2023-09-30, 12:51 PM
Quote: I disagree that there isn't much interest for such a feature. A quick search on the internet results in a buttload of posts on several sites/forums where people are asking about just that.
So, just to clarify, I don't mean that there is a lack of interest among a group of users in having this feature. There definitely is. What I meant by "a lack of interest relative to the intended purpose" is that I think there is a lack of interest among current active contributors in developing this feature in the context of their vision of what the server needs most. And that's OK. Again, I do not believe this feature would be out of scope for Jellyfin. I can't speak for the project team beyond just being familiar with general discussion, but I really don't see this being a feature that would be rejected if a group of contributors submitted a well-developed PR. If you (or anyone else) want to embark on that process, just head to the meta repository and bring it up for discussion (https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-meta/discussions).
Quote: Again, I don't think it's all that difficult. But I won't know for sure until I have had a look at the source code (which I would love to do if I would know where to look for this source code)
Yeah, this all might be true. I honestly don't know. Venson, above, would have a better idea. He has a lot more familiarity with the server code. But, as you say, the first step would be to poke around yourself and take a look. I was mostly saying that it can be surprising, sometimes, how seemingly simple things work once you actually start poking at them.
Quote: Oh, and I would like to add that more and more people are looking for low cost hardware to run the Jellyfin server on. I use a Raspberry Pi because of the cost of electricity. As mentioned in my first post, in my neck of the woods, running a small laptop would cost me between $40-$80 per month. The Pi only $4-$8. And that laptop would probably be able to only transcode one stream at a time. If you want to transcode multiple streams, then you probably need hardware that has even higher power consumption. And then you are completely missing the goal of such a media server in the first place. Because, let's be honest. Most people use Jellyfin as an alternative to having to have a subscription to multiple streaming services. So if the energy costs of your hardware are higher than the combined costs of those subscriptions, your are missing your goal.
I think that I wouldn't necessarily agree with you that this is even the goal. I don't think, broadly, that Jellyfin aims to be a lower cost alternative to streaming services. I just don't think that's the objective. If you look at the project site, for example, "streaming services" aren't mentioned once. Jellyfin is, in my mind, more about personal control, flexibility, and ownership--even if that comes at a cost premium over commercial streaming. It's certainly true that a large group of users have tried to use it for that purpose, and I think that it's been successful for at least some of them. People's attempts to run Jellyfin on low powered hardware has become common enough, in fact, that, as Venson points out above, we've added warnings to the hardware guide and the documentation that it's not supported or recommended. But, ultimately, I think that it is fine if commercial streaming is cheaper, at the cost of ownership, flexibility, and control. I just don't think that being cheaper than commercial streaming is actually the goal that you think it is.
But, again, I don't think a group of people who wanted to work on this sort of thing would be met with hostility, I just don't think it necessarily matches the aims of the already thinly stretched contributors that we have now. I'm just trying to be helpful and realistic about where I think you should focus your energy here. I'm mostly just parroting the perspectives that I have seen expressed when this sort of thing has come up before.
