[SOLVED] Hardware Needs - Check my Understanding?

[Milly]

Hi Y'all,

New here and new to the whole home-media-server thing. Because of that I wanted to ask if someone could take a look at the setup I'm planning just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding anything or missing some key component for all of this to work. Im not absolutely set on this hardware, I just picked these as examples to work with. I should also mention some things that Im hoping to get out of this setup and some things Im okay without:

Want:

• To stream up to 4K UHD 60fps Media to my TV at home
  
• Stream Music at home
  
• Somewhere to store my media, which is why I think I Need a NAS?
  
• Be able to transcode media if needed, which is why I think I need an Nvidia Shield?
  

What Im okay without (but would be nice if I could):

• Accessing and viewing media remotely (Outside of my home network)
  

That all being said, here are the components I think I need to have all of this work.

[TheDreadPirate]

Transcoding happens on the server, not the client (the Shield in your example).

Having said that, I would opt to have an external Android TV client over using a TV's built in Android TV/Fire TV. The codec support in most smart TVs is lacking even when they're new, they age poorly, rarely get software updates, etc. The Shield is a very capable Android TV device for Jellyfin and should be able to direct play most content (no transcoding required on the server). Price no object, it is one of the best Android TV clients. If you're price conscious, a Chromecast with Google TV 4K has worked pretty well for me.

As for storage and the server. You don't NEED a NAS for storage. All of my storage is located in the same PC running Jellyfin. But if you don't want to manage a lot of storage, a NAS will simplify and automate most of the management of your storage.

The specs for the PC running jellyfin depends on how many simultaneous users you will have. If you only play the 4K 60FPS (I'm assuming HDR) content on a device that natively supports that, you can get away with a fairly modest PC. If you have a lot of devices that don't support 4K and/or HDR, you may need a dedicated GPU to handle that transcoding (HDR to SDR conversion is computationally expensive).

[Milly]

In that case, if I was just to repurpose my existing gaming PC to run Jellyfin server (AMD Ryzen 3 and Nvidia RTX 3080ti), I assume that would eliminate the worry for transcoding needs?

1699650024[/url]']
Transcoding happens on the server, not the client (the Shield in your example).

Having said that, I would opt to have an external Android TV client over using a TV's built in Android TV/Fire TV.  The codec support in most smart TVs is lacking even when they're new, they age poorly, rarely get software updates, etc.  The Shield is a very capable Android TV device for Jellyfin and should be able to direct play most content (no transcoding required on the server).  Price no object, it is one of the best Android TV clients.  If you're price conscious, a Chromecast with Google TV 4K has worked pretty well for me.

As for storage and the server.  You don't NEED a NAS for storage.  All of my storage is located in the same PC running Jellyfin.  But if you don't want to manage a lot of storage, a NAS will simplify and automate most of the management of your storage.

The specs for the PC running jellyfin depends on how many simultaneous users you will have.  If you only play the 4K 60FPS (I'm assuming HDR) content on a device that natively supports that, you can get away with a fairly modest PC.  If you have a lot of devices that don't support 4K and/or HDR, you may need a dedicated GPU to handle that transcoding (HDR to SDR conversion is computationally expensive).

[TheDreadPirate]

That is more than enough. Keep in mind that if you are running Jellyfin and gaming at the same time, someone accessing Jellyfin that requires a transcode will consume some of your gaming resources.

[Milly]

Okay, so, follow up questions. I've got Jellyfin running on my Windows Desktop, without Docker. Just simple server install. My media/movies live on a Synology NAS, and I have mapped the network drive locally using Windows File Explorer and it appears as drive letter Z:. Bellow is a screenshot of my Library configuration and Synology's Disk Station showing that indeed the NAS is running. I can access the NAS through FileZilla too, where my username is just "milly" and password is "mycoolpassword", and the Host is sftp://192.168.1.2

In JF, the "Scan for Media" functions dont seem to be doing anything. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to give JF a dedicated user in Synology? Am I missing the network address (I.e. \\192.168.1.2)?

That is more than enough.  Keep in mind that if you are running Jellyfin and gaming at the same time, someone accessing Jellyfin that requires a transcode will consume some of your gaming resources.

[TheDreadPirate]

I don't have a NAS, but my Ubuntu server running jellyfin also acts as a SAMBA server. In the folders I share, I have to give the samba group permissions. You may have given permission to the share, but the folders in the share may not allow access.

[Milly]

I figured this out and am going to write up a summary of how I got this working (for me at least)

• Im using a Windows Desktop with Jellyfin installed as a Service.
  
• My media lives on a Synology NAS (IP: 192.168.1.2) which is on the same network as my Windows Desktop
  
• In Windows Services, I searched for the Jellyfin service and looked into properties. From there I went to the "Log on" tab and set it to "This account". I changed the default user to be the user that I am currently logged in and running the service as, so in my case, my windows user was "puffin\milly". From there I provided the password I use to login and clicked apply and restarted the service. If done correctly, the service will show ".\milly" (in my case) under the "Log on As" column.
  
• Then I used the windows file Explorer and used "Map a network drive..", and for the location, I specified "\\192.168.1.2\Movies" and got it mapped.
  
• Then in Jellyfin, for the folder location I specified "\\192.168.1.2\Movies" and for the network, "\\192.168.1.2" as show in the screenshot.
  

That was it and my movies appeared instantly!