Getting Confused With Clients

[GlenR]

I've been exploring Jellyfin for a while now and am getting confused with the available clients and which is the best way to go.

For background. For many years I have been using Windows Media Center. It has served me well but as Win7 is way out of support and the hardware is aging, it's time to reconsider how to host and view my media. Hence Jellyfin.

The more I read the more confused I get when it comes to which way to set up the client side. The client needs to display on my Samsung Q7 TV (purchased in 2018 and still running fine) and the audio needs to pass into my AV receiver (who wants to use TV speakers?). Of course it needs to be a 10 foot interface so my wife and I can sit on the couch and navigate the system. An attractive interface will also help.

It doesn't look like the Jellyfin desktop client will work well in this scenario as it looks like it is designed around mouse usage. I've read about using KODI as the client, native Samsung clients (although this is not available in their app store for my model) and things like Chromecast, Firestick, etc. Can I get some opinions on the best way to connect this all up. Thanks in advance.

[TheDreadPirate]

IMO, Android TV devices are the best option. Preferably NOT Amazon Fire devices. I run my Android TV device directly into my AVR.

If your TV is running a not super ancient Tizen OS version, you could possibly side load our Tizen OS client to experiment with. Instructions for side loading it on to your TV are on the app's github.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen

[cash2nead]

Samsung TVs don’t pass through HD audio, so anything running on the TV (Tizen, Chromecast, etc.) will downmix or strip TrueHD, DTS‑HD MA, DTS:X, and multichannel PCM. Not sure if that matters for your setup, but it’s worth knowing up front.

If you want a proper 10‑foot interface and full audio into your AVR, an option is:

HTPC → AVR → TV running Jellyfin MPV Shim 3
I’m currently using MPV Shim 2.10 and casting from my phone which is less hassle than I thought it would be. MPV Shim 3 (now in pre‑release) includes a full 10‑foot UI and MPV give excellent picture quality with full HD audio passthrough. It uses direct play back.

A simpler option is:

Android TV box → AVR → TV
Anything plugged into a Samsung TV first will lose HD audio. There are lots of option, depends on a persons budget and viewing goals.

[GlenR]

I sideloaded the Tizen app using a tool called Apps2Samsung. It was working OK but something changed and now SD channels and video files from SD channels are showing as 4:3 aspect ratio. HD channels are correctly showing at 16:9. I'm not sure what's changed and I can't find any settings that seem to help. Can anyone shed light on this?

[TheDreadPirate]

I'm not sure what you've described is something that is set in the Jellyfin app and is likely a setting in your TV.

[GlenR]

I've looked into this a bit further and the issue seems to be with videos encoded as anamorphic. While they play fine in the browser clients, the Tizen app on my 2018 Samsung TV does not seem to recognise the anamorphic flag so squeezes the image. Videos that are not anamorphic play fine. I believe that this does not occur on later versins of the Tizen OS - correct me if I'm wrong about that.

I have too many videos encoded from nanamorphic sources to retranscode them all, so is it possible to have Jellyfin trnscode on the server before snding to the TV?

[TheDreadPirate]

When you play an anamorphic video on your TV you can set the "quality" (aka max bit rate) to a value below the video's native bit rate.