this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Jellyfin: The Free Software Media System

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So I'm back with Netflix and Amazon. I'm kind of done with jellyfin at this point. I've been recommending it to everyone and honestly I'm not sure that I still would.

Jellyfin as a product simply doesn't work. There, I said it.

For a media system I'd hope for the basics to be able to play a movie or show with subtitles, selecting audio channels, and scrubbing and it to remember where I was left. I wouldn't even need posters and all that, I'd get my own subtitles, etc.

I have multiple TVs, but let's go with the old one with a chrome cast. I use my Android phone to cast a show episode. Scrubbing sometimes works. it works better than before because before it would just break everything to the point of the app requiring a reinstall. At least that's fixed now but scrubbing still is SLOW, 10 seconds ahead takes 20-30 seconds to do. Worse though, it borks up subtitles by leaving the subtitles that were there when you started scrubbing, and places the new ones on top of that. The only way out is to exit casting completely, kill the app, restart all from scratch. Obviously JF doesn't continue where I stopped (seriously, requests on that timeframe were made, it can't be that hard to register that, can it?) and so I need to scrub again which, you know, borks up subtitles. So I'll start just from the beginning, I can rewatch the same 5 minutes twice but it annoys the hell out of my wife.

Then, subtitles is a mess. The above, but also switching subtitles will cause similar issues. Don't touch anything when having subtitles!

Then: it's slow. It's godunholy slow. I have a 16 core and Rhyzen 5 cpu, 64gb men @3200mhz, 1tb M2 Samsung Evo 989 pro, and ~60tb over 3 exos drives. An AMD rx7800 XT finishes up the config. It's not the best of the best, but my system, u believe, ranks in the higher ranks of jellyfin installations

Jellyfin cannot play a movie or show without stuttering at least a few times, flat out freezing for minutes during shows, especially in the second episode for that day... If I run transmission in parallel, it just freezes up so much that it's undoable.

Logs don't indicate any major issue, I saw a freeze and had all logs on tail and literally saw no messages whatsoever during that freeze. System utilization was near zero.

Wife isnt tolerating jellyfin anymore and now I have Netflix and Amazon accounts again.

I understand it's open source software, you do what you can, but right now it simply isn't a system that is for the general public. It can be used by nerds like me who have the patience to deal with all the issues.

Edit: Really? 17 downvotes? I'm trying to tell you that the thing doesn't work and that I've spent plenty of time trying to fix it, reading docs, posting questions, nothing has fixed anything so far but can't have people talk about that, or what's wrong?

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[–] mateomaui@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you’re mainly looking for a good way to watch your movie/tv library, separate from content acquisition, just install Kodi on a FireTV stick (edit: or the Chromecast, forgot that as I typed this), and point it at your content hard drive. Install the opensubtitles.com plugin if you need that. (No need to login to it if you’re downloading 10 or less subtitles a day.) Install the Trakt plugin with an account to keep track of what’s watched, in case you ever need to reset Kodi without losing that history, and to sync the watched list between different Kodi apps.

I have Kodi on my FireTv, android tablet, and PC, and for me it all works great with none of the headache I keep reading about Jellyfin. The only concern is having enough storage space on each device for a copy of the library database, since it isn’t on a central server.

Add new content whenever, tell Kodi to update the library, and that’s it.

edit: as a reference point, I have 2230 movies currently in Kodi, and with its database it takes up 1.4 GB on my Fire stick.

edit2: I don’t know how jellyfin operates remotely, but one reason I love Kodi is because I don’t need a server when traveling. I have a gl.inet Beryl travel router with builtin USB3 and OpenVPN (or Wireguard)

https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mt1300/

and all I have to do is plug my 5TB usb-powered content hard drive into the USB3 port, and point Kodi at the router’s shared drive. The router says it requires 3A but I can easily power it with the drive, and a Raspberry Pi Zero W pihole, off a split usb cable plugged into a 2.4A battery pack if necessary.

(this usb cable: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08596XGMW)

and I recommend this case that can hold both the router and drive: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09C5QSK5Y

Buy a 2nd for a Raspberry Pi 4 in a Flirc case (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WG4DW52) with its own usb drive for wireless torrenting on the go, with a headless hdmi adapter and controlled by RVNC Viewer on my tablet.