MediaHub 0.5.3-beta is now available for Android TV, bringing a significant stability update to IPTV playback and provider connectivity alongside new Media Server series features.
A major focus of this release has been Live TV resilience.
Live IPTV streams can occasionally become unstable during periods of high provider load, particularly around popular live events. MediaHub 0.5.3-beta introduces automatic stream recovery designed to handle these temporary interruptions more gracefully.
When a Live TV connection times out, fails or remains stuck buffering, MediaHub can now automatically establish a fresh connection and retry playback. Multiple recovery attempts are available before the normal playback error screen is shown.
IPTV catalogue handling has also been extensively optimised.
Large Live TV, Movie and Series libraries are now processed using a more memory-efficient approach, reducing the amount of temporary memory required while loading a provider account. Catalogue loading is also performed in a more controlled sequence rather than processing every section simultaneously.
These changes are particularly beneficial to lower-memory Android TV hardware and IPTV accounts containing tens of thousands of channels or VOD items.
Provider compatibility has also been expanded. MediaHub is now more tolerant of differences between Xtream Codes and XUI-based services, including alternative response formats, inconsistent ID types, category-specific content APIs, unusual server URLs and incomplete category information.
Media Server users will also find improvements to Continue Watching.
Jellyfin, Emby and Plex series can now be represented as a programme within Continue Watching rather than multiple independent episode entries. Opening the programme provides access to its seasons and episodes, allowing another episode to be selected directly.
The Media Server player has also gained Previous Episode and Next Episode controls where neighbouring episodes are available. These work alongside MediaHub's existing Up Next and automatic episode progression features.
MediaHub Management 0.8.1-alpha is being released alongside MediaHub 0.5.3-beta. Updated Docker and native Ubuntu distributions include the latest managed Android template, allowing generated MediaHub deployments to benefit from the same core stability and playback improvements.
MediaHub remains beta software and testing across different Android TV devices, IPTV providers and Media Server installations continues to be extremely valuable.
MediaHub 0.5.3-beta can be downloaded from the MediaHub Downloads page.
Thank you to everyone who continues to test MediaHub, report issues and suggest new features.