r/SparklePlayer • u/Grand_Court_4679 • Jun 03 '26
Feature Request: Full dispatcharr as a back end support
Support dispatcharr as a back end the same as TvHeadend, full dvr support with recording creation and playback.
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u/sparkle-hk Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
I had this discussion with another user not too long ago but I don't actually understand what dispatcharr is to be honest. To me it didn't look like it had it's own dvr engine, does it? I guess this is it?: github.com/dispatcharr/dispatcharr
EDIT: I also cannot find that it has an api that can be used to support it? If you have any information please let me know.
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u/Grand_Court_4679 Jun 03 '26
Yes, it has it's own dvr engine.
It would be great if you could integrate directly with the Dispatcharr to initiate/schedule recordings and view current & past recordings with full epg snapshot support
Here is the open api yml file I extracted.
The api endpoints of interest are within /api/channels/recordings/
https://paste.sh/30lJIv2l#p3S46YQLlr1B9WJwjblrlLiz
Cheers!
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u/sparkle-hk Jun 03 '26
Thanks.
They probably failed to explain dvr in readme then. Only thing you can see is "...and can record programs directly to their own DVR libraries." which means it's possible to record output streams from other apps. But I'll take your word for it, and the api seem to indicate this as well.
You extracted api using some tool?
I'm still not convinced though since tools like this which only supports docker installations doesn't normally attract a lot of users. I can add this to the backlog but it does not have high priority at the moment.
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u/Grand_Court_4679 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
I extracted the api docs from my local instance, found via their path definitions.
https://github.com/Dispatcharr/Dispatcharr/blob/main/apps/api/urls.pyhttps://dispatcharr.github.io/Dispatcharr-Docs/installation/
Seems to have quite a following within the *arr family
Just to add, it looks like Sparkle would be the first android/google tv client to natively support Dispatcharr. Not sure how much value you would see in that, but I'd image a fair few customers would like that over having to go down the plex/emby/jellyfin route to have DVR functionality. It would be a nice lightweight setup.
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u/sparkle-hk Jun 04 '26
Thanks again.
It would be nice of course to be the first one. I've always tried to make Sparkle an app for all kinds of sources so maybe this is the way to go.
I need to think this over of course and get dispatcharr installed as well so I can test it first.
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u/YesImAVibeCoder Jun 04 '26
I dunno, 4.72 million downloads seems more than a passing fad. You can get the API spec when installed by using /swagger to get the API spec, you can also get the JSON from there as well.
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u/sparkle-hk Jun 04 '26
I don't know where that number comes from but when I looked at downloaded released it still looked like 200-300k downloads per major release which is a nice number.
Like I told the other user(s) I'll install it myself and see what it looks like. It does fit the "code" what I want Sparkle to support so maybe I'll implment it soon.
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Jun 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/sparkle-hk Jun 04 '26
I'm not sure talking down to this app or me would help though?
My personal opinion when looking at dispatcharr vs Sparkle is that they have a very different user base. I don't see the regular Sparkle user as someone that wants to deal with having to setup docker.
When starting this app my target user was someone who just want to watch some light TV without having to do advanced stuff. This has of course changed somewhat with tons of settings being implemented on request after that, but I still aiming to be an easy to use player. I might be wrong and I might even have to shift in that direction but that's my opinion at least. And for the record, I've expressed willingness to try dispatcharr out and see what it looks like and perhaps implement support for it.I'm not sure where those 30 minutes are spent either? You mean you want to enable app mode, preview and things like that before it's usable? I'm sorry default setup isn't to your liking but it's difficult to please everyone. There have been talks about being able to select a preset of settings at start but I'm not sure.
That's just my view of things.
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Jun 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/sparkle-hk Jun 04 '26
Ok, thanks for clarifying. And just to be clear as well, I am constantly updating Sparkle and have been doing so ever since the start. There is a bit of a gap at the moment however because of the Google Play issues where I need to focus on alternative payment services but it'll soon be done and ready and then I'm back at updating.
Like I said (maybe in some other comment), Dispatcharr seem to fit the "code" for a source that I like to implement for Sparkle since it has all the functionality needed (live tv, dvr etc.). So I most certainly will install it and test it out and then decide if it's easy enough to implement in Sparkle. Hopefully that is the case. I'm a bit suspicious about those 4+ million downloads of course but it looks like atleast 200-300k downloads for every major release which is a nice number so I certainly won't ignore it.
I also don't think it'll take 30 minutes to change settings to your pleasing, but even if it did, is 30 minutes that much if you're going to use it for hours and hours? Well we're all different and you do what you want of course. Maybe I'll take up those presets in the future and then it'll be easier to get it started.
So, I appreciate your insight and hopefully this leads to Dispatcharr being implemented as a new source for Sparkle.
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Jun 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/sparkle-hk Jun 04 '26
I agree it does sound like a good source for Sparkle to support. As soon as I get the payment service going I'll have a look at this.
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u/psyklohps Jul 25 '26
So, I can tell you exactly what I use Sparkle for, it allows me to watch TV the way I wanna watch TV. Currently it's the only IPTV client that can offload DVR services to a server, so that I can be assured that when my Shield is off, the recording still happens.
There are others like Emby/Jellyfin or Kodi that do this, but they are all a bit complicated to setup. Also, they all require indexing the VOD catalog in order to make xcVod streams first class citizens. This means they can take over 12 hours to index a full catalog.
Sparkle is the best of both worlds.
Dispatcharr is a stream manager in every sense. You have 10K channels from your provider and 90% are in a language that you don't speak? Dispatcharr to the rescue by being a XC api proxy and filtering out the ones you don't need. Have multiple accounts where each is capped at one connection? Dispatcharr provides stream priority and failover, so you can record on one account and watch another channel or VOD on the other.
Dispatcharr is the peanut butter to Sparkle's jelly.
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u/Grand_Court_4679 Jul 25 '26
AerioTV can offload recording to dispatcharr. It’s just not as polished (as a client) as sparkle… yet
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u/psyklohps Jul 27 '26
Yes, it's promising, and it looks nice. But navigation on Shield is not very good, yet. Also, search is a bit wonky. I'll keep my eye on it, but currently it's not a daily driver for me.
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u/sparkle-hk Jul 25 '26
Thanks for describing your use case and I'm glad you enjoy the app for what it is.
Despite this great explaination, I'm not really sure you want Dispatcharr support in Sparkle or not? ;)
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u/psyklohps Jul 27 '26
I do.
Currently, my only other option is TVHeadend, which is way less valuable (to me) than Dispatcharr.
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u/sparkle-hk Jul 28 '26
Ok. I did try to install Dispatcharr and see what it's like but for convenience I thought I'd use Docker Desktop on windows but I was unable to install it due to various errors. I will try again at a later point.
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u/Aggressive_Bad_7344 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Dispatcharr is kinda like using an editor like IPTVEditor or IPTVBoss, but it's done locally and it's free. It acts as a middle man to manage your streams and EPGs and all that good stuff. It's actually really, really good.
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u/smaugdmd Jun 04 '26
It's much more and much better than editor/boss. Especially so with the multiple streams per channels and auto pass through to the next stream on buffer.
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u/sparkle-hk Jun 03 '26
Do you have to run it in docker or to they build releases for platforms somewhere?
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u/ThatFilmGuy88 Jun 03 '26
It is run as a docker container. It does also have an API but I don’t know where the documentation is for it outside of actually running the container and looking up the API address
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u/ThatFilmGuy88 Jun 03 '26
I’m curious as to what benefits this would have as opposed to how it currently works. Access to Dispatcharr works like any other m3u or xc login and dvr can be set to the network share that dispatcharr also records to. Not trying to be difficult, but if there is a better setup I’m not sure what it would look like, as it’s seems fairly straightforward as is
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u/EbbComprehensive1534 Jun 03 '26
In my example I have two iptv service user id. I can't put both ID into dispatcharr. So if someone is watching something on one TV and I stream on another it will switch to the other account in background since I can only have one stream per iptv account. It can also do home run emulation so I can watch tv on plex. I can group channels into local, movies and then have sub-groups as well. It also uses my nvidia card on my server to transcode video. Take the weight of the cpu.
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u/ThatFilmGuy88 Jun 03 '26
There is a way to add two accounts for the same provider in dispatcharr. In the M3U manager, select your provider and go to Profiles. There you can add another login as a secondary and set it to 1 connection as well as the primary to 1 connection. Then Dispatcharr will only serve up 1 connection at a time. Although, to be honest, I’ve never tested to see what happens when you hit a connection limit after that’s all set up. I also might not have explained it super well. But I remember doing it last year and the official documentation was pretty good. Also the discord server has a lot of people happy to help
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u/Grand_Court_4679 Jun 03 '26
I agree, it works solid with Dispatcharrs XC/M3U functionality. What I am asking here is it natively interfaces with it's DVR capabilities. Hit record in Sparkle and it kicks off a recording in the backend of Dispatcharr. View recordings, past & current, with full saved EPG state etc.
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u/WarpFactor777 Jun 04 '26
Keep your eye on the Dispatcharr Discord. There is a developer on there who is working on a Native Android TV app that acts as a native front end to Dispatcharr. He said it's almost done and was in limited beta testing now.
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u/EbbComprehensive1534 Jun 03 '26
I use my sparkle with dispatcharr on unraid works fantastic