For years I have used our cheap Android TV box to play back files using DLNA, which of course has a myriad of security issues. Having recently upgraded and sorted out totally our homebuilt NAS box using the excellent Truenas system and ZFS I took the plunge and installed Jellyfin – and wow is all I can say. I knew about Jellyfin and Plex and several others, but for various reasons hadn’t taken the plunge, and all I can say is that it is well overdue.
In the above screenshot you can see the details of the famous 60’s series The Saint which I am currently rewatching. This is the browser view meaning pretty much anything can access your Jellyfin server but I have also installed the Android version on our TV box and my phone(s) and tablet and it works well on all devices. What I like is that it pulls in automagically the details of what you have setup quickly and nicely, and because I have my NAS setup with some nice shares using both NFS and SMB I could if I wanted send videos from pretty much any device and have it available to then stream across our network. So far, I haven’t done that, but the option is ready to go…
Another screenshot shows what has been recently been added and even the next up episode of The Saint. It works well, quick and makes life way easier than DLNA which worked albeit basically. I have not yet copied everything across as some of the older stuff is encoded in x264 and the quality isn’t great, but Jellyfin does support re-encoding streams, something because of the widely differing viewing systems I currently have not enabled. I may in the future do so though as I actually have a spare Quaddro 600 card for the job! But we shall see. Installation in Truenas is pretty simple though I did change some defaults, ie added an additional dataset but on the whole the defaults are pretty good. I did also set it up to use a shared folder because I can then copy files across from the various systems I have and then scan the libraries and them just appear! Coming soon will be a Truenas review as it is so helpful storing the large amounts of data that you accumulate these days in a central location, and also run things like Immich and Jellyfin to manage that data efficiently. To be really honest there isn’t much else I need to add to this quick review as Truenas and then Jellyfin pretty much just worked for me after remembering the correct IP address and port that Truenas had assigned to the running Jellyfin container to then add other devices. Once that was done I added the files into the correct folders, scanned the libraries and boom it was up and running! Took no time at all, took longer to copy the files across to be fair…
So do I recommend Jelyyfin? Yes totally – it can even run on something like a Raspberry Pi if needed, but I think that if you need a decent backup and filestorage system it is hard to beat Truenas – and paired with Jellyfin I kinda have my own Netflix at home with MY files, which is awesome. Remember though that for many Jellyfin doesn’t help you find new content unless you pair it with other software solutions and of course there are often legal issues with copyrighted content
Jellyfin on Truenas
Makes your own Netflix with your own files easy to do, and once sorted and a library built up works excellently well. Of course a lower powered machine may struggle but I found no issues on my setup at all! Even plays music well as a Spotify alternative
Pros
Easy to use
Free to use
Works on most devices but is dependant on the playback hardware
Cons
You do need a bit of technical ability to get it up and running
Lower powered system might struggle especially if you use the transcoding options
If you have low quality files then there isn't much to help it look better