PC or Streaming Box

[CmdRiker]

Hello,

I am new to Jellyfin, and streaming in general. I used to have a Western Digital WDLive unit years ago and it worked pretty good, most of the time, to "stream" movies from my Synology NAS.

Today I installed Jellyfin on my Synology NAS and configured it etc.. I can see my movies in Jellyfin and play them on my computer. But, what is the best way to be able to play the movies on my NAS, via Jellyfin, in my home theater ? I have an Anthem AVM-90 processor which is brand new. My TV is a "dumb" TV, a Panasonic Vierra Plasma, 1080P only but still looks great.

I've got some 1080P movies I ripped from BluRay to my NAS that I want to play through my new AVM-90. Do I need a "streaming box" ? like Apple TV, Roku, etc.. ? or can I use a Linux computer that has HDMI out, Intel i5 13600K with built in CPU graphics, connected to my network ?

I don't mind spending money to make this work properly, I'm just not sure what is the best way? my primary goal is best performance of video and audio from the HD BD movie files (MKV) on my NAS. Was looking at some Zidoo players, but might have more features than I need just to play movies.

I am planning on upgrading the TV to a newer 4K OLED or similar in a few months.

Thank you !

[TheDreadPirate]

Money no object, the Nvidia Shield is probably the best client for your kind of setup.

[CmdRiker]

Thanks for the recommendation. Money no object for me would be a Kaleidescape system with a MadVR Extreme, but that setup would run me about $30,000 Canadian, and that's a bit out of my budget ;-)

The Shield is getting a little "old" and doesn't support some of the newer features etc.. I wish Nvidea would come out with a new unit already, my guess is they are not going to move forwward with that device.

Yesterday I tried Jellyfin client from my Linux Ubuntu computer, which is Intel i5 13600K, 32GB DDR5 RAM, 1TB NVME Samsung and Nvidea RTX 3060 video card. My source material is on my Synology NAS which I installed Jellyfin server. I pointed Jellyfin web client to Jellyfin server on my NAS and it worked ok, but having to use a keyboard/mouse combo to control the PC is not very convenient. And was not "blown away" by picture quality. I did look at some of the settings and did my best to make it "as best as possible" without really knowing the details of what I'm doing.

Next I tried Jellyfin App installed on my FireStick 4K, pointed at NAS server. It also worked ok, and easier to control with fire stick remote vs keyboard.

There was zero difference between my PC setup and the Fire stick ? I would have expected better performance from the PC given the hardware "power" vs the fire stick. Part of my issue is that I do not understand where the "decoding" is happening, or the "transcoding"? I did however notice some video artifacts (banding?) in very fast moving scenes.

I've looked also at players like Zidoo, seems interesting with the "Realtek video chip" they seem to make a big deal of...there are a bunch of android boxes from others like Dune, as well as things like Roku etc.. 

I have no issues investing in a system that gives me the max performance (well, short of MadVR / Kaleidescape), already spent over $25K in my home theater in the past 2 months. But I don't know enough about the "where" and "what" to best spend that money in terms of video processing / workflow given that 95% of my source will be from my 60TB NAS.

Seems like many ways to achieve this goal, unsure as best path formward, willing to spend up to $4K, obviously less is desirable :-)

[tmsrxzar]

shield despite being 2019 is still more feature packed than 90% of the chinese boxes being sold but i am also not a fan
firetv stick is intended to be a cheap streamer so a no go for me
i currently use the FireTV Cube Gen3 and when paired with Kodi v21+ with the jellyfin addon for Kodi (not jellycon) everything actually works perfectly in Direct Play without the need for transcoding (except VC1 but that is configurable in the addon to force transcode, you will be hard pressed to find VC1 support from anything)

as far as best overall it is my pick but i cannot say it is the end all be all
you actually might find that your PC listed above (the i5+rtx3060) would run perfectly as a media device if you use LibreELEC with the jellyfin for Kodi addon

unfortunately i do not feel that the jellyfin clients other than "for kodi" are as mature as kodi and therefor kodi does a better job of playback

[TheDreadPirate]

Except for AV1, the aging Shield, AFAIK, has the most complete audio capabilities of all the Android TV based devices.

[CmdRiker]

shield despite being 2019 is still more feature packed than 90% of the chinese boxes being sold but i am also not a fan
firetv stick is intended to be a cheap streamer so a no go for me
i currently use the FireTV Cube Gen3 and when paired with Kodi v21+ with the jellyfin addon for Kodi (not jellycon) everything actually works perfectly in Direct Play without the need for transcoding (except VC1 but that is configurable in the addon to force transcode, you will be hard pressed to find VC1 support from anything)

as far as best overall it is my pick but i cannot say it is the end all be all
you actually might find that your PC listed above (the i5+rtx3060) would run perfectly as a media device if you use LibreELEC with the jellyfin for Kodi addon

unfortunately i do not feel that the jellyfin clients other than "for kodi" are as mature as kodi and therefor kodi does a better job of playback

Thank you guys, much appreciated, I really want to fully understand all the moving parts of this. 

So, LibreELEC is a light OS, Kodi is the "player" or "engine" ? Jellyfin is the "skin" or "GUI" to navigate the media from my NAS? LibreELEC essentially replaces the Unbuntu OS I have now right ?

Just trying to understand all the moving parts of a system like this. Which part are doing what? I think I understand the hardware part IE: the CPU and GPU have to pull the content ie: streams, from the NAS via the Network port, then "decode" the video data and send it to my Anthem AVM 90 through the RTX HDMI port so that it can "decode" the Audio stream (dolby 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, DTX etc)  and pass along the already decoded video stream to the television.. do I have this right ?

I thought Kodi was just like Jellyfin in terms of a pretty interface (GUI) to manage and interact with my content, or does it do more than that? is the Jellyfin add-on simply for the look and feel instead of the Kodi look and feel ?

[yshi]

Hello CmdRiker,

My understanding is that the web browser has extremely limited codec support, so you should probably try installing a Jellyfin client on your PC for a fair test. I'm using the flatpak from flathub.

As to some of your above comments, the JF server does any necessary transcoding. If the video codec or selected subtitle codec is not supported on the client, or the bitrate is too high to transmit, the server will do a transcode the video and stream that. If it's just audio that's not supported it does an audio conversion and streams that with the original video.
Right now I'm using a 6th gen i5 which can handle h264 on the APU, and am considering next arch release upgrading to a Ryzen3 APU (or I guess 5, since it appears the 7xxx don't offer a 3), which should be able to transcode to 265-10b.

The important thing for a client is that it can handle all of the video/audio/subtitle codecs you plan on streaming, or else convert your served files to be compatible, so that you don't have to worry about server transcodes lowering quality. Right now we're using several Roku, which is all well and good for living room control, but they've apparently dropped support for AAC, and VobSub are also not supported, so watching older shows results in a small lag at the start to convert audio to something the client can play, and video to burn in subtitles.

"Best" choice would probably be a PC that has the hardware codec support for everything you want, and a USB remote to control it, I'd guess? You can also use your phone/tablet to control, as long as they're both on the same network, I think. I haven't tested, as I keep my "smart" crap on a separate network from my phones and PCs.

[tmsrxzar]

Thank you guys, much appreciated, I really want to fully understand all the moving parts of this. 

So, LibreELEC is a light OS, Kodi is the "player" or "engine" ? Jellyfin is the "skin" or "GUI" to navigate the media from my NAS? LibreELEC essentially replaces the Unbuntu OS I have now right ?

Just trying to understand all the moving parts of a system like this. Which part are doing what? I think I understand the hardware part IE: the CPU and GPU have to pull the content ie: streams, from the NAS via the Network port, then "decode" the video data and send it to my Anthem AVM 90 through the RTX HDMI port so that it can "decode" the Audio stream (dolby 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, DTX etc)  and pass along the already decoded video stream to the television.. do I have this right ?

I thought Kodi was just like Jellyfin in terms of a pretty interface (GUI) to manage and interact with my content, or does it do more than that? is the Jellyfin add-on simply for the look and feel instead of the Kodi look and feel ?

LibreELEC would be the OS, the OS is designed around a single job of running Kodi so it has everything it needs for video playback and barely anything it doesn't; with that, the OS is tuned for video playback.
Kodi would be the player/skin/engine in total but Kodi does not know how to talk to the Jellyfin server so that is where the Jellyfin addon comes in to bridge the gap and allow Kodi to talk to jellyfin

[CmdRiker]

Thank you guys, much appreciated, I really want to fully understand all the moving parts of this. 

So, LibreELEC is a light OS, Kodi is the "player" or "engine" ? Jellyfin is the "skin" or "GUI" to navigate the media from my NAS? LibreELEC essentially replaces the Unbuntu OS I have now right ?

Just trying to understand all the moving parts of a system like this. Which part are doing what? I think I understand the hardware part IE: the CPU and GPU have to pull the content ie: streams, from the NAS via the Network port, then "decode" the video data and send it to my Anthem AVM 90 through the RTX HDMI port so that it can "decode" the Audio stream (dolby 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, DTX etc)  and pass along the already decoded video stream to the television.. do I have this right ?

I thought Kodi was just like Jellyfin in terms of a pretty interface (GUI) to manage and interact with my content, or does it do more than that? is the Jellyfin add-on simply for the look and feel instead of the Kodi look and feel ?

LibreELEC would be the OS, the OS is designed around a single job of running Kodi so it has everything it needs for video playback and barely anything it doesn't; with that, the OS is tuned for video playback.
Kodi would be the player/skin/engine in total but Kodi does not know how to talk to the Jellyfin server so that is where the Jellyfin addon comes in to bridge the gap and allow Kodi to talk to jellyfin

 Thank you.:-) Ok so, Jellyfin add-on in Kodi allows Kodi to talk to the Jellyfin server on my Synology, got it !

In that scenario, who does the decoding of the file / stream (ie MKV) ? the Jellyfin add on ? Kodi ? my Intel CPU ? my Synology hardware ? And should I actually care ? as long as my TV shows a picture and my AVM90 is decoding Atmos.. 

Could I just install Jellyfin client, minus Kodi, and just run that to connect to the Jellyfin server on my NAS? what is the benefit of Kodi if all I want to do is watch movies, maybe my picture collection and that's about it ? I mean my first test was Jellyfin on Ubuntu and it did work, but I don't know if my TV is the bottle neck at this point but video and audio was..meh.. The Jellyfin "client" I ran on my Ubuntu machine was just a web browser connecting to the JF server on my NAS. Mabye I was not using the "full" thick JF  client ?

maybe I don't need to dig that deep LOL ? But I do like to understand fully how things work, have all the information availble so that I can make the best decision for my use case.

[tmsrxzar]

im not sure i have a response for all that

when you run an operating system, it does a job, you want to run an operating system that does the job you want
in the windows world it's 1 operating system for workstations, 1 for servers
in android there's 1 for tv and 1 for phones and 1 for tablets

having an operating system be versatile is good but not if you only need 1 job to do, you don't run windows on a router (i hope) because windows has way more than is needed to do a simple job of being a router

conversely you wouldnt run dd-wrt (a router os) on a desktop and expect it to do web browser things

when building an HTPC it has 1 job so it makes sense to use an OS that is tailored for that 1 job