OwnTV v4.0.2

v4.0.2 — 2026-07-07

🏠 Customizable Home screen — reorder/hide rows, dwell-to-expand hero, On Now mini-guide (community PR #58 by @codeVerine — Sagar Mukundan UV)

• Reorder and show/hide every Home row via the new Settings → Home screen page (per profile):
  Keep Watching hero, Recent Channels, Favourite Channels, Continue Watching Movies, Continue Watching
  Series can each be toggled and moved up/down/top/bottom. When every row is hidden, Home says so
  instead of showing a blank screen. Configs ride with Backup & Restore (backup format v8; older
  backups restore cleanly with defaults).
• Filter the Keep Watching hero row — independent toggles include/exclude live channels, movies and
  series from the hero strip (e.g. keep it VOD-only). Addresses #43.
• Redesigned hero cards — dwell-to-expand — a card stays compact until it holds focus for 3
  seconds, then widens to a 16:9 preview with a blurred-artwork backdrop (no more stretched
  channel logos — #49). Quick D-pad sweeps never expand; the video preview starts only after the
  expansion settles, and the row stays anchored on the active item across data refreshes.
• "On Now" mini-guide rows — Recent Channels and Favourite Channels can each display as Cards
  or On Now: an inline programme guide with the currently-airing show, live progress bar, and the
  next ~6 hours, sharing the real EPG renderer. Up/Down picks a channel, Left/Right scrolls the
  timeline, OK tunes. Favourite Channels defaults to On Now.
• New Recent Channels row (hidden by default) — recently tuned live channels, respecting the active
  playlist filter.
• Times follow the device's 12h/24h clock setting across Home, Live TV preview, TV Guide and the
  catch-up dialog (previously always 24h).

⚙️ Settings menu reorganized

• Profiles moved to the top of Settings (own "Profile" group, first focused row).
• Live preview and Preview audio moved from Content into the Playback group.
• App startup (Home / Last channel / Live TV Favorites) now lives in the App group.
• Home screen (new page above) sits in Content; the Android TV home toggle + refresh moved into it.

🗂️ Multiple playlists — switch the whole app to one playlist (or all)

• Selecting a playlist as "Default" now actually filters the app. Previously the Default toggle only
  changed a label; the Browse screens always merged every playlist. Now choosing a default narrows
  Live TV, Movies, Series, TV Guide, Search, and the Home rails (Continue Watching / Favourites) to
  that one playlist. Choosing All playlists (no default) restores the merged view — exactly the old
  behaviour. It's a view filter only: nothing is deleted or re‑imported, and switching back to All brings
  everything straight back.
• New top‑bar playlist switcher. With 2+ playlists, the playlist chip in the top‑right becomes a
  button (with a ▾) that opens an All playlists / A / B / C picker. It applies everywhere instantly and
  persists across restarts, so you can switch without opening Settings.
• Default is now chosen in the playlist's Add/Edit form via a "Default playlist" toggle (instead of
  a per‑row button). The Sources list shows a DEFAULT badge as a status marker. Turning the toggle off
  on the current default clears it back to All playlists.
• Favourites & History inside each section respect the selected playlist — with a single playlist
  active you no longer see another playlist's favourites/history mixed in; the rail counts match too.
• The selected default is included in Backup & Restore (Sources section).

✨ VOD engine fallback (movies & series play on more devices)

• Automatic second-engine retry for Movies & Series — if a movie or episode terminally fails on
  the mpv engine (file rejected, decoder stall, all retries exhausted), the same item is now retried
  automatically on ExoPlayer at the same position before any error is shown. Some devices/providers
  play streams on ExoPlayer's decoder path that mpv can't open — previously those items just errored
  even though the hardware could play them (as Live TV, which starts on ExoPlayer, proved). Each item
  gets one fallback attempt; if both engines fail, the error says so explicitly ("Playback failed
  on both video engines") instead of a misleading single-engine message.
• New setting: Settings → Video Player → "Movies & Series player" — choose which engine plays VOD
  first: mpv (default; widest format support — DTS/TrueHD audio, unusual containers — plus the
  A/V sync nudge) or ExoPlayer (for TVs/providers where mpv can't start movies at all; no
  DTS/TrueHD decoding and no A/V sync fix). Whichever is picked, the other is still tried
  automatically on failure, in reverse order. Live TV and catch-up are unaffected. The setting is
  included in Backup & Restore like the other player preferences.
• Player top bar shows the active engine — the mini chips in the player's top-left (aspect ·
  resolution · fps · audio) now lead with MPV or EXO on every stream — Live TV, Movies and
  Series — so you can always tell at a glance which engine is playing.
• Stream Info shows the active engine — the player's info overlay now leads with an "Engine" row
  (mpv / ExoPlayer, including why ExoPlayer is active: preferred, fallback, or image-subtitle
  handoff), and shows real ExoPlayer codec/resolution/audio/buffer data while it owns playback.
• In-player engine toggle for movies & episodes — the player's engine toggle (the ⇄ MPV/EXO
  pill, same spot as Live TV's compatibility mode) switches the current item between mpv and
  ExoPlayer at the same position, without changing the global setting. Useful to check whether the
  other engine exposes a subtitle or audio track the current one doesn't — flip, check the tracks,
  and stay on whichever works. The pill shows the active engine (teal while on ExoPlayer) — and,
  like Live's compatibility mode, the choice is remembered per movie/episode: a toggled item
  opens on that engine every time, while everything else keeps following the setting.
• Engine toggle restyle + confirmation toast — the Live "compatibility mode" and the in-player
  mpv/ExoPlayer switch are no longer a gear icon: they're one labeled pill that shows the active
  engine (MPV or EXO) and turns teal on the non-default one. Flipping it briefly pops up a small
  "Switched to MPV" / "Switched to ExoPlayer" note at the bottom of the player, so the change is
  always confirmed. Applies everywhere the toggle appears: Live TV, Movies, Series, and channels
  opened from the Guide.
• While ExoPlayer owns VOD playback: subtitles (text and image) and audio tracks are selectable
  directly on it, autoplay-next keeps working across episodes and seasons, and progress/resume is
  tracked as usual.

🔄 Per-source Auto Refresh (playlists & EPG)

• Each playlist and EPG source can now refresh itself automatically — open Settings → Manage
  sources (playlists) or Settings → EPG sources and pick an Auto refresh mode per source: Off,
  Refresh at startup (once per cold app start), or a staleness interval (playlists: 6h / 12h / 24h
  / 48h; EPG: 1h / 3h / 6h / 12h / 24h / 48h). Interval modes are checked on cold start and when
  the app returns to the foreground; a source refreshes only once it's actually stale (now − last
  successful sync ≥ the chosen threshold), so resuming the app doesn't re-sync everything every time.
• Off by default — new playlist and EPG sources start with Auto refresh Off; nothing syncs in
  the background unless you turn it on. Existing users who had the old "Refresh on startup" toggle
  enabled are migrated to Refresh at startup so their behaviour is unchanged.
• Failure-safe freshness — a failed EPG sync no longer marks the source as freshly synced, so a
  source that errors stays "stale" and is retried on the next check instead of being skipped for the
  full interval. Never-synced sources are always treated as stale. Auto refreshes preserve existing
  data (they never clear-then-reimport); a manual sync still does the full replace.

💾 Backup & Restore now covers every persistent setting

• Auto Refresh selections are backed up — the per-source playlist and EPG Auto refresh modes ride
  with the Profiles & sources section. On restore, a saved mode is re-applied only if that source
  still exists; ids that no longer exist are skipped, and an unknown/corrupt mode falls back safely to
  Off. Sync timestamps are not backed up — after a restore the app re-derives freshness from
  the restored mode and the real sync state.
• Per-item compatibility mode is backed up — the Live TV "compatibility mode" pins and the
  Movies/Series per-item engine pins (mpv / ExoPlayer, set from the player's engine toggle) are now
  saved and restored with the App settings section. They're keyed by stream URL, so they survive a
  re-sync, and restore merges them into any pins you've already set rather than replacing them.
• Audit gaps closed — the Default source selection and the legacy "resume last channel"
  preference were being stored but not backed up; both are now included. Every user-facing preference
  in the settings store is now covered by Backup & Restore.
• Download folder is backed up too — the chosen Download folder (Settings → Storage) was the
  one persistent setting still missing; it now rides with App settings and restores on import. On a
  different device a path that no longer exists harmlessly falls back to app storage, so a stale
  restore never breaks downloads.
• Backward compatible — older backup files that lack any of these new fields still restore
  cleanly: missing Auto refresh defaults to the normal app behaviour (EPG stays Off), and missing
  compatibility-mode/default-source fields simply leave your current values untouched. Unknown or
  invalid entries are ignored — a restore never crashes on them.
• Customize PIN lock is backed up — each profile's Customize PIN rides with the Profiles &
  sources section and is restored per profile (PINs for profiles that no longer exist are dropped
  safely; older backups without the field restore as before).

🎬 TMDB metadata enrichment (Movies, Series & Episodes)

• On-demand TMDB enrichment — cached posters, plots, cast, genres, ratings and backdrops from TMDB,
  filling the gaps your playlist leaves. Fully opt-in and cached in Room; no bulk calls. Works out of the
  box via a shared caching server (no setup), or bring your own TMDB API key / self-hosted server.
• Metadata source mode (Settings → Metadata) — choose Provider only, Provider + TMDB (provider
  wins, TMDB fills gaps), or TMDB only (TMDB preferred). Advanced key/self-host fields appear only when
  TMDB is on.
• TMDB Details window — long-press a movie or series (or episode) → TMDB Details opens a scrollable
  window with the backdrop/still, full overview, cast, genres and rating (Back to close).
• Series & episode enrichment — series show pages and, inside a series, a new episode detail pane
  showing each episode's TMDB still, plot, air year and rating (resolved lazily per season).
• Sort by rating — the Movies & Series sort chip now cycles Provider → A–Z → Rating (highest first).
• Cleaner detail pane / interaction — the side detail pane is now display-only (single-press plays,
  long-press for Favorite / Download / TMDB Details), which also fixes D-pad navigation from the grid to the
  pane. Episode rows lost their play/download icons (single-press plays, long-press for Download / Details).
  Downloading an already-downloaded item shows a toast instead of re-queuing.
• Better title matching — provider prefixes like 4K-OSN+ - are now stripped before searching TMDB, so
  more messy playlist titles resolve correctly.
• Refetch TMDB details (long-press) — clear a wrong/stale TMDB match (or a 7-day "no match" cache) and
  re-search immediately, on Movies, Series, and Episodes — no need to wait for the cache to expire. Lets the
  improved title matcher reach titles that failed before the fix.
• Set TMDB name (long-press) — manual override for titles the matcher still gets wrong: type the exact
  TMDB title (and optional year) and OwnTV re-searches under that name, on Movies and Series. The override
  survives playlist re-syncs; Clear reverts to automatic matching. Episodes inherit their series' match.
• In-app toasts — transient notices (refetch, already-downloaded, re-search) now use a themed in-app
  toast instead of the system toast.
• 🎞️ In-app trailers (Movies & Series) — long-press → Play Trailer (shown only when TMDB has one)
  plays the YouTube trailer in a floating window styled like the TMDB Details window, with Exit, a progress
  bar and D-pad ◀/▶ ±10s seek. Falls back to opening the YouTube app if the built-in player can't run.
• Self-hostable metadata server — the caching-proxy Worker source now ships in worker/ with a README,
  so anyone can deploy their own and point OwnTV at it.
• Attribution — Settings → Metadata shows the TMDB logo and the required notice: this product uses the
  TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.

🙈 Hide individual movies & series — and a Customize PIN lock

• Hide any single movie or series (not just whole categories) — long-press an item → Hide
  removes it from everywhere at once: global Search, in-section search, its category, the
  All list and count, Home rails (Continue Watching / Favourites), the Android TV Watch
  Next launcher, and Downloads. The downloaded file stays on disk and the item returns the
  moment you unhide it — exactly like Live TV's per-channel hide.
• Hidden categories now hide their items everywhere too — previously hiding a Movies or Series
  category only dropped the folder from the rail, while its items still showed in All and
  Search. Hiding a category now behaves like Live TV: the items vanish from Search, All and the
  Home/launcher rails until you unhide the category.
• Unhide everything from one place — Settings → Customize & Hidden Items (renamed from
  "Customize Category", since it now manages hidden items too) lists every hidden channel, movie and
  series per section, each with an Unhide button.
• Optional PIN lock on the Customize screen — tap 🔒 Set PIN at the top-right of Customize &
  Hidden Items to lock it; afterwards every entry asks for the PIN, so nobody else can unhide items
  or change your category setup. It is per-profile, asked each time you open the screen, and
  deliberately not included in backups — a lock code shouldn't travel in a readable file, and a
  restore must never lock you out.

✨ External player — play movies, series & downloads in VLC / MX Player

• New setting: Settings → Video Player → "External player" — when on, pressing Play on a Movie,
  Series episode, or Download opens the stream in an external video player (VLC, MX Player, …)
  instead of the built-in one. Useful for streams this app can't decode, or if you simply prefer another
  player. Turning it off restores normal in-app playback. The setting is included in Backup & Restore
  like the other player preferences.
• Long-press "Play with external player" — every movie and series episode's long-press menu has a
  new action that plays just that item externally, regardless of the global setting. Completed
  downloads get an "External" button next to Play.
• Live TV is unaffected — channels always play in the built-in player (external routing would lose
  rewind/catch-up). Movies, Series and Downloads are the only sections that route externally.
• Smart hand-off — if more than one player is installed you get a chooser; if exactly one is set up it
  opens directly; if none is installed you get a clear "install VLC or MX Player" message instead of a
  silent failure. Downloaded files are shared safely via a content URI (not a raw file path).
• Trade-offs when playing externally (the same ones every IPTV app has): resume position and
  prev/next aren't available, and streams that require a custom User-Agent or referer header may not
  play in the external player. Watch history is still recorded.

📺 Live TV closed captions now work (#57)

• ExoPlayer engine: embedded CEA-608 captions on raw MPEG-TS channels are now detected. IPTV
  panels almost never declare captions in the stream tables, so the player never exposed them; the app
  now surfaces the standard CC1 track on every .ts live channel (HLS channels already worked).
  Because detection is unconditional, the CC entry also appears on .ts channels that carry no
  captions — selecting it there simply shows nothing.
• mpv engine: selecting the CC track now actually renders captions. CC text can only be extracted
  by the software video decoder, so while a CC track is selected the channel temporarily switches to
  software decoding (≤1080p only — the same GL path used by the decoder-rescue fallback) and switches
  straight back to hardware decoding when CC is turned off or you change channels. Expect a ~1s
  blip when toggling. On >1080p channels captions stay unavailable on mpv rather than risking
  stutter; use the ExoPlayer engine there.

🌦️ Weather settings submenu — Celsius / Fahrenheit

• The two weather rows on the Settings root are now a proper Settings → Weather submenu with three
  options: Show weather (top-bar chip on/off), Custom location (city or "lat,lon"; blank =
  auto-detect — useful on a VPN), and a new Temperature unit toggle (°C / °F) for the top-bar
  chip. All three are included in Backup & Restore.

⚠️ Low-zoom memory warning (#51)

• Setting UI Zoom below 85% now asks you to accept the risk first. Lower zoom draws far more
  items on screen at once, which can crash devices with limited memory (e.g. 2 GB Fire TV sticks)
  when combined with large playlists and EPG data. Stepping under 85% shows a one-button warning —
  OK ("I understand and accept the risk") continues, Back keeps zoom at 85%. If your zoom is
  already below 85%, the dialog doesn't nag.

🐛 Fixes

• Fixed D-pad navigation from the Movies/Series grid to the detail pane — the display-only pane no
  longer traps focus on the way right.

• Fixed episode long-press menu losing focus — after an action in the episode context menu (e.g.
  Refetch TMDB details), focus now returns to the episode row instead of jumping away.

• Failed TMDB lookups are no longer remembered as "no match" — a network error, rate limit or proxy
  outage during a lookup now simply retries on the next open, instead of being negative-cached for 7 days
  like a genuine "title not on TMDB" answer. The Settings test lookup also distinguishes "server
  unreachable" from "no match".

• Live channel-list overlay now matches the channel you launched from Home (#55) — pressing Left
  while a Live channel plays opens the quick channel-list overlay. When you started the channel from a
  Live TV category, it correctly listed that category — but when you started it from the Home
  screen (Keep Watching or a Favourites rail), the overlay still showed the previous category's list.
  The Home launch path updated the CH+/CH- zap list but not the list the overlay reads, so the two
  disagreed. The overlay now reflects the same list you're zapping through — the Keep Watching /
  Favourites channels you actually opened.

• Active nav section stays visible when focus moves away (#47) — in the left navigation and the
  category rail, the selected item lost all highlight as soon as you moved focus to another item, so
  at a glance you couldn't tell which section/category was actually active. Both now use a consistent
  four-state treatment: selected + focused (full accent fill) → focused cursor (surface fill +
  teal outline) → selected but unfocused (soft tonal fill, accent tint and a persistent left accent
  bar) → idle. The accent bar gives a colour-independent marker of the active tab for low-contrast
  panels. Selection/focus boxes are also slightly less rounded (box-style) and the nav bar sits a little
  closer to the first panel, so the whole left navigation reads as one consistent system.

• 4K Live channels no longer break playback on some TVs — on certain low-end panels (e.g. some
  Hisense models), watching a 4K channel could wedge the TV's hardware video decoder: every channel
  afterwards took ~20 seconds to start, and it stayed broken until the TV was rebooted (Google TV /
  higher-end sets were unaffected). The Live engine (ExoPlayer) was parking and reusing its decoder
  between channels instead of releasing it, so the stuck 4K decoder was never handed back. Now, whenever
  you leave a UHD (>1080p) channel — Back, exit full-screen, background, or zap to another channel via
  CH+/-, the D-pad, or the channel-list overlay — the decoder is fully released so the next channel
  starts cleanly. It's scoped to 4K only, so normal SD/HD zapping keeps the same fast, instant switching.

• Live engine pill now shows the engine that's actually playing — when a Live channel auto-fell-back
  from ExoPlayer to mpv, the MPV/EXO pill still read EXO (it was showing the saved pin, not the live
  engine), and tapping it appeared to do nothing. The pill now reflects the running engine, and one
  tap always switches it — flipping to mpv (and remembering the channel) or back to ExoPlayer. (The
  Movies/Series pill already tracked the live engine and is unchanged.)

• Live TV zoom / aspect modes now work — choosing Fit, Fill / Crop, Stretch, Original, Force 16:9
  or Force 4:3 on a Live TV channel did nothing at all (the picture never changed). Live channels play
  full-screen on ExoPlayer (the live engine), and that path had no zoom implementation — the mode was
  stored but never applied to the surface. Zoom/aspect now works on Live TV just like on Movies and
  Series, whether the channel plays on ExoPlayer or on mpv (a compatibility-mode pin).

• Fill / Crop now actually zooms in and crops — on Movies, Series and Live, "Fill / Crop" could
  look identical to Fit (especially on 16:9 content), or read as a stretch rather than a crop. It now
  takes the fitted picture and scales it up ~20% so it always visibly zooms and fills edge-to-edge,
  regardless of the source's aspect ratio. (Stretch remains a true distort-to-fill.)

• Weather chip: VPN-friendly location override + hide toggle (#45) — the top-bar weather guesses
  your city from your public IP, so on a VPN it showed the VPN server's city instead of yours. You can
  now set a manual Weather location (Settings → Appearance) — a city name (e.g. London) or a
  raw lat,lon pair (e.g. 51.5,-0.12) — which is geocoded via Open-Meteo and overrides IP lookup.
  Leave it blank for the previous auto-detect behaviour. There's also a Show weather switch to hide
  the chip entirely. Both settings are included in Backup & Restore. Default ON + blank location means
  existing users see no change.

• Modal D-pad focus can no longer escape into the UI behind it (#48) — in the Exit, Avatar picker,
  Rename/Text-input, Resume, App-update and EPG-sync-prompt dialogs, pressing Left/Right/Up/Down from
  a button could move focus into the browse UI behind the dialog, leaving Cancel/Exit unreachable
  (only Back could dismiss it). A new all-directions focus trap keeps D-pad focus inside every modal
  scrim; Back still closes each dialog as before.

• Focus returns to the right item after a long-press context menu (#46) — on Live TV, Movies and
  Series, long-pressing OK on an item and closing the menu (Cancel / Favourite / Hide / Remove from
  history / Download) used to jump focus to the left Category rail. Focus now lands back inside the
  list/grid: on the exact item if it's still there, or on the nearest surviving neighbour if it
  was removed (e.g. unfavouriting on Favorites, or Remove from History) — only leaving the pane when
  the category becomes empty. The restore is now deterministic (id + position based), fixing an
  intermittent race where the paged list still held a stale copy of the removed item.

What's Changed

• Customizable Home screen: reorder/hide rows, dwell-to-expand hero, On Now mini-guide, per-profile settings, Keep Watching filters by @codeVerine in #58

Full Changelog: v4.0.1...v4.0.2