My Experience So Far...

[GlenR]

For a bit of background, I have been using Windows Media Center for some years, but with win7 now very unsupported, hardware getting old, etc. it's getting time to find something new. Hence I'm trying Jellyfin.

I have installed Jellyfin on a test PC running Linux Mint while I try and learn it and also learn Linux as I'm new to both.

One of the main areas I have to get right for this to be sable for the wife is live TV and recording so I have been concentrating on that. I have install TVHeadEnd and got it working with Jellyfin. It wasn't a straightforward install for a newbie but I got there. Currently I'm using the OTA guide but intend to move to a third party XMLTV guide once I get more comfortable with the program.

From my initial playing I have noticed a few things that are not as smooth as I expected. Whether these are 'features' or I just haven't found the right settings, I'm not sure.

1. When setting a recording from the guide you get a message saying the recording is set and a red dot is placed on that program in the guide. But if you exit the guide and go back in there is no dot. The only way to know if something is set to record is to go into schedule, but this doesn't show what channel is being recorded, just the program name.

2. When something is being recorded there is no indication the recording is underway. If you are watching a show and want to record the last part, you can set it to record and there is nothing to say it is recording until it is finished and appears in the recordings section.

3. When recorded, everything is bundled into a folder - movies, other, title, etc. - and I can't find a way to have it just list all recordings sorted by date.

4. When playing back either Live TV or a recording I noticed that the picture wasn't as crisp as I expected. Looking at the info it showed the program was being transcoded as 'The video Codec is not supported' nor was the audio codec (see screenshot). I'm looking at DVB-T transmissions in Australia - is there a CODEC pack I need?
   

5. Finally, is TVHeadEnd the best method of getting Live TV into Jellyfin, or is there some other backend I should try?

Overall, Jellyfin looks pretty good. It's a learning curve after many years of WMC and I want to explore some of the various skins to see what I like, so if I can get a good Live TV experience it may be the way to go for me.

[TheDreadPirate]

1.  Do you have any plugins installed that modify jellyfin-web?  I don't have this issue.

   

2.  I'm not sure if this is because I use my admin account as my watch account as well, but I see recordings in progress on the home screen and in the dashboard.  Same with initiating recording while watching something.

   

3.  In the DVR settings, did you define a path for the default path, movie path, and series path?  I've never experimented with this, but I assume you'll get closed to what you're seeking by not defining the movie and series path.

4.  What is the original codec for the recording?  MPEG2?  A surprising number of devices don't have accelerated decoding of MPEG2.  Even if it is a PC.  This has nothing to do with codec pack.  Jellyfin will transcode if the client doesn't support accelerated decoding of a video codec.  This was a deliberate choice due to the wide range of capabilities of devices.  Some may not have the CPU power to decode some codecs/resolutions.  If you used Jellyfin Desktop or Jellyfin MPV Shim, those will try much harder to avoid transcoding on the server.

Regarding quality, do you have a GPU in the server?  In my experience, the difference in quality between transcoding and direct play is minimal with my Intel Arc GPU.  Are you CPU transcoding?

5.  What is the original source of your live TV?  An HDHomerun or something?  Jellyfin supports HDHomeruns directly.  A lot of IPTV streams should work directly in Jellyfin as well.

[GlenR]

1. The only plugin I have installed is the TVHeadEnd plugin.

2. I'm also using the admin account. I justv rebooted (to be sure) and retried and still the same. The red spot vanishes when you exit the guide and go back in.

3. I haven't set any default recording paths.

4. I think some channels use mpeg2 and some are H264. I just noticed some channels won't play due to a fatal error. Also, I'm not using hardware transcoding. This is on an old test PC so that may impact quality.

5. I'm using a Hauppauge HVR-2200 Dual tuner card.

[TheDreadPirate]

I've heard good things about Tunarr for feeding live TV/IPTV channels into Jellyfin and Plex. Give it a try.

Since it is an older CPU, it is likely that the encoding quality is lowered automatically so that the CPU is able to keep up.

Regarding the "fatal error", I'd need to see the ffmpeg log from that playback session to see what the cause is.

[GlenR]

Finally getting somewhere. After fiddling and Googling I found I needed to give admin access to the account I'm using for TVHeadEnd to get it to show the red dot.

One final obstacle to overcome prior to deciding to proceed with Jellyfin is the question of a remote control. I haven't been able to find any resources on which one/s work best with Jellyfin and how to set them up, but a decent remote will be necessary if this is to be used for the TV experience. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I'm thinking of running the server and the client on a mini PC possibly one like this https://www.geekom.au/geekom-mini-air12-mini-pc/, connecting it to my TV. My media is on a separate server so it only needs storage for recorded TV.

[cash2nead]

Agree with TheDreadPirate — it really does come down to the hardware in your test PC. Proper hardware decoding makes a huge difference in Jellyfin, especially with MPEG 2 and H.264 from Australian DVB T.
I’m using MPV Shim for playback, and my remote setup is FLIRC USB + Harmony 650 on my HTPC. That combo works great with MPV Shim.
Jellyfin is also working on a new 10 foot UI in prerelease that includes Live TV support. Can’t speak for the TV side yet, but for my own library it’s fast, responsive, and runs great on my test machine. On my HTPC I just cast from the Jellyfin app to MPV Shim 2.10 since it has no UI but control it with pause, skip, library refresh (Using Powershell script).
If you’re looking at a mini PC, I’d go with something that has Intel QuickSync instead of the Pentium 7505 — you’ll get noticeably better picture quality overall. Better server hardware can equal a more positve experiance but everyones goals and budget is different.

[TheDreadPirate]

Finally getting somewhere. After fiddling and Googling I found I needed to give admin access to the account I'm using for TVHeadEnd to get it to show the red dot.

One final obstacle to overcome prior to deciding to proceed with Jellyfin is the question of a remote control. I haven't been able to find any resources on which one/s work best with Jellyfin and how to set them up, but a decent remote will be necessary if this is to be used for the TV experience. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I'm thinking of running the server and the client on a mini PC possibly one like this https://www.geekom.au/geekom-mini-air12-mini-pc/, connecting it to my TV. My media is on a separate server so it only needs storage for recorded TV.

The N95 model would definitely be better, IMO.  Same price, newer CPU architecture, more cores, slightly newer iGPU, slightly newer Quick Sync.

https://www.geekom.au/geekom-mini-air12-lite-mini-pc/