Maybe a dumb question, but how is this better than having your files on a nas? I have a nas and just play my media files from there on my tv and laptop. What do I get from having jellyfin?

[–] Barky@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A slick interface with nice title cards and pictures, feels like your own personal streaming service with no drawback

[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Kodi/XBMC has been providing that for like 20 years though...

What jellyfin does provide that Kodi doesn't is on the fly transcoding for watching on mobile device and remote access. If you don't need that, Kodi might be a better choice providing a far wider array of features.

[–] averyfalken@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Personally I prefer jellyfins interface. Plus its easy for my bon tech familyyto use jellyfin

[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

That's fine, but it still doesn't do a tenth of what Kodi can do.

I also don't really see how it's easier in terms of browsing. It's a list of movies and tv shows...

[–] frozenicecube@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You're not wrong but there are still drawbacks to Kodi where Jellyfin ends up being better. In my use case, with 5 tvs in the house, 2 are hooked up to Nvidia shield tvs but the other 3 are Chromecast w/ Google TV which have very limited storage unless I want to spend a fortune in hubs for each one to add a USB drive or micro SD.

With kodi installed I would regularly hit the storage limit of the device and have all kinds of weird bugs. Just as an example I had my daughter set up with a kids only account, but account switching would cause Kodi to become unresponsive for anywhere from 30 seconds to having to do a hard reset of the device. Jellyfin gives me the same access to my library with a lighter, more streamlined, persistent interface across devices and with easy and fast profiles. It still allows me to keep a pi as the host so the whole setup is low power (important for me as we're on solar, every watt helps!)

I don't really need the Kodi plugins I used to have if the main purpose of streaming my local content isn't smooth and simple for the family. This is coming from a long time XBMC user, I've been running it since my original modded Xbox in the early 2000s.

[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Then you are doing it wrong. I have three instances of Kodi, one of them on completely hard drive less machine booted via PXE, the other two are Pis with minimal is on an SD card. All the media's are stored on a NAS, and all the metadata is shared between the instances on MySQL, all of it (profiles, views, etc) shared across all the instances.,

[–] balderdash9@lemmy.zip -1 points 2 years ago

There's a large possibility that your kids will be apathetic towards the media that you watch now. When's the last time you listened to a song or watched tv from the 50?

(I can hear you typing right now; yes, I myself even watch the Adams Family and listen to psychedelic rock every now and again, but that's not typical.)

[–] ArugulaZ@kbin.social -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Jellyfin? What is that, some computer based television network you populate and schedule yourself? Because I totally would want that. That would rule.

[–] Whom@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's a FOSS alternative to Plex, if you're familiar with that. Less like a tv channel, more like a streaming service you populate yourself.

[–] lemann@lemmy.one 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

more like a streaming service you populate yourself.

The most concise description of Plex/Jellyfin that I've seen

[–] Banzai51@midwest.social 1 points 2 years ago

DIY Netflix is the one I like.

[–] devdad@programming.dev -1 points 2 years ago

Unsure if your asking seriously (if not, whooosh to me), but it’s an open source alternative to Plex.

Plex is a media server that you run to host your TV shows and movies. Think of a self-hosted Netflix.

[–] Roundcat@kbin.social -1 points 2 years ago

Goes through hard drive with kid

"Everything the light touches, is our kingdom!"