Basic CouchPotato Configuration

htpc build

Basic CouchPotato Configuration

 

1. This configuration guide come after HTPCBuild.com’s CouchPotato Install Guide for Windows.

2. Navigate to your CouchPotato folder and right click on “CouchPotato.exe” and select “Run As Administrator”. The Windows User Account Control will ask you to confirm your action. A browser should launch with CouchPotato.

3. Click on the little cog/gear icon to the right of “Logs”. This will bring you to the Configuration area of CouchPotato.

4. Lets start with the “General” page. Here you can enter the HOST IP and HOST Port for your CouchPotato.You can also enter a username and password if you wish limit access to CouchPotato. I also leave “Search Every” at the default 24 hours, as movies are not released very frequently.

NOTE: If you are running CouchPotato locally, 0.0.0.0 is OK. However if you are running the instance on a server, please enter the IP address of your server. I also like to keep my ports in sequential order, for example if Sabnzbd is on Port 8080 the rest of my Sabnzbd addons will sequentially follow: 8081, 8082, 8083 etc.

5. When you are done, click the “Save” button on the bottom right hand corner. CouchPotato will confirm that the “Settings successfully saved.”

6. Next we can move on to the “Downloaders” page. Here you will enter the information of the program you use to download such as Sabnzbd or Torrent clients. For NZBs you will need different settings depending on your newsreader. In this case, I’m going to outline for use with Sabnzbd.

Check “Enable” to enable NZB downloading
Enter your usenet providers retention days
Select your newsreader – Sabnzbd
Provide the IP address of Sabnzbd
Enter Sabnzbd API Key
Sabnzbd’s Username
Sabnzbd’s Password
Category that CouchPotato will tell Sabnzbd the NZB should be sorted to. IE: Movies

7. When you are done, click the “Save” button on the bottom right hand corner. CouchPotato will confirm that the “Settings successfully saved.”

8. Next we can move onto filling in “Providers” information. Here you will need to provide the login information or API information of your nzb index provider. I highly recommend NZBMatrix as it currently is supported by most Sabnzbd addons.

NOTE: You must check mark “Enable” for each provider you wish to use.

9. When you are done, click the “Save” button on the bottom right hand corner. CouchPotato will confirm that the “Settings successfully saved.”

10. Next let us move onto the “Quality” page. Here you can define the different qualities you want for each download. There also size restrictions towards the bottom of the page for each quality type. By default, the quality types are ordered from best to worst. In this case, I’ve selected 1080P and only 1080P. Why waste bandwidth downloading twice? Patience is a virtue, wait for the best! (If you don’t have a 1080P capable TV or are playing on a small laptop screen, selecting a lower quality will reduce waiting time as well as save space.)

NOTE: You can create “Quality Profiles” but sticking to the default 1080P, 720P etc is probably what most people would use.

11. When you are done, click the “Save” button on the bottom right hand corner. CouchPotato will confirm that the “Settings successfully saved.”

12. The last step is to “Restart” CouchPotato. To do this, click on the cog/gear next to “Logs”. Now click on the “Restart” button. CouchPotato will announce that it “will restart in a few seconds.”.

This pretty much covers the basic settings required to get CouchPotato up and working. There several more features of CouchPotato such as Userscript for Mozilla (allows movie adding from IMBD), notifications (alerting XBMC, Plex Media, Server, Twitter, etc), and a lot more. Please refer to HTPCBuild.com’s Advanced CouchPotato Configuration Guide to learn more.

Please also visit HTPCBuild.com’s CouchPotato Windows Service Install Guide to install Sabnzbd as a service for Windows. By installing Sabnzbd as a service Sabnzbd will run in the background of your computer. You will not need to login to have Sabnzbd run.

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