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?

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    4 hours ago

    Rpi3 is pretty slow but you’re right it’s ok for testing.

    Jellyfin doesn’t pretend to do external access well. Some people put a proxy in front of it, others do something like Tailscale to create a private network over vpn. Then you set up the Tailscale app on your mobile devices and it should activate for specific ip addresses or dns names.

    Consider using tinymusicmanager to fix up all of your tv/movie metadata first.

      • Brkdncr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 hours ago

        Without knowing much about, yes unless all servers are using tailscale. It’s simple to share hosts across tailscale tenants.

        That’s getting more technical than what OP is doing though.

    • gigachad@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      Noted, remote streaming will be an extra step I can tackle after I created my setup, it may easily work or may not.

    • thegr8goldfish@startrek.websiteEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      I am just some rando but I think this poster may have meant tinymediamanager as opposed to tinymusicmanager. I use tinymediamanager and it’s great.