What is cabernet?

Cabernet is a modular IPTV appliance that cleans, organizes, and repackages streaming content for consumption by media servers. It supports multiple plugin instances for providers including Pluto TV, XUMO, and M3U/XMLTV sources. The software merges EPG data, manages channels with filtering and renaming, and streams via FFmpeg or internal proxy. It presents M3U and HDHomeRun interfaces compatible with TVheadend, Emby, Jellyfin, Plex, and VLC. Cabernet runs on Python 3.10+ with minimal dependencies (cryptography, httpx, optional streamlink, ffmpeg) and is deployed via Docker, docker-compose, or direct Python execution. The project is actively maintained with recent releases and MIT licensing.

Should you self-host cabernet?

cabernet scores 46/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #78 of 118 in Media Server. It has 379 GitHub stars.

It shipped 7 stable releases in the past year. The latest, 0.9.16.02, came out on 13 March 2026. New versions land roughly every 3 weeks.

Setup is moderate: expect some configuration beyond a single command. An official Docker image is available. It is MIT-licensed and written mostly in Python.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is Jellyfin (88/100, 58 744 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See cabernet vs Jellyfin side by side.