Hi; have been using Infuse since March of this year and love it
I’d love to see a feature in Infuse that brings a live, scheduled TV experience to personal libraries. The idea is simple: let users create a scheduled playlists that plays content on specific days/times. For example, set up Saturday Morning Cartoons to play from 8AM–10AM every weekend, or a Sunday Night Movie from 7PM–10PM. It would be a great way to enjoy your library without decision fatigue—just turn it on and let the content roll.
Think of it as building your own personal TV network. You could also have theme channels by genre, shuffle or play in order. A TV guide-style view, notifications before a “broadcast,” and a “Join Live” feature would round it out nicely. This would make Infuse feel more dynamic and nostalgic—which would be perfect for those who miss the simplicity of scheduled programming but want the flexibility of their own collection.
I built a small DVR setup that works as a home-built live-TV recorder and streamer. It starts with the HDHomeRun Flex 4K tuner. Each morning, a PowerShell script automatically launches FFmpeg, which captures the TV signal and writes it into an HLS format and a m3u8playlist. I use FastAPI to serve that live HLS stream to my Apple TV through Infuse. This lets my wife hit Play from Start and scrub through a show while it’s recording. Scheduled watchdog scripts keep the recorder healthy, restart FFmpeg if a feed drops, and clean up when the show ends. This is only for two shows each morning that she watches. This isn’t channels or plex at all. From her point of view, she’s looking at a real DVR, but it’s not.
Infuse is terrific for what it does, playing your video, but you need to look at the other parts of your system to accomplish what you’re after, a DVR.
Thanks for the input; however I am not looking for a DVR as you suggested - just something that would auto play the content I have on my server, along the lines of an AutoDJ but for the vices and shows
Hi @anbnzb . This sounds amazing. I have been trying to figure out how to do something like this with recording sports. I am using Channels DVR and/or Dispatcharr to do the recording in the background. I am saving to my NAS and have a WebDAV connection. I want to play the recorded videos in Infuse, where the rest of our media is.
Question about the recordings you get with your solution… If I start recording an NBA game, and start watching the game in Infuse an hour after it started, will I run into EOF issues and have to re-open the file? Or will the Infuse timeline auto-expand as more data is added/recorded?
I’m sorry I didn’t come back and update that statement back in Oct. I tried for weeks to solve that issue with EOF. I’m guessing it’s a design decision with Infuse. I’d call it a serious limitation. I finally had to switch to another player all together to solve the EOF issue and record a rolling buffer. Now the wife can scrub through anytime, during recording or after.
Aww, that’s a bummer. I had hoped you figured it out using Infuse. That’s awesome you found another solution. Which player did you end up going with, if you don’t mind me asking?
I want to put a suggestion forth. I’d like to see a feature that mimics live channels. Basically it uses your current library of videos and produces a “live TV channel” effect. It can be categorised by series, movies, and then further by documentary, or comedy, action, etc etc. It doesn’t play anything from the beginning, it creates a predetermined playlist, say, everyday, and then calculates the point at which a channel (movie/series) should be based on the current time as if it was playing from the start of the day or however. That way if I’m not interested in specifically watching something, and I just want some background nonsense, I can just select a comedy channel, or sitcom, or documentary, etc etc. It musn’t feel like I’m starting a show or movie. And it must not play things unwatched - also it shouldn’t affect watched or progress indicators.
Sometimes bingeing on a series can become tiresome, so why settle for one when you could binge on 2, 3 or more?
Imagine you could setup a “channel” where you add a few series to watch, one episode of each in the sequence you want. That’s a channel.
So, I could set a channel to watch American Horror Story Season 8, followed by The Simpsons Season 20 and then Law and Order Season 12 and then start again with AHS.
That’s a custom channel, what do you think about it?
I’ve been trying a couple different options that create a channel guide like experience that allows you to tune into a tv channel like the “old days” and I’ve been disappointed with the amount of work needed to flesh out a full catalog, the end execution of some apps, or the price to use these services.
This is probably more of a long shot but I’ve used Infuse for years and I hope that for some reason this sort of feature is on your radar. It stems from the goal I have to allow my future kids to sit down and “tune in” to a series of episodes (of different) shows and then day to day watch a show just like we did.
