Echoplex

A Windows desktop application that creates custom live TV channels from your Plex media library. echoplex acts as an HDHR (HDHomeRun) tuner emulator, letting Plex, Emby, or Jellyfin treat your curated channels as live television complete with an electronic program guide (EPG). ## Features - **Custom Channels** — Build channels from movies, TV shows, and other media in your Plex libraries with full scheduling control - **Auto Channel Generation** — Automatically create channels grouped by studio, genre, decade, content rating, country, or collection with optional major-studio filtering - **Commercial Breaks** — Insert filler content at configurable intervals within programs, with block-based padding for traditional TV-style timing - **HDHR Emulation** — Appears as an HDHomeRun tuner device so Plex/Emby/Jellyfin can discover and stream channels natively - **XMLTV & M3U** — Generates XMLTV EPG files and M3U playlists for guide data and channel listings - **SSDP Discovery** — Auto-discovery via UPnP so Plex finds the virtual tuner on your network - **HDHR Discovery** — Native HDHomeRun UDP discovery protocol (port 65001) for apps like Channels, Emby, and Jellyfin - **App Discovery** — UDP broadcast discovery (port 16464) for companion applications to find the server on the local network - **Filler Content** — Fill gaps between programs with short clips, bumpers, or commercials - **Custom Shows** — Group programs into custom show collections for flexible scheduling - **Web Dashboard** — Fully featured web panel to monitor channels, manage servers, and configure stream settings directly from your browser - **Time Slots & Random Slots** — Schedule programs into fixed or randomized time slots - **On-Demand Channels** — Channels that pause when no one is watching and resume where they left off - **Channel Redirects** — Redirect one channel to another during off-hours - **Per-Channel Transcoding** — Override resolution, bitrate, and buffer size on a per-channel basis - **FFmpeg Transcoding** — Full transcoding pipeline with configurable video/audio codecs, resolution, bitrate, and normalization - **Stream-Copy Mode** — Pass-through video/audio without re-encoding for minimal CPU usage, with automatic transcoding fallback for incompatible containers (AVI, MKV with non-standard codecs) - **Hardware Encoding** — GPU-accelerated encoding with NVENC, QSV, VAAPI, AMF, and VideoToolbox with automatic hwaccel detection - **Graceful Direct Play** — Automatically uses local file paths when available, falling back to Plex HTTP streaming when the file isn't accessible - **Error Loop Video** — Bundled fallback video for offline gaps and error screens, with automatic fallback to black screen generation - **Image Caching** — Optional proxy cache for program artwork served to guide clients - **Multiple Plex Servers** — Connect to and manage content from multiple Plex Media Server instances - **Mini Mode** — Collapse the window to a compact title bar for unobtrusive background operation - **System Tray** — Minimize to the system tray to keep echoplex completely out of the way - **Autostart** — Optional Windows autostart so echoplex launches when you log in - **Structured Logging** — Daily rotating log files in `.echoplex/logs/` with severity levels, in-memory ring buffer, and a `/api/logs` endpoint for the web panel - **Hostname Resolution** — Automatic mDNS `.local` hostname resolution for Plex servers, preferring physical network interfaces over virtual adapters - **Keyboard Shortcuts** — Quick access to common operations (`Delete`, `Ctrl+T`, `Ctrl+G`, `Ctrl+M`, `Ctrl+R`)