FreePassport-C Media Player

FreePassport-C Media Player is a low-dependency SDL2 + FFmpeg application inspired by the interactive program guides used on older Cisco and Scientific Atlanta Explorer cable boxes. It turns a local media library into a fullscreen-first virtual cable system with live-seeking channels, a retro guide, and broadcast-style on-screen overlays.

Features

Live-TV epoch clock based on time(NULL)
200 ms black-screen channel tuning delay
Fullscreen and guide modes
5-row Passport-style guide with a 90-minute timeline
Background decoder thread with a bounded frame queue
Automatic channel discovery from ./media
Randomized per-channel schedules on each launch
Fullscreen channel banner, theme picker, and about panel

Layout

src/ - application, UI, channel scan, and playback code
media/ - channel video files
guide-ui.jpg - visual reference used for proportions and palette

Controls

Up / Down - surf channels
Tab - toggle guide
Enter - tune selected channel from the guide
Left / Right - browse guide time
0-9 - direct channel number entry
i - show current channel info
a - toggle about panel
b - toggle theme picker
f - toggle fullscreen
Esc - exit guide or quit the app

Build

Install development packages for SDL2, SDL2_ttf, SDL2_image, and FFmpeg headers before building.

Typical Debian or Ubuntu packages:

sudo apt install build-essential libsdl2-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libsdl2-image-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libswscale-dev libswresample-dev libavutil-dev

Then build and run:

make
./passport-c-media-player

AppImage Build

To create a portable AppImage with the included packaging script:

make appimage

The AppImages for 0.1 are built on Debian 13 using linuxdeploy and the repository's included scripts. The build automatically detects your architecture and produces the appropriate AppImage:

x86_64: FreePassport-C-Media-Player-0.1-x86_64.AppImage
ARM64/aarch64: FreePassport-C-Media-Player-0.1-aarch64.AppImage

Users can run it directly:

./FreePassport-C-Media-Player-0.1-x86_64.AppImage
# or on ARM devices:
./FreePassport-C-Media-Player-0.1-aarch64.AppImage

For a fully portable setup, create a media/ directory in the same folder as the AppImage and add your channel videos there. The AppImage will automatically detect and load channels from this directory.

Media

The player scans ./media for channel directories. Each subdirectory is treated as one channel, and the supported video files inside it are shuffled into a randomized schedule for that channel on each launch.

Optional metadata can be provided with description.txt inside each channel directory:

name=Reading
number=56
description=Books, documentaries, and reading-focused programming.

Example layout:

media/
  reading/
    description.txt
    01-intro.mp4
    02-feature.mp4
  computers/
    description.txt
    01-chronicles.mp4
    02-demo.mp4

Fonts

The UI tries BigBlueTermPlus Nerd Font first, then falls back to common Linux monospace fonts.

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