Dispatcharr TV

Pressing BACK while you watch no longer stops the channel: it keeps playing in a corner of the guide while you look at what else is on.

What's new

• The channel keeps playing in the guide's corner. BACK while watching opens the guide with the channel still playing, with sound, in its top-right corner and the guide's cursor on that channel. OK on it goes back to full screen without re-tuning; OK on any other programme changes to that channel; BACK on the guide stops it. STOP still leaves the channel outright.

Fixed

• An HTTPS server whose certificate an older television does not recognise. If your Dispatcharr server is behind a reverse proxy with a current Let's Encrypt certificate and your television's own certificate store is too old to know its issuer, the app now checks the certificate against the Let's Encrypt roots it carries, still verifying the chain, dates and name, instead of failing to connect.
• Addresses without a port number. A channel logo, or a redirect from your server, whose address names no port was dialled on the wrong port; it now uses the standard one (80 for http, 443 for https).

Compatibility

• Plays video, verified by watching it — a 2021 LG set. An LG OLED C1 (OLED65C1PUB) on webOS 6.5.3 is the development set: the guide's corner picture and the rest of this release were watched there against a real Dispatcharr server.
• Played video in v0.1.0, verified by watching it — a 2018 LG set. An LG OLED B8 (OLED55B8PUA) on webOS 4.4.3 played live TV with v0.1.0. This release has not been run on it, and webOS 4 places the corner picture through a different part of the television's software than the C1 does.
• Starts, and nothing further is known — every other firmware from webOS 3.4.0 up. The loader resolves this binary's libraries and symbols against all eleven firmware images webosbrew has at 3.4.0 or newer. That grades startup and says nothing about whether video plays; the matrix is in the technical audit.
• Does not start — webOS 2 and older. Symbols the app needs are missing there, so the process is killed before anything appears.

If your set is in the middle two groups, tell us what happened. It working is as useful a report as it failing.

Known issues

• MPEG-2 video channels do not play. The television's buffer-feed pipeline does not accept MPEG-2 video; the app says so and suggests setting an H.264 stream profile for that channel in Dispatcharr. Unchanged from v0.1.0.
• Some televisions cannot decode DTS audio. The development C1 refuses a DTS stream, as many 2020-and-later LG sets do; such a channel needs an AC-3 or AAC audio profile in Dispatcharr. Unchanged from v0.1.0.
• Long viewing sessions use more memory over time. Memory grew by about 7.5 MB an hour during a two-hour session on the development set; the cause has not been measured yet, and this release does not change it.

Help test this release

If you have an LG set on webOS 4 or 5, press BACK while watching a channel. The guide's corner picture has only been watched on webOS 6; tell us whether the picture lands in the top-right corner, keeps its sound, and goes back to full screen with OK. Open an issue with your model and webOS version. It working is as useful a report as it failing.

Installing

Download com.magness.dispatcharrtv_0.2.0_arm.ipk and install it with the Homebrew Channel or dev-manager-desktop. You do not need a rooted TV.

Nothing in this distribution chain is signed, so this sha256 is what tells you the file you have is the file published here:

bc8be27eb8b6463bf1f7040ed2769a9643358dc3de36730e9bcb349d13df61ed  com.magness.dispatcharrtv_0.2.0_arm.ipk

Installing and checking a download covers the other assets, how to check the hash on each platform, and the Developer Mode expiry that uninstalls your apps. This package bundles FFmpeg under LGPL-2.1-or-later and its complete corresponding source is attached to this release. Exactly what was built, verified and shipped is in the technical audit for v0.2.0.

What's Changed

• Leftovers 2: Plex server-identity machinery out of the transport; roots fallback for any HTTPS server by @andrewmagness in https://github.com/andrewmagness/webos-dispatcharr/pull/53
• Guide picture-in-picture: BACK off a channel keeps it playing in the Guide's corner by @andrewmagness in https://github.com/andrewmagness/webos-dispatcharr/pull/57
• Release note and audit for v0.2.0: the Guide's corner picture by @andrewmagness in https://github.com/andrewmagness/webos-dispatcharr/pull/58

Full Changelog: https://github.com/andrewmagness/webos-dispatcharr/compare/v0.1.0...v0.2.0