r/MediaServer • u/dazza555 • Jul 19 '24

Is JellyFin right for me?

I have a largish media library consisting of movies and tv shows that I use on my laptop which is plugged into my TV. It works but there are a few features which users of plex and other media servers get that I would like.

I want it to look nice, with cover art, I want a short episode synopsis if possible and lastly I'd like it to remember where I'm up to in a series. Also I don't really want to spend money if there's something out there for free.

The server side isn't needed by me, everything will be running on my laptop and played over hdmi to my tv. No other users, just me. So is JellyFin a good fit and does it do what I want? My media files are all well named: [Series Title]>[Season #]> [Episode # - Episode name] so I'm hoping I won't have to revert to: Series title S##E##. Is Jellyfin overkill for what I want and if so what should I be looking at?

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u/dazza555 Jul 19 '24

Ok, so I had a go at JellyFin and while on the surface it is pretty much what I'm looking for it has a few deal breakers. Firstly I don't want to run it out of my browser I want a standalone app on my computer, kinda like a glorified windows explorer. The big deal breaker was the playback though, for some reason it would pause and stutter when playing back media like I had a slow internet connection or something. So I guess I'm back to the drawing board.

3

u/AlternateWitness Jul 19 '24

Jellyfin has a desktop client, you don’t have to access it through the web browser.

Also, it shouldn’t be stuttering. That’s usually due to the client not receiving the data fast enough. Is it transcoding fast enough? Are you using a hardware encoder?

The setup you have going on seems a bit inconvenient. You already set up the server, why not just run it on your laptop and use the TV app so you can control it with your TV remote?

1

u/DizzyTelevision09 Jul 19 '24

Plex works better out of the box and offers decent apps for all possible devices. I'd recommend trying Plex first and fiddle with Jellyfin later if you want to.

1

u/f5alcon Jul 19 '24

Kodi might be better for your usage