Point Emby at your movie, music, and photo libraries and it becomes a private streaming service: metadata and artwork arrive from TMDB and TVDB, everything lands in a polished browsable interface, and media transcodes on the fly whenever a client can't play the original format. The client reach is the selling point: native apps span Android TV, Apple TV, Google TV, Fire TV, Roku, LG and Samsung smart TVs, iOS, Android, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, plus web browsers and desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and DLNA devices are auto-detected for casting and remote control. Multi-user support gives each household member their own account, watch history, favorites, and recommendations, with genuinely capable parental controls: content restrictions, access schedules, time limits, and live monitoring with remote control of kids' sessions. Live TV works with hardware tuners like HDHomeRun or M3U playlists, with free guide data in the US, Canada, and UK. The server and core features are free; an optional Premiere key adds hardware-accelerated transcoding, DVR recording, offline sync, and Cinema Mode intros.

Lunarr turns the movie and TV folders you already store into a private streaming service with posters, progress tracking, and play-anywhere convenience. Point it at local disks or at libraries living on SFTP and WebDAV servers, and it scans, identifies, and decorates everything with TMDb artwork, cast pages, similar titles, and because-you-watched recommendations. Press play and the file either streams directly or is transcoded on the fly into seekable HLS, generating only the segments around the moment you are watching instead of converting whole films up front. Continue watching follows you between sessions, sidecar subtitles are picked up automatically, and known intros and credits can be skipped. Send the picture to the big screen with Chromecast or AirPlay, pair new devices without typing passwords, and hand a guest a share link instead of your account. Underneath, an admin console manages users, roles, and which libraries each person may see, watches background jobs, and holds API keys and registration settings. Rescans run on schedules you set from minutes to a month, local folders can be watched live for new arrivals, and metadata refreshes itself on a timer. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. Apache-2.0 licensed.

Nowen Video turns the hard drive of films and series sitting on your NAS into a streaming service your family actually wants to open, posters, seasons, and all. Point it at your media folders and it scans the usual formats, reads streams with FFprobe, and scrapes rich metadata from TMDb, Douban, TheTVDB, Bangumi, and Fanart.tv, recognizing movie, season, and episode naming as it goes. NFO files and external subtitles are honored, filesystem watching keeps the library current, and collections plus episode navigation make a big archive feel curated rather than dumped. Pressing play is where the engineering shows: a server-side planner decides per client whether to direct play, remux, or transcode to HLS on demand, with automatic fallback when the first choice fails. Hardware acceleration through the GPU keeps transcoding cheap, subtitle and speed controls ride along in the player, and a local analysis pass can surface highlight clips from your own footage. Every family member gets favorites, watch history, and continue-watching progress under their own account, while library permissions decide who sees what. An Emby-compatible API even lets clients like Infuse connect as if it were an Emby server. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GPL-3.0 licensed.

Peach is a self-hosted video library manager that scrapes rich metadata for your own collection and serves it through a polished web player you can open on any device. Point it at local drives, SMB shares, mounted cloud storage, or a PikPak library and it scans everything into one browsable catalog without moving or modifying your files. The scraper recognizes video codes, reads existing NFO files, and fills in titles, performers, studios, and cover art from multiple sources while always preserving corrections you make by hand. Playback happens right in the browser with subtitle support, variable speed, rotation, resume points, and timeline previews you can scrub through before committing to a scene. A follow system tracks performers and creators so new releases surface automatically, and the discovery views plus a want list help you decide what to add next. When something is missing, search by video code or drop in a magnet link and completed downloads are filed into the library on their own. Tagging, duplicate detection, and multi-version grouping keep large collections tidy, while the task center lets you pause, resume, or cancel scans and downloads and watch their resource use as they run. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0-or-later licensed.

Viewers arrive on browsers, phones, and desktop players, and SRS meets each of them with the right protocol from a single published stream. A broadcaster pushing RTMP can reach browser viewers through WebRTC with sub-second latency, phone apps through HLS, and desktop players through HTTP-FLV, all from the same live source without running parallel encoders. WHIP endpoints accept WebRTC ingest from browser studios and tools like OBS, while WHEP serves WebRTC playback, so an entire publish-to-viewer path can stay on modern web protocols. Operators shape each channel with virtual hosts, authenticate publishers and players through HTTP hooks that consult your own backend, and record live streams to disk as DVR archives for replay. Forwarding republishes a stream to YouTube, Facebook, or another SRS instance, and origin clustering lets edge servers pull from a central origin so one ingest feeds viewers in several regions. The built-in HTTP API reports streams, clients, and server health for monitoring, and GB28181 support ingests surveillance camera networks alongside creator broadcasts. Configuration lives in a single reloadable file, so changing a vhost or enabling HLS rarely means restarting the listeners your audience is attached to. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

MediaMTX sits between cameras and viewers as a self-hosted live media server, taking in video and audio streams over one protocol and handing them back out over another, so one IP camera feed can end up playing in a browser, a phone app, and a recording archive simultaneously. Publish with FFmpeg, GStreamer, OBS Studio, a browser, or a Raspberry Pi camera over RTSP, RTMP, SRT, WebRTC, Media-over-QUIC, HLS, MPEG-TS, or RTP, and read it back on any other protocol without a transcoding pipeline. Run dozens of camera feeds side by side, each on its own path, and keep every path available even while its publisher is offline. Record everything to disk in fMP4 or MPEG-TS as it streams, then play recordings back later through the same server instead of shipping files around. Authenticate publishers and viewers with built-in users, an external HTTP check, or JWT, and use the control API plus Prometheus metrics to wire the server into the rest of your monitoring stack. Forward streams to other servers, proxy cameras behind NAT, and fire hook commands whenever a client connects, publishes, or disconnects, so a doorbell camera can trigger a snapshot or an alert as it starts streaming. Reload the configuration while clients stay connected, and tune everything from the same mediamtx.yml file or environment variables, with no database or runtime dependencies to babysit. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

neTV turns any Xtream Codes or M3U IPTV subscription into a clean, fast player that you host yourself and open from a browser, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac, or Chromecast. The EPG grid guide shows what is on now and next, and catchup lets you browse earlier listings, replay a program from the beginning, or start over a show already airing, with timeline seeking whenever your provider keeps an archive. Intelligent Handoff lets you switch off the living room TV mid-match and resume on your phone from the exact moment you stopped, because the server keeps the stream going until the program ends. Movies and series arrive with metadata, seasons, episodes, and resume points, while search accepts regular expressions and favorites support drag-and-drop ordering alongside playlists that you build on the web and see in every app. Smart passthrough remuxes h264 and AAC streams without re-encoding, and NVENC or VAAPI hardware transcoding serves low-latency HLS to clients that need it. Owners of an NVIDIA GPU can switch on real-time 4K AI upscaling that lifts 1080p channels above 70 frames per second on an RTX 5090. A separate gateway port exposes your live sources as an Xtream-compatible endpoint for other native players, with per-user source access and stream limits. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. Apache 2.0 licensed.

Dispatcharr is a self-hosted IPTV stream proxy, electronic program guide manager, and DVR server that consolidates multiple M3U playlists and Xtream Codes providers into a unified live television and video-on-demand hub. Through its web dashboard, you can import and filter thousands of channels from unlimited upstream sources, automatically match XMLTV or Schedules Direct guide data to your lineup, and organize movies and series enriched with IMDb and TMDB metadata. The proxy streaming engine shares a single upstream provider connection across multiple local clients, switches seamlessly to backup stream URLs when buffering or drops occur, and routes backend traffic through FFmpeg, VLC, or Streamlink profiles with custom fMP4 or MPEG-TS output transcoding. To integrate with home media servers, Dispatcharr exports curated lineups as M3U playlists, XMLTV feeds, Xtream Codes API endpoints, or emulated HDHomeRun network tuners that Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, and Channels DVR discover automatically, while also offering a built-in DVR with series recording rules, Comskip commercial stripping, and timeshift catch-up playback. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0 licensed.

Twitch and YouTube Live, replaced by infrastructure you control: Owncast is a self-hosted live streaming and chat server. Point OBS, Streamlabs, or any RTMP-capable broadcaster at the server's ingest port, and Owncast transcodes the feed with FFmpeg into HLS with multiple quality variants, playing it in a built-in web page with a real-time chat beside it. Chat supports anonymous participation, custom emotes, and moderation tools - message removal, user bans and suspensions - with optional authentication via IndieAuth or a Fediverse account. ActivityPub integration puts the stream on the Fediverse: viewers on Mastodon and compatible services can follow a channel and get notified the moment it goes live. Video delivery can come straight off the server or offload HLS segments to S3-compatible object storage so a modest VPS handles thousands of concurrent viewers while only managing ingest and chat. The backend is a single Go binary with a React frontend - no accounts platform, no database server, no dependency stack - and the player embeds in any website. MIT-licensed, with roughly 9k GitHub stars, zero platform fees, and no algorithm or takedown policy between you and your audience.

The fediverse's answer to YouTube comes from French non-profit Framasoft: PeerTube is a TypeScript/Angular video platform where hundreds of independently operated instances federate over ActivityPub into one network. Videos you publish are discoverable across the whole video fediverse, and viewers can follow your channels from Mastodon or any ActivityPub platform - or plain RSS - without needing an account on your instance. The namesake innovation attacks video hosting's core cost problem: alongside HLS delivery, an optional WebRTC-based P2P layer lets concurrent viewers' browsers share video segments with each other, so a video going viral distributes its own bandwidth demand instead of crushing your server; instance redundancy extends this by letting friendly instances cache each other's videos. Livestreaming is first-class - stream via OBS or any RTMP software, host permanent streams, enable replays, and interact through live chat. Creators get channels, playlists, analytics, built-in video editing (trim, watermark), and an embeddable player for any website. There are no ads, no data mining, and no recommendation algorithm engineered for watch-time - the project's explicit design stance. Admins control federation policy, P2P settings, and theming; a plugin system extends the rest. AGPL-licensed, 300+ contributors, in active development since 2015.

Friday night, 1994: you are standing in the Action aisle deciding what the weekend looks like, except the shelves are stocked with your own library and the store lives in your browser. Halcyon Video rebuilds that ritual in 3D around your Jellyfin, Plex, or Emby server, turning libraries into aisles and genres into signed sections you can walk. Pick a case off the shelf and it comes up in your hand at true rental proportions; flip it over for the synopsis, cast, runtime, ratings, and a technical table read from the actual file. Seasons arrive as box sets, popular titles sit deeper on the shelf, and the clerk behind the counter searches by title, director, or genre and recommends from your catalog and watch history. Carry an armful to the checkout and she bags them in plastic that folds around the cases, receipt and all. A RomM connection opens a games department with platform-correct cartons and clamshells, while Jellyseerr requests appear as discovery cases you can order in-store. Drive it from the couch with a TV remote, gamepad, keyboard, or phone, or let attract mode tour the floor past the ceiling CRTs. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GPL-3.0 licensed.

Browse trending titles, search anything, request it in two clicks: Jellyseerr gives Jellyfin, Emby, and Plex users a beautiful storefront for the media library. Born as the Overseerr fork that added Jellyfin and Emby support (the projects have since unified as Seerr), it handles the full request lifecycle - users authenticate with their existing media-server accounts, pick individual seasons or movies in a clean interface, and admins approve or decline from a simple queue, including on mobile. Approved requests flow straight to Sonarr and Radarr, which handle acquisition automatically, with support for separate 4K server instances. Regular library scans keep availability accurate, so users see instantly what already exists instead of requesting duplicates. A granular permission system controls who can request what - auto-approval for trusted users, quotas and limits elsewhere - and override rules adjust request routing by user, tag, or other conditions. Watchlist and blocklist functions curate discovery, notifications reach email, Discord, Telegram, Slack, Pushover, and Pushbullet, and both PostgreSQL and SQLite are supported. Localized into many languages, it turns "can you add this movie?" texts into a self-service system that runs itself.

Getting non-technical friends and family onto a media server is its most tedious chore - Wizarr solves it. Instead of manually creating accounts, dictating server addresses, and explaining which app to install, you send one invite link. When the recipient clicks it, Wizarr creates their account on your server automatically - Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, Audiobookshelf, Komga, Kavita, and Romm are all supported - then walks them through a mobile-first, app-like onboarding wizard: download the right client, sign in, and learn how to request movies through your Overseerr or Ombi instance, with an optional Discord server invite along the way. Invitations are genuinely manageable: set expiration dates, usage limits, passphrases, library-scoped access tiers, and time-limited memberships that end access automatically. The wizard itself is fully customizable - Markdown-based steps managed from the admin UI, organized into pre-invite and post-invite phases (terms of service before joining, app setup after), reorderable bundles assignable to specific invitation types, and combined flows for invites spanning multiple servers. Multi-server and multi-admin support manages several backends from one dashboard, SSO support is plug-and-play, and a REST API with OpenAPI/Swagger documentation covers automation. A Flask/HTMX app in a single Docker container.

Plex's own dashboard shows current streams and forgets everything else - which is why every Plex server admin eventually installs Tautulli, the analytics layer. This Python web application (descended from PlexWatch and Headphones) logs complete watch history - what was watched, who watched it, when, where, from which device and IP, and whether it played directly or transcoded - and turns it into clean Highcharts graphs of daily plays, concurrent streams, bandwidth, and platform breakdowns. The home page surfaces top statistics over configurable windows: most-watched content, most active users, stream type ratios. For running a server shared with family and friends, this is operational truth: spot the user forcing 4K transcodes on a phone, see which libraries earn their disk space, and track sync activity across users. The notification engine triggers on server events - playback starts, transcode decision changes, recently added media, server down - through dozens of agents (Discord, Telegram, Slack, email, webhooks) with fully customizable text and conditions, plus arbitrary script execution. Scheduled newsletters email your users a styled digest of recently added content. A comprehensive API exposes every statistic for dashboards like Homarr, and an official mobile app monitors activity on the go. Themed to match Plex/Web. GPL-licensed.

Jellystat is a self-hosted media analytics and live session monitoring dashboard for Jellyfin and Emby servers that turns raw streaming activity into detailed user, library, and playback insights. Media server administrators use the live dashboard to watch active streams in real time, inspecting transcoding status, client devices, bitrates, and playback progress as sessions happen. Every completed or partial stream is logged automatically so you can browse chronological watch histories, filter by library or stream type, and analyze peak concurrent streaming hours across the week. Dedicated library and user views break down total watch duration, play counts, and most popular movies, episodes, or music albums per account. If you already use the official Jellyfin Playback Reporting or Statistics plugins, you can import existing historical records directly into your instance without losing past data. Built-in database backup and restore tools, automatic library synchronization tasks, IP geolocation via MaxMind GeoLite, and interactive Swagger API documentation at the /swagger endpoint round out the administrative toolkit. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Movie night should not depend on everyone pressing play at the same second; SyncWatch runs your own watch-party server so friends in different places watch the same frame together. The host controls play, pause, seeking, and playback speed for the whole room, and late joiners or drifting clients are corrected back to the shared position automatically. You build the program from uploads or direct HTTPS media links, with subtitles, audio, images, and documents handled in the same library. Rooms can be permanent or temporary, protected by passwords and member limits, with host, admin, and permission-group control over who may operate playback. Between scenes, people talk through public and private chat, on-screen danmaku comments, emoji, voice messages, or full-room voice. Anyone can share a browser tab, window, desktop, or phone screen into the room, so a clip, a game, or a presentation becomes the shared screen. The server also keeps friends, notifications, online presence, bans, registration approvals, and an operations log, so a private community can run itself without a platform account. Uploaded media is analyzed and thumbnailed automatically, with browser-compatible versions generated for awkward formats. Backups, data export, a recycle bin, mail verification, and network diagnostics round out the admin side. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. Apache-2.0 licensed.

Share a game, a film, or your holiday photos with up to 20 friends, and let them watch from a browser tab with nothing to install. The host picks a screen, window, browser tab, or camera, then sends an invite link or a four-digit room code, with an optional room password. Friends open it on a desktop or phone, press Play, and chat or react while it runs, with optional on-screen chat. A microphone switch adds spoken commentary, with a choice of input device and voice volume. Video travels directly between participants where possible, and a self-hosted server can add automatic forwarding for networks that block direct links. Sharing settings cap resolution from 480p to 1440p, frame rate up to 60 fps, and audio at 64, 128, or 192 kbps, with Clarity, Balanced, and Fluency presets and a choice of VP8, H264, or automatic codecs. Viewers get playback controls, picture-in-picture, fullscreen, light and dark themes, and a connection topology view. The interface follows the system language in Chinese or English, with a visual-only mode for a text-free look. Piik App adds native capture on Windows, macOS, and Linux, while a hosted site works from any desktop browser. A self-hosted site can set a site passphrase, a viewer limit per room, and automatic cleanup of empty rooms. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.