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Station Wrapper 43 Wiki

This wiki shows how to turn a pile of TV shows and movies into your own cable TV network. Channels have schedules. Shows start on the hour. A guide tells you what's on. You can watch it in Emby or Jellyfin, or on a real TV in another room.

It is built on two projects:

• FieldStation42 makes the schedules and plays them like a TV station.
• Station Wrapper 43 (this repo) runs FieldStation42 in Docker. It adds a web dashboard, a channel guide, and a fake HDHomeRun tuner. That tuner is how Emby and Jellyfin see your channels as live TV.

The setup these guides describe

Two computers share the work.

graph TD
  nas[NAS: your videos]
  server[tv-server: Station Wrapper 43 in Docker]
  emby[Emby or Jellyfin]
  player[tv-player: FieldStation42 player]
  tv[A TV]
  nas -->|read-only share| server
  nas -->|read-only share| player
  server -->|live channels and guide| emby
  server -->|schedule copy, every hour| player
  player --> tv

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• The server does all the planning. It builds every channel's schedule and serves the channels to Emby or Jellyfin.
• The player is a second PC hooked up to a TV. It copies the server's schedule every hour and plays it. Both show the same thing at the same time, just like real TV.
• Both read the videos straight from the NAS. Nothing gets copied or changed.

You don't need the player. The server works fine by itself with Emby or Jellyfin. Add the player later if you want channels on a TV that has no Emby app, like an old CRT.

Example machines

The guides use these names and addresses. Swap in your own.

Name	Address	What it does
nas	192.168.1.10	Holds the videos in a share called media
tv-server	192.168.1.20	Runs Docker and Station Wrapper 43 (and Emby or Jellyfin)
tv-player	192.168.1.30	The PC connected to a TV

The user on both Linux PCs is tv, so home folders are /home/tv.

Guides

Start at the top and work down. Each page says what you need before you start.

1. Server Setup: install Station Wrapper 43 and connect it to Emby or Jellyfin.
2. Making Channels: build channels from the dashboard or with a script, and keep new episodes coming.
3. Remote Player: set up a second PC that plays your channels on a TV.
4. Syncing a Remote Player: keep that PC showing the same thing as the server.

Extras:

• Block Channels: channels that change shows by time of day, with little "bump" cards between them.
• Weather Channel: a retro WeatherStar 4000 channel.
• YouTube Channel: YouTube's TV app as a channel you cast to from your phone.
• Backups: a nightly backup of your channels and schedules.
• Troubleshooting: problems people hit, and how to fix them.

The scripts these guides use are in the repo's extras folder.