Husam Osman
2ee05a0ccc
Nuvio no longer needs the payload sent or autoloaded after the first install. The service now builds twice: nuvio-ps5.elf installs the app as before, and nuvio-service.elf ships inside the app's folder. Whenever the service does not answer (after a reboot, a crash, or rest mode leaving its port dead) the app hands its copy to the ELF loader on port 9021, or asks Payload Manager when nothing listens there. The launch splash stays up until the service answers, an older running service is replaced, and a final playback result that could not be posted is sent again once the service is back, so Continue Watching keeps its place. That also fixes the white screen after an episode: the page reopened against a service that had stopped answering and stayed white until the payload was sent again. The service now probes itself every 5 s and reopens its port after two misses, the app restarts the service after ~3 s of failed polls, and a dialog whose page never checks in (POST /api/page/alive) is opened again. Search: Cross on the search box now always raises the keyboard (the field gives up focus and takes it back inside the press), results update as you type instead of only after leaving the box, background refreshes no longer replace the field and close the keyboard, and Done jumps to the results. The microphone button is hidden on PS5. Also: the player labels scope 4K encodes (3840x1600) as 4K instead of 1440p, the sign-in card no longer repeats its instruction line, the controller guide covers the search box, and D-pad latency per screen is reported to the service log.
Nuvio PS5
Nuvio, at home on the PlayStation 5: the full Nuvio TV interface as a PS5 app, with a native 4K HDR player built for the console's own video hardware.
Browse, search, pick a source and press play exactly as in Nuvio. The stream then opens in a native player that looks like Nuvio's - same controls, same panels, same typography - but decodes on the PS5 itself: 4K HDR10, Dolby Vision (HDR10 base layer), HEVC and H.264 in hardware, lossless TrueHD and DTS-HD audio in 7.1, every subtitle format, and a deep read-ahead buffer so internet streams play without stalls. When the film ends, or you press back, you are returned to exactly where you were in Nuvio: progress saved, Trakt scrobbled, next episode ready.
Unofficial. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by the Nuvio team. Nuvio's own interface and services are used as they are published; everything listed under "Built for this project" is new.
Features
Playback
- Hardware HEVC (8 and 10-bit) and H.264 decoding up to 3840x2160, measured at ~1 ms per 4K frame
- HDR10 output with automatic switching of the console's display mode
- Dolby Vision profile 8 plays its HDR10 base layer; profile 5 (no HDR10 layer) is flagged on screen
- UHD Blu-ray remuxes encoded in tiles, and AV1, decode in software on all CPU cores - 4K tiled HEVC at real time with no late frames
- Lossless audio: TrueHD / Atmos, DTS-HD MA, E-AC-3, AC-3, AAC, FLAC, PCM, output as 32-bit float 7.1 so 24-bit tracks keep their full resolution; the best track for your language is chosen automatically (never commentary)
- 30 seconds of read-ahead for internet streams, kept in one preallocated block of memory; a clean pause-and-refill when the network falls behind instead of stuttering
- Large files over HTTP are fetched by six connections at once into a 128 MB read-ahead cache, because one connection is usually the limit rather than the line: Wi-Fi caps a single stream and debrid hosts cap per connection. Measured on a PS5 at 118-120 Mbit/s on a 15.7 GB remux. Small files, playlists and hosts without byte ranges use the single reader as before
- Instant seeking (0.4-0.7 s to resume on 4K), resume from Continue Watching
- Automatic recovery: a source the hardware decoder rejects is reopened on the software decoder at the same point
Interface
- Nuvio-style on-screen controls drawn natively over the video: title, episode line, quality line (resolution, HDR, codec, audio), progress with buffered range, clock and "ends at", pause screen
- Subtitles panel (languages, tracks, size, position, colour, background), audio panel, sources panel to switch streams mid-film, episodes panel
- Next-episode card, skip intro, error screen with "try another source"
- Subtitles from the stream (ASS/SSA with full styling, SRT, WebVTT, PGS) and from your Nuvio subtitle addons, fetched natively
- Seamless hand-off: the web player never flashes up - the screen stays black until the native player appears, and Back returns one step, to the source list or the title page
Built for this project
Nuvio's web interface runs unchanged apart from a small PS5 integration patch. Everything else here was written for the PS5:
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
service/ |
The Nuvio service. Serves the Nuvio interface on the console, carries play requests and results between the page and the player, keeps the page's settings, restarts its own listener when rest mode leaves it dead, and offers a LAN debug interface for development. Built twice: nuvio-ps5.elf also installs and updates the app, and nuvio-service.elf ships inside the app, which starts it itself. |
app/src/ |
The Nuvio app (title PPSA99176): hosts the Nuvio page in the system browser, then plays natively. The player session, the native on-screen interface and its renderer (canvas, text shaping with FreeType/HarfBuzz/FriBidi, icons, images), subtitles (libass and bitmap), input, screenshots and the bridge to the page. |
app/engine/ |
The playback engine: demuxing, hardware and software decoding, audio output, A/V sync and GPU presentation, extended here with the read-ahead buffer, packet ring, rebuffering, HEVC stream cleaning, decoder recovery and the subtitle and audio hooks the player needs. |
app/runtime/ |
The process allocator, tuned so FFmpeg's aligned allocations come from pooled memory. |
web/nuvio-ps5.patch |
The PS5 platform layer for Nuvio's web app: native-player hand-off, return navigation, subtitle requests, input and service clients. |
toolkit/ |
Tools that turn the linked program into a signed PS5 application. |
The engineering behind it
Getting a stable 4K player out of the PS5 took a long series of hardware-verified fixes. A summary of the harder ones:
- Memory. FFmpeg asks for 64-byte-aligned memory for every packet and buffer reference. The process allocator served each such request as its own memory mapping, so a lossless audio track (1,200 packets a second) exhausted the app's memory within seconds of deep buffering. The allocator now serves small aligned blocks from pools, and the packet queues copy data into one preallocated ring per stream - memory stays flat for hours of playback.
- Buffering. Queue limits measured in packets meant a TrueHD track held video read-ahead to under two seconds. Queues are now budgeted in seconds and bytes; underruns trigger a proper rebuffer that pauses audio and video together and resumes in sync.
- The PS5 video decoder. UHD Blu-ray remuxes repeat their parameter sets in-band and sometimes change them; the decoder refused keyframes that carried both the container's copy and a changed in-band copy, which showed as green and scrambled blocks. Access units are now cleaned - Dolby Vision RPU and enhancement-layer units removed, superseded parameter sets dropped - before they reach the hardware. A refused keyframe holds back the pictures that depend on it instead of decoding garbage, and seeks rebuild the decoder rather than reset it.
- Tiled HEVC. Some remuxes switch to a 4x4 tile grid the hardware decoder will not take. These are detected from the stream and decoded in software, which needed a rebuilt FFmpeg/dav1d toolchain to run 4K at real time.
- Deadlocks. Audio waiting for video, video waiting for the demuxer, the demuxer waiting for room in the audio queue - each such cycle found on hardware is broken by bounded overshoot and starvation checks.
- Return to Nuvio. The page's route, profile and playback context survive the round trip through the native player, even across a restart of the service, so Back lands one screen back and never on the profile picker.
Install
Requirements: a jailbroken PS5 that can load ELF payloads. Tested on firmware 13.60 with the Relapse exploit, kstuff-lite, ShadowMount+ and etaHEN; any firmware with a working ELF loader should do.
- Download
nuvio-ps5.elffrom the latest release. - Send it to your ELF loader (port 9021) once. It installs the Nuvio app and shows "Nuvio ready".
- Open Nuvio from the home screen and sign in as usual.
That's the only time you send anything. From then on Nuvio opens like a game:
the app carries its own service (nuvio-service.elf, in its folder) and
starts it through your jailbreak's ELF loader whenever it isn't running,
after a reboot too. Jailbreak as usual, then open Nuvio. If no loader answers
on port 9021, Nuvio asks Payload Manager instead.
No payload at all: unzip PPSA99176.zip from the release and copy the
PPSA99176 folder to /data/homebrew/ over FTP. ShadowMount+ registers it
like any other homebrew folder.
Updating: send the newer nuvio-ps5.elf once (the app updates as soon as
Nuvio is closed), or replace the folder. Coming from 1.7 or older with
nuvio-ps5.elf in an autoload list? Take it out, or swap it for the new one:
an old one would put the old app back on every boot.
Troubleshooting
- "No streams found", or an addon shown in red. If the addon only returns torrents (Torrentio without a debrid service, for example), Nuvio PS5 says how many torrent links it found: the PS5 cannot stream torrents directly. Add a debrid service (Real-Debrid, AllDebrid, TorBox, ...) in the addon's own configuration and its links play. If an addon shows red everywhere, your internet provider may block its site: set the PS5's DNS to 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 (Settings > Network > Settings > Set Up Internet Connection, your network, Advanced Settings, DNS Settings: Manual).
- A white screen on launch, a blank sign-in frame, or every addon red. Nuvio needs ordinary DNS lookups to work. Blocking Sony's own servers is not itself the problem: a console set up that way plays media here normally. The resolver used to do the blocking can be, though, and the symptoms are a white screen for up to a minute on launch, a sign-in frame with no code, or every addon in red. Which of the two it is has not been pinned down, so the thing to do is test it: point the console at 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 (Settings > Network > Settings > Set Up Internet Connection, your network, Advanced Settings, DNS Settings: Manual) and see whether it clears. If it does, the resolver was the cause; if it does not, please open an issue. Changing DNS does not affect a jailbreak that is already running; set your own resolver back before the next time you jailbreak if your entry point needs it.
- A white screen after watching something, or after rest mode. Rest mode could leave the old payload running but deaf, so Nuvio reopened white and only came back after sending the payload again. Since 1.8 the service notices and reopens its port, the app restarts the service itself when it stops answering, and a page that never loads is opened again.
- The sign-in QR code does not appear. The frame says when no code could be fetched, and Nuvio keeps retrying on its own. A PS5 whose date and time are badly wrong cannot make secure connections: set them under Settings > System > Date and Time. It can also mean Nuvio's sign-in service is down for a while.
- Controller. Move with the D-pad, or with the left stick as a cursor. After a D-pad press, Cross always acts on the highlighted item, wherever the cursor rests; moving the stick switches back to the cursor. Circle goes back, also from the player to Nuvio. In Search, Cross on the search box brings up the keyboard and results update as you type.
- A stream fails or the app closes. Please open an issue with your firmware, the addon, and the file name or format (MKV/MP4, codec, HDR).
Support
Nuvio PS5 is an unofficial port: it isn't made or funded by the Nuvio team, and donations here go to this project, not to them. It was built and tested on real hardware, one stream, codec and console quirk at a time. If it's become how you watch on your PS5, a coffee helps cover the cost of building it and keeps the updates coming.
Not able to donate? A star on the repository and a bug report with the source type, codec and HDR format help just as much.
Build from source
Prerequisites: the PS5 Payload SDK with its homebrew sysroot (FFmpeg 7.1.1 built with dav1d, libass, HarfBuzz, FriBidi, FreeType, libpng, libjpeg, libwebp), LLVM with lld, Node.js, Python 3, GNU bash 4+, make, meson, ninja, nasm.
# 1. Web interface: upstream NuvioTVSmart at commit 48a94b3 plus the PS5 patch
git clone <NuvioTVSmart repository> web/NuvioTVSmart
git -C web/NuvioTVSmart checkout 48a94b347837965e2e052f82707820c0dd7c8028
git -C web/NuvioTVSmart apply ../nuvio-ps5.patch
(cd web/NuvioTVSmart && npm ci && npm run build)
# 2. Nuvio's public runtime config, taken from an official Nuvio TV release
cp <official release>/nuvio.env.js web/nuvio.env.js
# 3. The app
export PS5_PAYLOAD_SDK=/path/to/ps5-payload-sdk
app/scripts/build.sh
# 4. The service, then the installer (embeds the web build and the app)
make -C service
The results are service/nuvio-ps5.elf (installer and service),
service/nuvio-service.elf (the copy inside the app) and
service/build/PPSA99176.zip (the app folder, service included).
Known limitations
- The PS5 cannot output Dolby Vision, so it is shown through its HDR10 base layer. Profile 5 has no such layer: it plays with wrong colours and is flagged on screen, so pick an HDR10 version of those. Profile 7 enhancement layers are not used.
- Torrents are not streamed directly: an addon's torrent links play through a debrid service (see Troubleshooting).
- Dolby Atmos and DTS:X play their 7.1 bed: the PS5 gives apps no way to pass the original bitstream to a receiver, so height and object information is not available.
- Tiled 4K HEVC and 4K AV1 decode on the CPU: smooth at 24 fps, but seeking in them takes about two seconds.
- The PS5 web browser alone (without the app) falls back to its own player.
Not here yet
Each of these is already working in PS5VR, the sibling project, on the same console and the same decoder. None of it is VR-specific, so it is a port rather than new ground.
Picture
- 8K decoding. Nuvio stops at 3840x2160. The hardware decoder takes HEVC up to 7680x3840, which PS5VR plays.
- Frame generation. Where the decoder cannot keep up (8K60 arrives at 30 fps), motion estimation on the GPU builds the frames in between. PS5VR does ~55-60 pictures a second from a 30 fps decode.
- FSR 1 upscaling and sharpening for sources below the panel's resolution.
- HDR in float buffers, so highlights stay above SDR white instead of being tone-mapped.
Sound
- First-order ambisonics (AmbiX).
- Automatic audio delay correction when a decode runs slow, instead of letting the two drift.
Sources
- Local files: internal storage, USB drives and extended storage. Nuvio plays only what an addon hands it, so a file already on the console cannot be opened.
- DLNA / UPnP servers (Plex, Jellyfin, Emby). This is the shortest route to the Jellyfin and Plex libraries people have asked for.
- RSS / Atom feeds with video enclosures.
Formats
- Spatial video (MV-HEVC) and 3D Blu-ray (H.264 MVC). On a TV these would play as one eye, which is the honest reason this is low priority here and high priority there.
License
Copyright (C) 2026 Husam Osman. Nuvio PS5 is free software under the GNU
General Public License v3.0 or later - see LICENSE. Forks and derivatives
must stay open source under the same license and keep these notices. Third-party components and their licenses are listed
in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md; original copyright notices are kept in the
source files.