I’m looking to replace my Rock 5B running Android TV (the OS jank has finally gotten to me) with an x64 Linux HTPC coupled with an Rii remote.
What distro would one recommend for a “Jellyfin native” client setup? I’ve run Kodi with the Jellyfin plugins before and not been a fan of the experience.
Finding a good client is hard. Folks recommend the Nvidia Shield Pro. Finding something that plays all the formats and can pass audio through hdmi to a AV receiver. Umcompressed HD audio, HDR/10/DolbyVision. Etc.
If I can just pop a debian machine down, that is great, but a hardware guide would be nice to see.
I’ve been using fedora on a small intel 6th gen or newer mini pc. I then cook up some custom launch scripts that cause JMP to run at login. I use cockpit and a CMK agent for remote monitoring and management.
I got sick of the lack certificate management on Android TV and how much you need to do to make it reasonably private.
If you are on the latest mesa drivers (hence fedora over a more LTS release), and you install Jellfin Media Player via flatpak, everything should just work with hardware decoding.
Thanks for the Fedora nod. I’m looking in to Bazzite. For Intel transcoding on the server I had to install the non-free firmware, and will probably have to do the same.
Debian! I have a Plex server on Debian and it’s been nice and stable. I stream 4k to two tvs at my house at once. Works well.
I’m looking at chimera. Mostly because I also want to use the same machine for gaming, and since chimera boots right to steam, then I could add an entry for jellyfin
I was hoping to use Chimera, bit with it only supporting AMD GPU’s (I’m running an Intel n100) I had to keep looking. Bazzite looks interesting.
Yeah, definitely an issue. I’m slowly building up a new rig just for that, and I’m going team red for that build. Honestly the new AMD GPUs are just tanks, and they take on all but the most high end NVidia ones. Doesn’t help if you already have a GPU, but if you’re in the market I can tell you it’s pretty dang awesome. I have looked into Bazzite too, Chimera seems a bit more synced with SteamOS which is why I like it.
I have a Raspberry Pi 3 with a Hifiberry DAC running OSMC (nicely packaged Kodi on top of Debian) acting as my media center and recently installed Jellycon with the hopes of being able to use server side transcoding for a few formats my old TV doesn’t support.
My verdict: Menu navigation is slow, but it’s a native kodi integration (supports widgets) and playback works great once you made your way through the menus. You can selectively set transcoding options per file type which is exactly what I needed.
Best solution I’ve seen so far, as it also does IR remote passthrough over HDMI if your TV supports it. The addon works in any kodi setup of course. I think there might be a way to start playback from the Jellyfin web UI but haven’t bothered with it. This would fully remedy the menu slowness, I think.
