How to Use PosterBox

PosterBox installs directly from your device's app store — no PC, no cables, no account required. Once open, it immediately begins cycling full-resolution movie posters. There is nothing else you have to do.

1. 1 Open the Amazon Appstore (Fire TV) or Google Play Store (Android TV / Google TV) on your device.
2. 2 Search for PosterBox and select the result showing the red film-reel icon.
3. 3 Tap Get or Install — the app is free. Once installed, launch it from your app library.
4. 4 PosterBox starts displaying posters automatically. Your TV should be mounted in portrait orientation for the best look — the app's Rotation Flip setting handles either mounting direction.

All PosterBox settings are accessed through the remote control while the app is running — there is no separate setup wizard. To open the Settings panel:

• Press the Menu button (☰) on your Fire TV remote — the three-line button below the navigation ring.
• Press the Down arrow (▼) on the D-pad — also opens Settings.
• On Android TV / Google TV remotes, use the Settings or Menu button if present, or the Down D-pad direction.

Open Settings (Menu button) to find all display controls. Settings are organized into labeled sections — Display, Top Panel, Poster Content, Bottom Panel, Media Server Integration, and Account. Most settings take effect as soon as you close Settings and return to the display. UI Theme changes require a tap of the Refresh button, which restarts the app.

PosterBox ships with four cinema-inspired UI themes, each with a distinct color palette and typography. Select your theme in Settings → UI Theme.

Instead of cycling through PosterBox's curated selection, Premium subscribers can create up to 15 named playlists and hand-pick exactly which movie posters appear. Build a horror collection for October, your all-time favorites, or a lineup of films you're excited to watch next — then switch the active playlist any time.

1. 1 Open Settings (Menu button) and navigate to Poster Content → Manage Playlists. This opens the Playlist Manager.
2. 2 Tap + New Playlist, enter a name, and confirm. The playlist editor opens immediately so you can start adding movies.
3. 3 Use the search bar to find any movie by title. Thousands of titles are available from TMDB (The Movie Database). Tap a poster to add it — a checkmark appears. Tap again to remove.
4. 4 To review what you've selected, check Selected only in the search bar. The grid instantly filters to show only your chosen posters — selection overlays are hidden since every visible poster is already selected. Tap any poster to remove it. Uncheck the box to return to the full browse view.
5. 5 Tap Save when finished. Your playlist is stored and you can return to the Playlist Manager to create more, rename, or delete playlists.
6. 6 In the Playlist Manager, tap Set Active on the playlist you want displayed. The active playlist is shown with a gold indicator.
7. 7 Back in Settings → Poster Content → Content Source, choose Custom Playlist. PosterBox will now cycle only through your active playlist's selections.

Google Drive Playlists let you display your own images on PosterBox — not just movie posters. Link any playlist to a public Google Drive folder and PosterBox streams those images directly, cycling through them just like a normal playlist. Perfect for holidays, birthdays, events, or any time you want your display to feel personal.

Some ideas for what to show:

• 🎂 Birthday celebrations — photos of the guest of honor cycling all day
• 🎄 Holiday artwork — seasonal images swapped in for Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and more
• 💍 Weddings & anniversaries — engagement photos or milestone memories
• 🏀 Game day — team logos, player photos, or hype graphics
• 👶 New baby — newborn photos cycling for visiting family
• 🎓 Graduations — milestone photos for the big day

1. 1 In Google Drive, create a folder and upload your images (JPG, PNG, and other common formats all work).
2. 2 Right-click the folder → Share → Change to anyone with the link. Set the permission to Viewer. Copy the share URL — it will look like:
   https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BxiMVs0XRA5nFMdKvBdBZjgmUUqptlbs74
   The long alphanumeric string at the end is your folder ID.
3. 3 In PosterBox, open Settings → Poster Content → Manage Playlists.
4. 4 Tap + New Playlist and enter a name for it. When prompted to choose a playlist type, select Google Drive Folder.
5. 5 Type the folder ID from your share URL (just the alphanumeric part at the end — not the full URL) and tap Confirm. PosterBox will sync the folder immediately and show how many images were found.
6. 6 Tap Set Active on the Drive playlist. Back in Settings → Poster Content → Content Source, choose Custom Playlist. Your images will now cycle on the display.

You can add or remove images from the Google Drive folder at any time. PosterBox does not sync automatically — to pick up changes, go to Manage Playlists, find your Drive playlist, and tap Sync ↻. The playlist will refresh with the current contents of the folder.

Community Playlists extend the Playlist Manager with a shared, crowd-sourced library. You can publish any of your personal playlists for the world to discover, and browse or download playlists that other PosterBox users have shared. Browsing is free for everyone — sharing and downloading requires a Premium subscription.

1. 1 Open Settings → Poster Content → Manage Playlists. Your playlists appear in the My Playlists tab.
2. 2 Tap the Share button on the playlist you want to publish. If this is your first time sharing, you'll be prompted to enter a display name — this is the name other users will see next to your playlists in the community. It is saved and reused for all future shares; you can leave it blank to appear as "Anonymous".
3. 3 Your playlist is published immediately. The Share button changes to Unshare (shown in cyan) to indicate it is live. Any future edits to that playlist — adding or removing posters, or renaming it — are synced to the community automatically.
4. 4 To take a playlist down, tap Unshare. It is removed from the community list immediately. Your local copy is not affected.

1. 1 Open the Playlist Manager and tap the Community tab at the top.
2. 2 Sort by Most Downloaded (default) or Newest using the sort buttons. Results are paginated — use the Prev / Next buttons at the bottom to browse.
3. 3 Tap View on any playlist to open a detail screen showing every poster it contains. This is available to all users, no subscription required.
4. 4 Tap Download to add the playlist to your local library. Requires Premium. The playlist is saved immediately and appears in your My Playlists tab, ready to set as active.

Turn the display panel beside your poster into a full cinema marquee. For every movie or TV show, PosterBox automatically fetches and presents a rich set of details — no typing or searching on your part.

• Star rating — out of five stars, sourced from TMDB audience scores
• Director credit — displayed alongside the star rating
• Top billed cast — up to three actors, sorted by billing order
• Color-coded MPAA rating badge — green for G/PG, orange for PG-13, red for R, purple for NC-17
• Genres, runtime, and release date
• Tagline — the iconic marketing line when available, displayed at the bottom of the info panel

The Theater Info Panel also works during Jellyfin, Plex, Kaleidescape, Zidoo, and Kodi playback — when a movie or TV show starts playing, the panel updates to show that title's full details automatically.

To enable it: open Settings → Bottom Panel → Show Movie Info Panel and toggle it on.

PosterBox analyzes each poster as it loads, extracts the dominant color from the image, and applies it across the entire UI — edge glows, accent lines, and panel dividers all shift to match. Every transition is smoothly animated over 800 milliseconds, so the display literally breathes with each new poster.

Works with all four main themes (Modern, Traditional, Noir, Neon). Special event themes are excluded to preserve their brand identity.

To enable it: open Settings → Display → Match Accent Color to Each Poster and toggle it on. You can turn it off any time to return to the theme's fixed accent color.

Replace the plain text header at the top of your display with a full-motion animated marquee banner. Eight cinema-inspired styles are available, each designed to fill the top panel with atmosphere and movement.

• Art Deco – Now Showing — elegant gold geometric styling
• Drive-In – Coming Soon — retro roadside marquee feel
• Filmstrip – Coming Soon — classic celluloid strip animation
• Premiere Curtain – Now Showing — dramatic red curtain reveal
• Holographic – Now Showing — futuristic iridescent shimmer
• OLED – Now Showing — vivid deep-black OLED-inspired glow
• Spacecraft HUD – Coming Soon — sci-fi heads-up display aesthetic
• Cyberpunk – Coming Soon — neon-drenched urban night vibes

To enable: open Settings → Top Panel → Theater Marquee Banner and choose a style from the dropdown. Select Off to return to the standard text header. Your selection is saved automatically and the new banner loads immediately — no restart needed.

When the marquee banner is active, the Custom Text field is hidden. To show custom text instead, set the banner to Off and enter your message in the Custom Text field below the banner selector.

Prefer your own animated banner? Choose Custom URL… from the banner dropdown and paste a direct link to any .gif file. PosterBox will load and loop that GIF in the marquee area. Your URL is saved and restored automatically each time the app starts.

When PosterBox is connected to a media server (Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, Kaleidescape, Zidoo, or Kodi), the marquee banner responds to playback state automatically — no settings to change:

• Now Playing — an animated marquee GIF replaces your selected banner while a movie or TV show is actively playing
• Intermission — a separate animated marquee GIF appears whenever playback is paused
• When playback stops, your normal banner setting is automatically restored

The Synopsis Overlay reveals a full movie detail view over the current poster. A blurred backdrop image fills the center panel, the poster shrinks and floats in the corner, and a rich set of movie information is displayed — all fetched automatically from TMDB.

• Blurred backdrop image fills the center panel for atmosphere
• Star rating and numeric score from TMDB audience reviews
• Genres, runtime, MPAA rating, and release date
• Full tagline and synopsis — the complete plot overview
• Director and top billed cast

Press OK / Select (center D-pad button) while PosterBox is running. The overlay animates in with a smooth fade. Press OK again or press Back to dismiss it and return to the poster view.

Enable Settings → Poster Content → Alternate Poster and Detail to have PosterBox automatically toggle between the poster view and the Synopsis Overlay every 30 seconds — no remote press required. This creates a hands-free cinema display that continuously cycles between the visual poster and its full details.

Connect PosterBox to your Jellyfin or Emby media server and your poster display automatically switches to showing the movie or TV show that is currently playing — complete with its poster, theater info panel, and a live countdown of the remaining runtime. When playback stops, PosterBox seamlessly returns to its normal rotation.

1. 1 In your Jellyfin or Emby server dashboard, generate an API key. In Jellyfin: Dashboard → API Keys → +. In Emby: Dashboard → API Keys → New API Key.
2. 2 Find your server's local IP address — e.g. 192.168.1.100. Make sure PosterBox and your server are on the same network.
3. 3 In PosterBox, open Settings → Jellyfin / Emby and enable the toggle.
4. 4 Enter your server's IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.100) and paste in your API Key. Running on a non-standard port? Append it: 192.168.1.100:8920.
5. 5 Close Settings. PosterBox now polls your server every few seconds. Start playing something in Jellyfin or Emby — the poster display will update within a few seconds.

Only one integration (Jellyfin, Plex, Kaleidescape, Zidoo, or Kodi) can be active at a time. Enabling Jellyfin automatically disables the others. Enabling an integration takes effect on return from Settings. If you disable it or change the server URL/API key after it's already running, tap Refresh in Settings to restart the app and apply the change.

PosterBox connects to your Plex Media Server directly over your local network — no relay service, no webhooks, no extra configuration on the Plex side. It polls your server every few seconds and updates the poster display the moment something starts or stops playing.

Your Plex token is a unique key that authenticates PosterBox with your server. To find it:

1. 1 Open Plex Web in a browser and play any media item.
2. 2 Click the three-dot menu (···) on the item, then choose Get Info.
3. 3 At the bottom of the info dialog, click View XML. A new tab opens with the raw media XML.
4. 4 Look at the URL in your browser's address bar — it contains X-Plex-Token= followed by a long string of letters and numbers. That string is your Plex token.

1. 1 Find your Plex server's local IP address — e.g. 192.168.1.100. Both PosterBox and your Plex server must be on the same network.
2. 2 In PosterBox, open Settings → Plex Integration and enable the toggle.
3. 3 Enter your server's IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.100) and your Plex Token. Running on a non-standard port? Append it: 192.168.1.100:32401.
4. 4 Close Settings. Start playing something in Plex — the poster display will switch to that title within a few seconds.

PosterBox connects to Kaleidescape players over your local network using the native Kaleidescape Control Protocol (KCP). When a movie starts playing on your Kaleidescape system, PosterBox automatically displays that film's full-resolution cover art alongside complete metadata — rating, runtime, director, cast, genres — all delivered directly from the Kaleidescape player itself. No TMDB lookup is required.

1. 1 Find your Kaleidescape player's IP address. This is available in the Kaleidescape system settings or through your router's device list.
2. 2 Make sure PosterBox and your Kaleidescape system are on the same local network. PosterBox connects to port 10000 on the player.
3. 3 In PosterBox, open Settings → Kaleidescape and enable the toggle.
4. 4 Enter your player's IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.50). No port number needed — PosterBox uses port 10000 automatically.
5. 5 Close Settings. PosterBox maintains a persistent connection to the player. When you press Play on your Kaleidescape system, the poster display updates automatically within seconds.

PosterBox requires your Kaleidescape player's Control Protocol Device ID (CPDID) to communicate with it. Enter this in the Device ID field in Settings. Without it, the integration will not connect.

To find or assign a CPDID: open the Kaleidescape Web Utility in a browser, go to Components → [your player] → Settings → Control, and choose a CPDID from the dropdown (options range from 02 to 99). Enter that same number in PosterBox Settings. If you have multiple Kaleidescape players and only want PosterBox to respond to one specific device, make sure each player has a unique CPDID assigned and enter only the one you want to use.

PosterBox connects to your Zidoo media player over your local network using Zidoo's built-in HTTP API. When a movie starts playing on your Zidoo, PosterBox automatically switches to that film's poster — fetching full metadata and cover art from TMDB and displaying it with the Theater Info Panel if enabled. When playback stops, PosterBox seamlessly returns to its normal poster rotation.

1. 1 Find your Zidoo player's IP address. Open the Zidoo system settings or check your router's device list. Look for a device named something like ZIDOO-Z9X or similar.
2. 2 Make sure PosterBox and your Zidoo player are on the same local network. PosterBox communicates with the Zidoo on port 9529 — no configuration needed on the Zidoo side.
3. 3 In PosterBox, open Settings → Zidoo Integration and enable the toggle.
4. 4 Enter your Zidoo's IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.50). Enter the IP address only — no port number, no http:// prefix. PosterBox handles the connection automatically.
5. 5 Close Settings. PosterBox begins polling your Zidoo every few seconds. Start playing a movie on your Zidoo — the poster display will update within seconds.

Only one integration (Jellyfin, Plex, Kaleidescape, Zidoo, or Kodi) can be active at a time. Enabling Zidoo automatically disables the others. Enabling takes effect on return from Settings. If you disable it or change the IP address after it's already running, tap Refresh in Settings to restart the app and apply the change.

PosterBox connects to Kodi over your local network using Kodi's built-in JSON-RPC API. When a movie starts playing in Kodi, PosterBox automatically switches to that film's poster — pulling full metadata and TMDB/IMDB IDs directly from Kodi's library so cover art is accurate without any extra configuration. When playback stops, PosterBox seamlessly returns to its normal poster rotation.

Kodi's web server is off by default. You must enable two settings in Kodi once before PosterBox can connect:

1. 1 In Kodi, go to Settings → Services → Control.
2. 2 Turn on Allow remote control via HTTP. Note the port number shown — it defaults to 8080. If Kodi requires a username and password here, note them — you'll need them in PosterBox.
3. 3 Turn on Allow remote control from applications on other systems. This is the critical setting that allows PosterBox (running on a separate TV) to reach Kodi over your local network. Without it, Kodi only accepts connections from itself.

1. 1 Find your Kodi device's IP address. Check Kodi's Settings → System Info → Network, or look in your router's device list.
2. 2 Make sure PosterBox and your Kodi device are on the same local network.
3. 3 In PosterBox, open Settings → Kodi Integration and enable the toggle.
4. 4 Enter your Kodi device's IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.50). Enter the IP address only — PosterBox uses port 8080 automatically.
5. 5 Optional — Authentication: If you set a username and password in Kodi's HTTP settings, enter the same credentials in the Username and Password fields. If you left those blank in Kodi, leave them blank here too.
6. 6 Close Settings. PosterBox begins polling Kodi every few seconds. Start playing a movie in Kodi — the poster display will update within seconds.

Only one integration (Jellyfin, Plex, Kaleidescape, Zidoo, or Kodi) can be active at a time. Enabling Kodi automatically disables the others. Enabling takes effect on return from Settings. If you disable it or change the IP address after it's already running, tap Refresh in Settings to restart the app and apply the change.

Yes, but PosterBox is specifically designed for portrait-mounted TVs. On a landscape TV the poster will appear rotated. For the best experience, mount a secondary TV vertically outside your theater door or in your media room.

Yes — install it on as many Fire TV, Android TV, or Google TV devices as you like. There are no per-device limits. A Premium subscription or Patron GUID covers all your devices.

Make sure the toggle in Settings → Bottom Panel → Show Movie Info Panel is enabled. It requires a Premium subscription or a valid Patron GUID. Also confirm your device has an active internet connection — the panel fetches metadata from TMDB.

All integrations use the same format: enter just the IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.100) — no http://, no port required. PosterBox uses the default port for each integration automatically (32400 for Plex, 8096 for Jellyfin/Emby, 9529 for Zidoo, 10000 for Kaleidescape, 8080 for Kodi). If your server runs on a non-standard port, append it: 192.168.1.100:8920. In all cases, both your player/server and PosterBox must be on the same local network. If you recently changed an IP address, update it in PosterBox Settings and tap Refresh. For Kodi, also make sure Allow remote control via HTTP is enabled in Kodi's Settings → Services → Control.

PosterBox matches the title your Zidoo HT app reports against TMDB. If the HT app hasn't scraped or matched that title yet, PosterBox may fall back to the raw filename. Open the Zidoo HT app, find the item, and run a re-scan or manual match — after that, the correct poster will appear the next time you play it.

Yes. The Kaleidescape integration uses hi-res cover art delivered directly from your player, so poster quality matches exactly what Kaleidescape has on file for each disc in your collection.

Premium features are unlocked by an active subscription (available on Amazon and Google Play) or a Patron GUID code. Subscribe directly inside the PosterBox app, or enter your code in Settings → Account → Registration ID if you received one from the PosterBox team.

Join the PosterBox Facebook community to ask questions, share your setup, and get tips from other users.