What is Mirakurun?
Mirakurun is a free, open-source Japanese digital TV tuner API server developed by the Chinachu project. It acts as middleware between your physical TV tuner hardware and the software that records or streams live Japanese broadcast TV across your local network.
In simple terms: you plug in a TV tuner, run Mirakurun, and any app on your LAN can now access live TV through a clean HTTP API — without each app needing to talk to the hardware directly.
How Does Mirakurun Work?
Mirakurun sits between your tuner hardware and your DVR or media software. Here is what happens step by step:
- You connect a DVB or chardev TV tuner to your Linux machine
- Mirakurun detects the tuner and registers it internally
- Mirakurun exposes a RESTful HTTP API on port 40772
- Software like Chinachu or EPGStation connects to this API to stream and record TV
- Multiple clients on your network can access the same tuner simultaneously
Who Made Mirakurun?
Mirakurun was created and is maintained by the Chinachu project, a Japanese home server community focused on building open-source DVR software for Japanese broadcast TV. The project is fully open source and available on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license.
What Tuners Does Mirakurun Support?
Mirakurun supports two main categories of TV tuners commonly used in Japan:
- DVB Driver Tuners — automatically detected by Mirakurun's setup wizard
- Chardev Tuners — configured manually via tuners.yml and a startup script
What Software Works with Mirakurun?
Mirakurun is designed to work as the tuner backend for several popular Japanese home server DVR applications:
- Chinachu — the original DVR app that Mirakurun was built for
- EPGStation — a popular modern alternative DVR that supports Mirakurun natively
- Any custom app — via the REST API and Swagger documentation
Is Mirakurun Free?
Yes. Mirakurun is completely free and open source under the Apache-2.0 license. There is no paid version, no trial period, and no account required. You can download it directly from GitHub or pull the official Docker image at no cost.
Why Use Mirakurun Instead of Accessing the Tuner Directly?
Managing TV tuner hardware directly in Linux — especially Japanese chardev-based tuners — is complex and error-prone. Mirakurun solves this by providing a stable, unified API layer so your DVR software never has to deal with low-level hardware details. This means easier setup, better reliability, and the ability for multiple apps to share one tuner.