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Setup guide

Set up Beam in a few minutes.

Beam plays from your own storage, so setup is two things: give it a couple of free keys for artwork, then point it at where your media lives. Everything below is one-time, and all of it lives in the app's Settings screen.

Get Beam — €12.99 Back to overview

A TMDB key Free

Posters, backdrops and plot details. Without it, titles fall back to the file name.

An OMDb key Free · optional

Adds IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings plus awards during a scan.

At least one source

A Mega S4 bucket, an HTTPS seedbox, or a USB / SD drive. Mix as many as you like.

1
ADD KEYS
TMDB, then OMDb
→
2
CONNECT
Cloud, seedbox or USB
→
3
SCAN & PLAY
Beam builds the library

Metadata keys

Two free keys turn bare file names into a poster wall with ratings. Get them once, paste them in, and every scan uses them.

TMDB — posters & details
  1. Create a free account at themoviedb.org.
  2. Open Settings → API in your TMDB account and request a key — a Developer key for personal use is free and instant.
  3. Copy the API Key (v3 auth) — the short key, not the long "API Read Access Token".
  4. In Beam: Settings → Metadata → TMDB API Key → paste it and save.
Note  Beam runs without a TMDB key, but titles show as their file names with no artwork. This is the one key worth adding first.
OMDb — extra ratings & awards
  1. Go to omdbapi.com and request a key on the FREE tier — 1,000 lookups per day.
  2. Enter your email, then click the activation link OMDb sends you.
  3. In Beam: Settings → Metadata → OMDb API Key → paste it and save.
Note  Optional. It adds IMDb / Rotten Tomatoes / Metacritic scores and awards, fetched while a scan runs.

Mega (S4 object storage)

Beam streams Mega through Mega S4 — Mega's S3-compatible object storage — not a normal MEGA Drive folder. You keep your media in an S4 bucket and sign in with a key pair.

Important  Your everyday MEGA email and password will not work here. Beam needs an S4 Access Key and Secret Key from Mega's Object Storage (S4) console.
  1. In your MEGA account, open Object Storage (S4) and create a bucket.
  2. Upload your Movies and TV Shows into the bucket. Keep tidy file and folder names — Beam matches titles from them (e.g. Metropolis (1927).mkv).
  3. In the S4 console, create an access key pair and copy the Access Key and Secret Key.
  4. In Beam: Settings → Cloud → Mega → Sign in, then paste the S4 Access Key and S4 Secret Key.
Note  Once signed in, your Mega library appears as its own poster wall. Files are streamed directly — nothing is downloaded first. Run a scan (or reopen the library) to pull artwork.

Seedbox (HTTPS)

Any file server that lists a folder over HTTPS becomes a second cloud library, on its own isolated engine — a misbehaving box can never touch Mega playback.

  1. Make sure your seedbox serves your media over HTTPS with a browsable directory listing, protected by a username and password.
  2. In Beam: Settings → Cloud → Seedbox (HTTPS) → Sign in.
  3. Enter the Base URL (for example https://your-box.example.com/media/), then the Username and Password.
  4. Relaunch Beam. The seedbox appears as its own library alongside Mega and Local.
Note  Seedbox changes apply at the next app launch. If titles look bare, open the library once so a scan can fetch artwork with your TMDB key.

Local drives (USB / SD)

Plug storage straight into the TV box. You tell Beam which folders hold Movies and TV Shows, and only those are scanned.

  1. Plug a USB stick or SD card into the Android TV box.
  2. In Beam: Settings → Local Drives → + Add Drive, and pick the drive.
  3. Choose Set Folders — assign one folder as Movies and one as TV Shows. Unassigned folders are ignored.
  4. Tap Scan Library to build the library and fetch artwork.
Note  Unplug a drive and its titles are kept and flagged, not deleted — plug it back in and they return. Remove a drive in Settings to drop its titles for good.

Share to Kodi & your browser

Optional. One toggle each — both stay on across reboots until you switch them off.

Media Server for Kodi (UPnP)
  1. In Beam: Settings → Network Sharing → Media Server for Kodi (UPnP) → on.
  2. In Kodi: Add videos → Browse → UPnP devices → Beam, and direct-play from Mega and your drives.
Web dashboard
  1. In Beam: Settings → Network Sharing → Web Dashboard → on.
  2. Beam shows a network address (ending in /Beam). Open it in any browser on the same network.
Note  The dashboard can control playback, send titles to the TV and mark them watched — never your settings, accounts or files.

Once you're set up

Kids Mode

Long-press a title → "Show in Kids", then flip Kids Mode on for a safe, hand-picked library.

Analyze Media Specs

Settings → Library. Reads real codec, HDR/Dolby Vision and audio for each local file.

Match Frame Rate

Settings → Playback. Switches the TV to the film's native rate to kill judder.

External players

Settings → External Players. Long-press a title to hand it to VLC, MX or Just Player.

That's the whole setup.

Keys in, storage connected, scan run. From here it's just posters and a remote.

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