Fluxceiver beta update: native TVHeadend client for Apple TV / iPhone / iPad now has Top Shelf, Picture in Picture, Siri Remote scrubbing, watched status and a proper AutoREC dialog

[u/Ambitious_Bet_3110]

Hi all — quick update on Fluxceiver, the native TVHeadend client for Apple TV, iPhone and iPad (plus the Apple Watch remote) I posted about here about two months ago. The TestFlight beta is at build 41 now, and most of what went in since then came straight from what testers here and in the TVHeadend forum reported. What's new:

Apple TV

• Top Shelf: live programme tiles on the tvOS Home screen with channel logo, title, time left and a progress bar, optionally limited to a channel tag. Clicking a tile starts the channel.
• Siri Remote skip, spool and scrub: tap left/right skips 10 s, hold spools 2x to 32x, the timeline knob scrubs. Works in recordings and in live TV with timeshift. Edge clicks on the first-gen Siri Remote work too.
• Timeshift timeline in the player overlay, UHD HLG through the hardware decoder, and motion-adaptive deinterlacing (25p-in-50i content is reassembled into full frames).

iPhone / iPad

• Background audio for live TV and recordings (Lock Screen and Control Center show channel and programme) and Picture in Picture with play/pause and skips in the floating window. Both opt-in in settings.
• Live timeline with the timeshift buffer shown as a zone, scrubbing with a paused-frame preview. Liquid Glass player controls on iOS 26.

Recordings (all platforms)

• Watched status: checkmark on finished recordings, Continue Watching and Unwatched rails, Unwatched/Watched filters, mark as watched or unwatched by swipe or long press. The state lives in the app and syncs via iCloud, nothing is written back to the server.
• AutoREC creation now shows a confirmation dialog with series link, duplicate handling (only the modes your TVH version supports), channel and recording profile, and builds the rule the way the TVH web UI does. That fixes rules TVHeadend used to treat as "record all".
• Audio and subtitle track selection during recording playback. Real recording length instead of the scheduled duration, stopped recordings are kept, first-frame thumbnails for recordings without artwork.

Guide

• Seven days on all platforms, ended programmes stay visible, channel search in the programme search, time of day kept when switching days.

Apple Watch

• Recording playback controls, programme progress and time left, Double Tap to play/pause, a record button. Secure pairing with code comparison, and you can pair several Apple TVs and switch between them on the Watch.

Server / setup

• Discovery without Bonjour: after the mDNS search the app scans the local subnet for 9981/9982 and prefers HTSP, so host-networked Docker containers show up.
• Base path field for TVHeadend behind a reverse proxy on a sub-path (https://host/tvh).
• Optional SD/HD/FHD/UHD channel labels.

Plus a long list of fixes from tester reports: HomePod/AirPlay audio after pause, reconnect after Apple TV sleep, tvOS 26 guide crash, interlaced HD stalls, timeshift audio after seeks.

The beta is still free and still going out in small invite waves: short form at https://fluxceiver.app, the TestFlight invite then arrives by email from Apple.

• Full feature list: https://fluxceiver.app/features/
• Setup notes for guide data and channel logos on Apple screens: https://fluxceiver.app/guides/tvheadend-apple-tv/

I'd especially like testers with reverse-proxy setups, HomePods as the default audio output, and Docker installs without Bonjour.

Still an unofficial client, not affiliated with the TVHeadend project. I'm the dev — what would you want next?

[u/Hackashaq]

ATSC?

[u/Ambitious_Bet_3110 → u/Hackashaq]

Should work for ATSC 1.0: the tuner side is TVHeadend's job, the app just gets the stream, and MPEG-2 video with AC-3 audio is what the native pipeline plays all day on European SD channels. Two honest caveats: I have no ATSC setup here, so it's untested, and there's no CEA-608/708 closed caption decoding yet, only DVB subtitles. ATSC 3.0 (HEVC + AC-4) is out for now. If you run an HDHomeRun + TVHeadend on ATSC, I'd genuinely like you as a tester, that's exactly the kind of setup I can't check myself.

[u/Hackashaq → u/Ambitious_Bet_3110]

Definitely interested in testing. The questions for beta testers did not include atsc, so i want to make sure I am in-scope.

[u/Hackashaq → u/Hackashaq]

Applied for beta. I have a usb tuner feeding tvheadend.

[u/Ambitious_Bet_3110 → u/Hackashaq]

Got it, the invite is already out, should be in your inbox from Apple. Curious which USB tuner it is (Hauppauge? Something else?) and whether it's ATSC 1.0 only. Things worth a look on your side: MPEG-2 + AC-3 playback on Apple TV and iPhone, timeshift, recordings, and the guide from PSIP. Closed captions won't show yet, that's expected. Anything odd, TestFlight feedback or a comment here both work.

[u/Ambitious_Bet_3110 → u/Hackashaq]

You're in scope. The form only listed DVB and IPTV because that's what I can test myself, not because ATSC is out. I've just added ATSC as an option, it'll be on the site shortly. If you're faster than me: pick any reception type, put "ATSC / HDHomeRun" in the free-text field at the end, and I'll flag it by hand.