Live TV

Live puts channels next to your library. A channel can play your own shows and movies around the clock on a schedule you set, or it can come from your TV provider's playlist or an HDHomeRun antenna tuner on your network. Everyone watches them with a guide, can pause and rewind, and (if you allow it) record.

Live is part of the server from 0.13.0, and this page describes server 0.13.1. You can watch it in the web app at app.tofa.tv and on your server's own web address, in the desktop app, and on Apple TV from version 2.2.0. In the desktop app, Live on Windows and Linux needs version 0.1.17 or later, which plays it through the app's own video player. iPhone, iPad and Android TV get Live in a later update.

Set it up#

If you set up your server with 0.13.0 or later, the setup already asked where your channels should come from. To start or change Live later, open your server's admin pages and choose Live. It sits in the Library group and only admins see it.

The first time you open it with no channels, a short setup walks you through three choices:

1. Channels from your libraries. We suggest channel ideas based on what you have, with the best few already ticked.
2. Provider or tuner. Add a Playlist from your TV provider, an HDHomeRun tuner, or choose Not now. If we find a tuner on your network, we say so. For a provider login, add it afterwards under Sources.
3. Who sees them. Everyone or Admins only.

You can skip the setup and do each part from the admin pages instead. Live has seven sections there: Overview, Channels, Sources, Guide, Recordings, Categories and Settings.

Channels from your library#

A library channel plays titles you already have, like a TV station built from your collection. Nothing needs converting ahead of time and the guide fills itself in.

Start from an idea#

Open Channels and the Ideas tab. Each idea is a ready-made channel, for example a decade of films or one genre, that we only offer when your libraries have enough to fill it without repeating too often. Add an idea as it is, choose Customize to change it first, or Not now to hide it. Seasonal ideas can switch themselves off after the season.

Channel ideas come from tofa's cloud, so your server needs to be connected to your tofa account to see them.

Build your own#

Choose New channel, give it a number and a name, and choose Create channel. Then, on the channel's page, choose Add block to say what plays. A block plays a Show, a Season, a Movie, a Collection or a Filter of your library, and you choose:

• Starts: After the previous block, or At a set time on the days you pick. For a timed block, If a programme is still on decides whether the earlier programme can Let it finish (we wait up to 30 minutes) or the block will Start on time.
• Order: In order, Shuffle, Shuffle shows, Marathon or Random.
• Each time: a number of items, a length of time, until the next timed block, all the remaining time, or All of it, once through. Once through plays everything the block covers one time, and picks up new episodes as your library grows.

Blocks play in the order you list them, then the schedule repeats. Times follow your server's time zone. Choose Save changes when you're done. We apply the new schedule from the next safe point, so the programme on air isn't cut off. Next 24 hours shows what will air.

In the channel's settings you can also set Who sees it, a Logo, Categories, and what happens Between programmes: Up-next cards or Back to back. A channel without a schedule shows an off-air screen. When you add a schedule to it, it starts straight away.

Channels from a provider or tuner#

Open Sources and choose Add source. There are three kinds: Playlist, HDHomeRun and Login.

Playlist#

Paste the M3U playlist link from your TV provider. You can also add a guide link (XMLTV). Both are stored encrypted. Set:

• Where it is: Internet for a provider, or Home network for a playlist served on your own network, for example by Threadfin or Dispatcharr. We choose Home network for you when the address is a local one, and you can change it later in the source's Settings.
• Connections: how many streams your provider lets you watch at once. We never go over it.
• Advanced: a sign-in method, user agent or headers, only if your provider needs them.

If your provider gave you a server address, username and password instead of a link, use Login below. If you paste a login address into Playlist, we point you there.

Login#

Enter the Server address your provider gave you, with its port, and your Username and Password. The login is stored encrypted and sent only to that server. Set Where it is as for a playlist, and leave Connections empty to use what your account allows. Read the provider's guide too is on at first, so we also read the guide that comes with your login. Then choose Sign in and read. Large provider lists can take a few minutes.

HDHomeRun tuner#

Choose Find tuners, or enter the tuner's address yourself. If tofa runs in Docker on a bridge network, the tuner can't be found automatically, so enter its address. For Dispatcharr and other software tuners, add the port and path, for example 192.168.1.20:9191/hdhr. We can also read the channel list from tuners that can't scan. Without a guide link, we read the guide that broadcasters send with the signal.

Encrypted channels and ATSC 3.0 channels can't play yet. They are marked Copy-protected or ATSC 3.0 when you pick channels.

Pick and number channels#

After we read the list, pick channels by group or one at a time. Then choose how they are numbered: keep the playlist's or tuner's numbers where they are free, and number the rest from a starting number. For playlists and logins, Make a category for each picked group is on by default, so each group becomes a category.

New channels from a source start as Admins only, so you can check them first. Open them to everyone from the source page when you're happy.

The source page#

Each source has Channels, Available and Settings tabs, a Refresh now button and an On switch. Sources refresh every 24 hours by default. If a refresh would remove more than half of the channels, we hold it and ask you first, in case the provider had a bad moment.

On a playlist or login source, Make a category for each group in its Settings puts each channel in a category named after its group. Categories with the same name are reused, and nothing is taken out of a category. All categories, with their channels and logos, are in Live, Categories.

Open a channel to change its number and name, Who sees it, whether it is on, its guide channel, and Motion for interlaced broadcasts (Automatic, Full motion or Standard).

The guide#

Library channels make their own guide. For playlists and tuners we match the guide to each channel automatically, by the playlist's guide ids, channel numbers, and names.

Channels we couldn't match are listed in Guide, under Channels without a guide, with suggestions marked Sure, Likely or Possible and the reason, such as the same name or the same logo. Accept N sure matches takes all the safe ones at once, or use Find a guide channel to pick one yourself.

Watching#

Everyone who can see at least one channel gets Live in the app's navigation.

The guide opens on All. Next to it are Favourites (once you have a favourite channel), Recordings (if you can record or have recordings), your own tabs, categories you pinned, and Categories, where you can browse every category and pin the ones you use. New tab makes a tab of channels you choose. In the web app the guide reaches 3 hours back and 22 hours ahead, and on Apple TV 24 hours ahead. Search finds channels, categories and programmes airing in the next 24 hours.

Pick a programme that is on now to watch it. On a library channel, a later programme opens a card where you can Watch now from your library. In the web and desktop apps you can also start a channel from its logo or name, programmes are marked New and reruns show when they first aired, when your guide supplies that, and closing the player brings you back to the guide as you left it: the same tab, category, search, time and scroll position.

In the player you can change channel, open the guide, add the channel to Favourites, and choose audio, subtitles and quality. In the web and desktop apps, Auto quality on provider and tuner channels checks your connection before playback and lowers the quality if playback stalls. In the web app, Page Up and Page Down change channel, Up, Down or G opens a mini guide, and Escape goes back to the guide.

Pause and rewind#

On provider and tuner channels you can pause and go back up to an hour. The player shows how far behind live you are, and Live jumps back. When the server is short on disk space, the window shrinks to 10 minutes. On library channels you can go back to the start of the programme that is on.

Recording#

Recording works on provider and tuner channels. Library channels don't need it, because they play what you already have.

Press Record in the player. We record the programme you are watching, from its start if that is still in the pause window, until it ends plus two minutes. With no guide data, or when the guide lists one programme longer than six hours, we record an hour from where you are. In the web app you can extend a recording with +30 min or +8 h. On Apple TV you can add +30 min to a recording that started without guide data. Recordings keep going if you close the player.

Your recordings are in the guide's Recordings tab. Each profile sees only its own. A finished recording plays like any other title.

Admins can always record. Everyone else needs Can record Live TV, which you turn on per person in Users. Admins can see and delete every recording in Live, Recordings. Recordings are saved in the server's data folder unless you choose another Recordings folder in Live, Settings.

Who sees what#

Each channel is visible to Everyone, Selected people or Admins only. On top of that:

• A profile with a rating limit sees a library channel only if everything on it is within the limit. Provider and tuner channels carry no ratings, so you choose which limited profiles see each one, on the channel's page.
• A person's library access applies to library channels.
• If a person can't convert video, channels that need converting won't play for them. See Profiles and parental controls.

Limits per person#

In Users, you can set for each person:

• Live screens at once: how many devices they can watch Live on at the same time, across all their profiles. Past it, a new screen is refused and nothing playing elsewhere stops.
• Recording space: Unlimited, or a limit in GB. A recording that reaches the limit keeps what was recorded.

Both are unlimited unless you set them. A person's maximum quality applies to Live too. Admins have no Live limits.

What admins see#

Live viewers of provider and tuner channels appear in Activity next to everyone else. Details shows buffering, conversion pace, the source and delivered quality, why a stream is converted, and which app is watching.

Limits#

• Away from home: library and tuner channels play anywhere. Provider playlist channels, and recordings of them, play only on your home network or through your own VPN or a direct connection. They are marked Home only. See How your devices connect.
• Tuners and connections: when every tuner or provider connection is in use, the player says so and offers Try again. Admins see who is using them. Switching channel on a device reuses its connection, unless someone else is still watching or recording the channel you left.
• Converting: the web app can't play interlaced broadcasts as they are, so the server converts them, and that counts toward the server's normal conversion limit. Live conversion follows your transcoding settings for output format and processor fallback. We share a conversion between viewers where we can, but different audio choices, devices or rewind positions can each need their own. Hardware transcoding helps a lot here.
• Disk space: Live always leaves 2 GB or 5% of the disk free, whichever is larger. When there isn't room, Live tells you instead of filling the disk.
• Channel lists: playlists can be up to 1 GB. An HDHomeRun tuner's list can have up to 4,000 channels.