Dispatcharr Joins the QuickBox Pro Lineup

If you run IPTV, this is the piece that ties it all together. Dispatcharr has graduated out of beta and is now a permanent member of the QuickBox Pro application lineup. It is wired into the install, the dashboard, and the What's Streaming Dashboard, and it is ready for every QuickBox user.

Dispatcharr is a self-hosted IPTV proxy. It merges your M3U playlists and Xtream Codes accounts into one clean channel lineup, matches EPG guide data from XMLTV and Xtream sources, transcodes streams with FFmpeg, records with a built-in DVR, and presents itself to Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin as an HDHomeRun tuner so Live TV works without a physical capture card.

Here is what makes the QuickBox version worth talking about: it is not a container you bolt on and babysit. It gets the same bespoke QuickBox treatment every application in our lineup gets, with full per-user isolation, install and updates managed from the dashboard, and the VPN and SSL plumbing you already know.

The dashboard is the recommended way to run Dispatcharr, the same as the rest of your apps. Open Software, find Dispatcharr under Media Servers, and install. The install dialog has a Beta toggle if you want the upstream development branch, and a Custom Domain option that issues SSL and publishes Dispatcharr on your own subdomain as part of the install. A live install log streams right in the window. Updates, reinstalls, and removal all live on the Dispatcharr row in the App Dashboard, so the whole lifecycle stays in the browser.

If you would rather work from the command line, the same pipeline runs behind a single command:

qb install dispatcharr -u username
qb install dispatcharr -u username --beta                    # upstream development branch
qb install dispatcharr -u username -d iptv.your-domain.com   # custom subdomain with SSL

Either way, each install gives that user their own complete, isolated stack. Not a shared instance with separate logins, an actually separate instance: its own PostgreSQL database, its own Redis broker, its own application services, its own channel lineup, EPG sources, and DVR storage. Your channels and your recordings never touch another user's.

Under the hood each install lays down six per-user services managed by systemd: a private PostgreSQL cluster and Redis broker, Gunicorn for the web UI and REST API, Daphne for the live WebSocket updates, and Celery worker and beat for playlist and EPG fetches and the scheduled refreshes. QuickBox picks a free port near the upstream default and wires nginx in front of it, so you reach Dispatcharr at https://your-server/username/dispatcharr/ with no port juggling.

The first install on a box is the only one that needs an admin. That first run primes the shared system packages (PostgreSQL, Redis, and FFmpeg) that every later install builds on. Each user's own database and cache then run on their own auto-generated ports and private sockets, so nothing collides with the rest of the box or with another user. Once any admin has done that first install, any QuickBox user can install their own Dispatcharr without admin help.

You do not go hunting through SSH for the auto-generated admin password either. Open the App Dashboard, expand the Dispatcharr row, and the API and Secrets section shows your Dispatcharr username with a click-to-reveal, click-to-copy password.

Dispatcharr ships with the full VPN App-Scoped Routing surface from day one. You can send all of Dispatcharr's upstream traffic through a VPN tunnel without rerouting the rest of the box, and it works whether your tunnel is WireGuard or OpenVPN.

Turn it on from System -> VPN Control, open the App-Scoped Routing card, pick Dispatcharr, choose your peer, and enable it. QuickBox moves all four Dispatcharr application services into one shared network namespace together, so your IPTV provider and EPG sources see the VPN exit IP from that point on. PostgreSQL and Redis stay on the host by design, because they only ever bind localhost and never reach upstream.

By default Dispatcharr lives on the per-user subpath of your dashboard domain. If you would rather give it a clean home like iptv.your-domain.com, custom domain and SSL support is built in and you can set it up right on the SSL Control page.

Point a DNS record at your server, open System -> SSL Control, pick Dispatcharr as the target, enter your domain and username, choose HTTP-01 or DNS-01, and submit. QuickBox issues the Let's Encrypt certificate, writes the subdomain vhost, rebuilds the frontend for the new home, and registers the certificate for automatic renewal. DNS-01 is supported across the full provider list, including Cloudflare, Route 53, DigitalOcean, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Linode, OVH, Vultr, Gandi, DNSimple, Hurricane Electric, Azure, GCP, and IONOS. From the command line it is the -d flag shown earlier, which issues the certificate and publishes the subdomain in the same install call.

This is where Dispatcharr really earns its place in the lineup. Getting IPTV into Plex has always been the rough part, so we did the hard work for you.

It tunes in Plex out of the box. Dispatcharr publishes an HDHomeRun tuner at the /hdhr path under your URL. Add it in Plex under Live TV and DVR by entering the tuner address manually, and you are watching. Plex has one long-standing quirk: its bundled FFmpeg cannot pass AAC audio into its Live TV segmenter, so plain IPTV channels fail with "Could not tune channel." QuickBox seeds an output profile called Plex HDHR (transcode) that copies the video and re-encodes audio to AC3, and binds it as the HDHR default on every install, reinstall, and update. It is idempotent and never overwrites a profile you set yourself. The result is Plex tunes Dispatcharr channels the first time, with no manual profile work.

The guide is already correct in the dashboard. Plex builds its native guide from its own Gracenote data, which routinely mismatches IPTV channels. The What's Streaming Dashboard does not. It reads the EPG straight from Dispatcharr, so it shows the right channel and the right program for every channel, Gracenote or not. On a QuickBox install this connection is auto-provisioned: the install generates a Dispatcharr API key and wires the EPG override into the dashboard automatically, so accurate Live TV shows up with nothing to configure. You can review or change it in the Streaming Dashboard under Settings, in the Plex Live TV Guide (Dispatcharr) card.

Plex stops tuning the wrong channel. When you renumber your Dispatcharr lineup, Plex's cached channel map goes stale and starts tuning the wrong channel. QuickBox runs a per-user self-heal that re-syncs Plex's map to your current lineup every 8 hours, plus at install and update time, so this usually fixes itself. You can also force it from the Streaming Dashboard with Re-sync Plex channel map (preview first, then apply, with an automatic backup), or from the CLI with qb manage dispatcharr channelmap --user username.

Duplicate guide IDs are easy to spot. If two channels share a guide id, the program guide gets confused. The dashboard's Check duplicate guide IDs scan (and qb manage dispatcharr dupes --user username) reports every collision so you can fix it at the source. It is report-only and never changes your data.

Plex tuners stay tidy. Spinning up test instances or switching tuner profiles can leave stale tuners registered in Plex. The WSDashboard Settings page has a Plex Tuners panel that lists every tuner as active, staged, or orphaned, lets you rename a tuner for display, and cleans up the leftovers. One note worth knowing: a tuner's number is its concurrent-stream capacity, not a device count.

If you run Emby or Jellyfin instead, you get all of this for free with none of the Plex-specific steps. Those servers read Dispatcharr's guide directly, so the channel and the program are always right with no extra setup.

Everything above is documented in full, and the docs are kept truth-to-source from the install scripts and the dashboard code:

• ●Dispatcharr application guide covers install, first-run setup, admin credentials, architecture, plugins, and troubleshooting.
• ●Connect Dispatcharr to Plex is the end-to-end Plex walkthrough, including the AC3 profile, the EPG override, channel-map repair, and the duplicate scan.
• ●The Plex Live TV Guide card explains the auto-provisioned EPG override and how to review or change it.
• ●Plex Tuners covers tuner states, concurrent-stream capacity, renaming, and orphan cleanup.
• ●VPN Control covers App-Scoped Routing over WireGuard or OpenVPN.
• ●SSL Control covers custom domains, certificates, and DNS providers for Dispatcharr.
• ●Plex on QuickBox if you are setting Plex up alongside it.

Install it from the dashboard under Software, or from the CLI with qb install dispatcharr -u username. That is all it takes. You get an isolated IPTV stack, automatic Plex tuning, a guide that is correct in the dashboard from the first second, optional VPN routing over WireGuard or OpenVPN, and a one-page path to your own subdomain with SSL. Welcome Dispatcharr to the lineup.

Dispatcharr is open-source software from the upstream Dispatcharr project. QuickBox Pro packages, isolates, and integrates it; the application itself is theirs, and it is a good one.