recheck it whenever you want a new shuffle.

STEP 4: When you're ready, click "START WATCHING" in the bottom-right corner to leave this screen and start watching. That's it!

2.2 Trying RerunTV Without Your Own Media

No library handy? Each release on GitHub has RerunTV-demo-library.zip, a gentle demo lineup of generated test video: slow soft colors, quiet tones, nothing copyrighted.

STEP 1: Download the zip from the Releases page on GitHub and unzip it somewhere permanent. (Developers can generate the same thing with scripts/make-demo-library.js, which needs Node and ffmpeg.)

STEP 2: In the LINEUP tab, click "+ ADD CHANNEL" for each folder it created, use "ADD FOLDER" to point the channel at it, then click "START WATCHING".

TIP: The zip has a README.txt with these steps and suggested channel numbers.