Skip to content

Recording and Scheduling

Jump to bottom
Iain Smith edited this page Sep 2, 2026 · 2 revisions

Recording & Scheduled Recordings

Applies to any live-channel source — M3U, Xtream, Stalker, HDHomeRun. There are two separate ways to record: doing it right now, or telling tvdinner to do it later.

Recording right now

r toggles recording the current stream to disk as a raw copy — no re-encoding — saved under --record-dir as <channel>_<timestamp>.ts (default: ~/Videos/tvdinner on Linux, %USERPROFILE%\Videos\tvdinner on Windows).

Works on any live channel regardless of whether that source has EPG data at all — this doesn't depend on the guide, so it's the only recording option for an EPG-less source like Stalker or an HDHomeRun without a DVR subscription.

Scheduling one in advance

This does need a programme to point at, so it only works for a source with real EPG data (see each source's own page):

  1. Open the guide (g), select a programme, press i for its details.
  2. Press s to schedule it — tvdinner will switch channels and start/stop the recording at its start/stop time automatically, even if you're watching something else at the time. Press s again on the same programme to cancel.

A scheduled programme shows a small red "R" badge in the guide. Recordings are saved to the same --record-dir as ad-hoc ones.

tvdinner has to actually be running when the scheduled time arrives — there's no background service, so it can't record while the app (or the machine) is off.

Saved to --schedule-file (default: ~/.config/tvdinner/schedule.json on Linux, %APPDATA%\tvdinner\schedule.json on Windows).

Browsing what's scheduled

u opens the upcoming-recordings browser, soonest first, marking whichever one is currently recording:

  • UP/DOWN/PGUP/PGDWN — move the selection
  • ENTER — cancel the selected one
  • ESC — close

Only one recording can happen at a time. If an overlapping schedule never got a turn, it shows up here under Missed, with the reason why (plus an on-screen notification when it happens).

Scheduling from a tvtimes watchlist

On a tvtimes source, --record-watchlist fills this schedule automatically from that account's watchlist — press Remind me in the tvtimes web app on your phone and this box records it. Entries it adds are reconciled on every poll and are marked as its own, so they never collide with the ones you scheduled by hand here. See the tvtimes page.

Watching recordings back

w opens the recordings browser, grouped by date:

  • UP/DOWN/PGUP/PGDWN — move the selection
  • ENTER — play it back, resuming where you left off if you didn't finish it last time (see --playback-positions-file — a recording's saved position is dropped once the file itself is deleted)
  • d twice — permanently delete the selected one (the first press just arms the confirmation)
  • ESC — close

Everything else

Clone this wiki locally