Currently ripping my DVDs and building a Jellyfin server. Now on desktop and mobile streaming works fine but the Raspberry Pi 4 + Libreelec + Jellyfin/Jellycon Setup i tried has been somewhat janky - both in terms of navigation and also the framerate drops at times though it isn’t really an issue.
Pretty sure the folks in the Jellyfin Subreddit/Forums would tell me to just get a Firetv stick, so I was more curious what experiences and recommendations you guys have.
Firetv + firewall whitelist?
Fix my Raspi install?
Just use Stremio with a VPN and then you have nothing to maintain.
I have a good experience with the NVidia shield TV (2017). Jellyfin app work great without tinkering and HEVC deciding is supported by this device, minimizing the need of transcoding.
The experience outside of Jellyfin needs some work though, to get an ad-free experience. Once Projectivy Launcher and Smart Tube installed and configured, I am fully satisfied.
I haven’t played too much with Raspberry, I think HW decoding is still a point of pain.
I know it’s an investment, but for the sake of stability and out of box simplicity I recently switched to an Apple TV with Infuse player. I run a Jellyfin server on my desktop PC and browse it through the Infuse app on the Apple TV. It plays everything natively and smooth as butter (including Dolby Vision), and the interface is polished. I wish the app was little more customizable, but it just works.
Yeah as far as “just works” goes AppleTV with infuse is really high up there.
Support for all the lossless audio you want, dolby-vision, perfect framerate switching, etc. Either that or something like a Dune-HD box (no framerate switching bugs, lossless audio, DV, etc) or an NVIDIA Shield Pro (though the value of this last one is not great, hasn’t been refreshed in years hardware-wise, more expensive than AppleTV, still has issues with framerate switching not working as well as the looming fact that it feels like Nvidia could kill it and its support off any year now).
Biggest complaint with infuse would have to be lack of extras support after people have begged for it for a decade. Other than that and having not quite as many sort options as something like Kodi/Libelec it’s pretty great. It allows for directplay and pretty efficiently connects to Jellyfin, Plex, etc. You do have to pay for a pro subscription to infuse if your library has 4k/HDR/DV video or uses any audio codecs but AAC and FLAC as they even gate regular Dolby Digital behind payment (the patent on it has expired) and claim it’s because they use the official Dolby SDK and have to pay for that. Not a lot of money admittedly, $12 a year, it’s peanuts compared to what most spend on streaming services, less than the cost of one month ad-free anything.
Any box that can run https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-mpv-shim
I have a living room HTPC connected to my tv and have Jellyfin Media Player on that, and it works well. Obviously thats more of an investment than a firestick. Mine was £290 when I got it, I installed linux and I use it for gaming (including locally and streaming more graphically intense games from my PC), watching some streaming services and browsing the internet on my TV.
I do also have a Chromecast with Google TV stick in another tv. I use that purely for streaming and it also has the Jellyfin App installed.
I find both my HTPC and Chromecast are good with Jellyfin. No issues at all, good consistent streaming. But note HDR in linux can be finicky if thats important to you. Of course most come with Win 11 so you have that choice too (I wiped windows off mine)
I do have kodi on my HTPC, works fine with Jellyfin/jellycon but I prefer desktop mode and the jellyfin media player myself. I tend to use the pc with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, so dont really use Kodi.
My PC was £290 but I got one that could do a bit more gaming. You can get them for £100-£160 and they’d likely be more than capable of streaming 4k content. Better than a Pi 4 and more versatile than a £60 4k fire stick (even if more expensive - might be justified if itnopens up new uses for your tv)
Other option of course is a Raspberry pi 5 - more powerful than the 4. Ive not tested my pi5 with Jellyfin much so cant comment on how it suites the task.
Since you’re running on a Pi, you’ll want something that has the most codec compatibility to avoid transcoding. Something like the Nvidia Shield could work, but they haven’t updated it since 2019 and it’s ridiculously expensive. Perhaps check into the AppleTV box as they’ve probably kept up to date on hardware. Sticks should have a lot of compatibility and cheap but you may need to download a different version of a movie/show every now and then due to incompatibility.
Until there’s something better, fire tv is the best you can get. Everything works.
There is a jellyfin app for common smart TV platforms
I have a Chromecast and I use my phone to cast it. Simple, effective.
The stick route is probably the easiest.
I’d go Chrome over Fire though- easier to mod and side load things.
Roku. They have a Jellyfin app.
This is how I do it. I don’t recommend roku though, its covered in ads and it crashes sometimes and requires reboot (Amazon app, not jellyfin)
I’m not purchasing another.
Yes I have a pihole for the ads. The thing is always trying to radio home.
Did you try Kodi? Also, I recommend reencoding your dvd rips to h264 with eAC3 audio.
Why not HEVC 10bit? We’re quickly approaching the age of AV1 and HEVC has been on the scene for a decade now so might as well have a relatively recent codec and HEVC offers improvements of 20% bitrate reduction for same quality even for 480p content vs 264. Modern devices don’t have any issues decoding it either even in software and open source encoders are mature enough. AV1 might be an even better bet but encoding time takes a really noticeable hit compared to HEVC and client device support still isn’t entirely there, the encoders are also still a little more finicky than HEVC.
As to ripping DVDs to EAC3, I wouldn’t.
Almost all DVDs are natively AC3 regular dolby digital. You can’t add more quality by doing lossy conversions and the bitrates typically present for DVDs are low enough that doing a conversion to lower the bitrate doesn’t really make sense. We’re talking 512-640kbps for 5.1 audio (and 192 to 240 for stereo) which isn’t unreasonable and the damage incurred in conversion to save say half that IMO just doesn’t make sense with modern storage prices and the amount of storage being used for 480p content. You can easily save as much without damaging the audio by choosing HEVC10 as your video encoder. If you insist on doing a conversion for DVD audio I would suggest doing so to either AAC if you have a good encoder and know how to use it or Opus but I wouldn’t recommend it (all TVs pretty much natively play/decode AC3 audio so given you’re not saving that many bits you’re just inducing degradation of conversion from AC3 to AAC/Opus and again back to AC3 for playback).
Now for BluRays I fully agree converting from those massive 2000-4000kbps DTS-HD MA, TrueHD, PCM audio streams to EAC3 at 640kbps for multi-channel audio can save a fair amount of space at scale and doesn’t incur meaningful audio degradation (while offering equivalent quality to 1000kbps AC3).
I just use my fire stick.
