If you’ve ever tried to build your own IPTV viewing setup at home, you would know exactly how ugly most of these apps can look. Every interface feels stuck in the past, with a look and feel straight out of the early 2000s. Clunky menus, laggy electronic programming guides abound, and the design makes you want to close the tab before you even pick a channel. It’s been one of my biggest frustrations with IPTV players. I like the idea of IPTV and want to use it, but the lackluster interface is an instant turn-off.
I suppose I wasn’t the only one with that thought in mind because this self-hosted app attempts to fix exactly that. Called ViniPlay, it’s a self-hosted IPTV player that gives the entire experience a polish for 2025 standards. It’s fast, slick, and surprisingly beautiful. In fact, you might be surprised that the app isn’t a commercial offering. The interface is clean, animations are as smooth as they get, and the EPG actually scrolls without major stutters. If you’ve got a NAS sitting around, this Docker-based IPTV app might be the upgrade that your NAS needs.
A modern approach to IPTV viewing
Clean and responsive interface
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ViniPlay is clearly built with the intention of making IPTV look and work like a modern 2025 platform. Loading the web interface, you immediately notice it doesn’t have the typical clunkiness of IPTV apps. Menus are beautifully organized with smooth transitions, and the TV guide gives you full functionality, including group-based organization and search.
A lot of that comes down to being built on modern architecture. Under the hood, Viniplay is built on Node.js, which serves a lightweight web front end. The app is extremely easy to install via Docker. In fact, I barely had to make any changes to the provided Docker Compose file beyond adding a secure string to the environment file. Once it’s set up, just open the web interface and create an admin account, and you’re good to go. The interface is pretty self-explanatory. Just head to the settings, enter your M3U playlist of IPTV stations, point it to EPG sources, and ViniPlay builds a full-fledged IPTV experience for you.
What’s even more impressive is the app’s speed. Streams start running practically instantly, and the app can transcode videos on the fly using FFMPEG. Additionally, the app supports hardware-accelerated encoding, too, if your hardware supports it. While I tend to stick to a single channel at a time, if you prefer to have multiple channels playing simultaneously, you’ll appreciate the hardware transcoding option. This can significantly reduce CPU usage depending on the configuration and streaming format you’re using.
Regarding multiple streams, ViniPlay offers a convenient multi-view feature that lets you watch several streams at once. You can split your screen into multiple grids, resize them, or rearrange them. Additionally, you can save your layout for later. Like I mentioned, I prefer viewing a single stream at a time, but if you want, you can run multiple sports streams or even news channels at the same time. It’s also extremely flexible in terms of grid layout, so you should be able to make it work for your personal use with ease.
Of course, streaming is just one aspect of ViniPlay. The app also serves as a full-fledged DVR. Using FFMPEG, ViniPlay can record shows directly on your NAS or home server. You can start recordings from the programming guide or on the fly. Like the rest of the app, it’s very flexible, simple, and intuitive to use, and can come in handy for recording interesting moments or even entire news broadcasts and sports games if you prefer.
Focused on essential features
Streamlined access with built-in cast support
What makes ViniPlay stand out from alternatives is that it offers a highly focused experience without trying to be a full-fledged media player. It’s an IPTV player and an excellent one at that. All essential controls are included, and the player supports all standard IPTV formats, so you can view both public and private IPTV streams without issue. There’s multi-user support to save favorites and individual settings.
Moreover, since it runs entirely in the browser, there’s no need to install any additional apps. You can easily access it from your laptop, tablet, or phone. And if you need to watch something on your TV, the built-in cast support makes it a cinch to beam across to the large screen.
The open-source project is under active development, with features constantly being added, though personally, I don’t find anything missing in the app as is.
The best-looking IPTV app you can self-host today
I’ve spent the last couple of days using ViniPlay and can confidently say that it’s the best-looking and most polished IPTV app you can self-host right now. The app is lightweight and delivers impressive performance even on modest hardware, making it ideal for hosting on a NAS. Moreover, the app has all the essential features you could want, including a responsive interface, EPG support, quick switching, and plenty of organization. If you’ve been on the lookout for a new IPTV app, I’d highly recommend adding ViniPlay to your self-hosted stack and checking it out.
