Curacast
Installation

Get it running.

Curacast ships as a single container. On most home servers that means a search box and an Install button — no terminal, no config files.

Unraid

The easiest route. Curacast is in Community Applications.

  1. Open the Apps tab

    That's Community Applications. If you don't have it, install it from the Unraid forums first — it's the standard app store for Unraid.

  2. Search for Curacast

    Pick the standard template, or the NVIDIA one if you want hardware transcoding on an Nvidia GPU.

  3. Click Install

    The defaults are correct for most systems. Change the WebUI port only if something else already uses 8000.

  4. Click Apply

    Unraid pulls the image and starts it. Then open the WebUI from the Docker tab.

Next

After it starts.

Same on every platform.

  1. Open Curacast

    http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:8000 — or http://localhost:8000 on the machine itself.

  2. Create your admin account

    First run asks you to set a password. Curacast is not open to your network before you do.

  3. Connect your media server

    Sign in to Plex, Jellyfin or Emby, or point it at a folder of files.

  4. Build a channel

    Two are free forever, so you can confirm it works on your setup before paying anything.

  5. Add your licence

    Settings → Licence, paste the key from your confirmation email. Unlimited channels from then on.

  6. Copy your tuner address

    Settings → Protected streaming. A new installation protects its streams with a key, and the address shown there already contains it — http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:8000/s/YOUR-KEY/

  7. Add it to Plex

    Plex → Settings → Live TV & DVR → Set up DVR → Add tuner manually, and paste that address. Plex will not find Curacast on its own while streams are protected — see below.

Why the tuner has to be added by hand. Curacast's streaming and discovery endpoints can't ask for a password the way the rest of the app does — TV tuner clients have no way to send one. So a new installation protects them with a key carried in the address instead, and without it the plain http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:8000 address answers Forbidden. That is the protection working, not a fault.

Curacast still announces itself on your network, but at the unprotected address, so Plex's automatic discovery is refused. Announcing the key instead would broadcast it to every device on the network — including the ones you'd want it kept from. Pasting the address once is the better trade.

You can turn protection off in Settings if your server is on a network you fully trust, and the key can be rotated at any time. Installations upgraded from an earlier version are left unprotected until you choose otherwise, so nothing you already set up stops working.
Stuck? Email [email protected] and tell us what platform you're on.