I really want to get into jellyfin streaming, but I am a noob and have not much knowledge about hardware and video tech, and I could need some help! Please apologize if some of my questions seem uninformed.

  • My plan is to store my DVDs on an external HDD, I already have some movies stored with makemkv.

  • I do not want to spend a lot of money, at least for now. Synology is out of question because of enshittification. But I don’t have 300-500€ to spend on a mini PC, for a project I might abandon.

  • What I have is an old Raspberry Pi 3, where I could set up a Jellyfin server on.
    From what I gathered, it will be slow AF, but I guess for trying out the technology it should be enough to start?

  • I want to stream to mobile devices, for example an Android phone or tablet, or my Hisense TV. I know already there is no Jellyfin app for the TV, but I could imagine setting up another pi as a client for it.

  • Now there is another problem: I do not really understand what transcoding is, or if any if my devices support the H265 codec making transcoding unnecessary.

  • Can you recommend me a low cost setup, let’s say max. 150€? Would a Pi 4/5 work, or does it need to be a mini PC?

I am not really interested very much in 4k, but if it is possible, why not.

Bonus question: How easy would it be to setup remote streaming so my SO could watch with their android phone from home?

  • gigachad@piefed.socialOPEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    It’s not that I don’t want to buy a mini PC. But for this little project I might abandon like my many programming projects a massive investment is just not worth it. I payed 300€ on a TV some years ago, I just cannot pay the double amount for a device I use for streaming. I might upgrade if Jellyfin turns out to be my companion, but then everything needs to work, remote streaming from outside my network included.

    Thanks for your advice though. I will look into a used fire stick, but if I understand correctly, this would act as a jellyfin client for watching on my TV.

    • thegr8goldfish@startrek.websiteEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      You’re correct. The Fire Stick would be a client. I currently use a Pi 4 as my server and it works great, but I use KODI instead of jellyfin. This means that nothing trys to transcode when I use it. However, my brother is able to connect to my server through Tailscale and he does some sort of GPU pass thru with a jellyfin container and as far as I know it works great.