My jellyfin collection has finally become large enough that I have been able to cancel all my streaming services. My issue now is that I want to get rid of my Roku’s that are hooked up to each TV.
Is there a good alternative? It MUST be family approved, meaning:
- It is not visible (no desktop/laptop hooked up)
- It is low power
- It has a simple remote control
- It supports Jellyfin
- It is relatively cheap (< $150)
I am sure I could build something out of a raspberry pi, but:
- I don’t need another project I have to fiddle with
- It MUST support new codecs (h.265/AC1/aac/…) as I want direct play from my server
- If it stutters/buffers once, it goes into the trash!
I’ve generally been mostly happy with my Roku, and my pi.hole blocks most of their analytics, but last week, I pressed the home button on my Roku and it started play a video add with audio. Completely unacceptable (That has happened twice in the last week). And in general, the more of this crap I can get out of my life the better!
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I second the AppleTV recommendation based on your disgust with the Roku UI ads, I am completely on your side there, but my similar search has bought me to AppleTV.
I currently run Amazon Fire Sticks which also have UI ads but my pihole is catching most of them and it’s dirt cheap with h.265 support. Plus it runs various hacked apps like TVMob, Cinema, and Cyberflix. That’s what keeps me from moving to an AppleTV or an n100 box already.
What filters are you using in pihole to filter the fire stick ads?
Hagezi’s pro and above blocks the sponsored video ones which I found most intrusive: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists/main/domains/native.amazon.txt
These usually break the UI but you can still access apps so it’s functional.
I’m using the hagezi list for now
Thanks!
How good is Jellyfin on AppleTV? My understanding was the app was a bit lacking…
Oh I haven’t made the leap yet due to the jailbreak apps but I’ve seen read that Jellyfin is decent on AppleTV, about as good as anywhere else. Probably not as polished as you’d expect on AppleTV but serviceable. I’ll update if I end up buying one!
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Use SwiftFin app instead on Apple TV, but better than the Jellyfin app.
The Swiftfin app is awesome
Swiftfin is the official Apple TV jellyfin app. Swiftfin is great on iOS, but hasn’t been updated on Apple TV for a while. It also lacks a lot of polish and features but it is being worked on. There should be an update soon.
I’ve been using infuse on Apple TV. Infuse isn’t open source and needs a subscription to watch most 4k hdr content. I think it’s worth it if Swiftfin gets an update soon.
Apple TV is definitely a better experience compared to Samsung and Android. Apps are nicer and there isn’t any ads, privacy controls and privacy statements are much better. Recommended content can also be disabled and only shows when your hovering over the relevant app.
Any guide you recommend for tvmob, cinema, and cyberflix?
This worked best for me for Linux ISOs on my fire stick: https://www.firesticktricks.com/jailbreak-fire-stick.html
Edited to un-embed, thanks u/lka1988
Why did you embed the link? Just paste the link directly into your comment.
Oh shoot, didn’t realize it just worked. Thanks!
If you’re happy with the Roku hardware and you’re going to cancel all your other streaming services, why not just firewall block the Roku from reaching out of your local network?
If you do that, Jellyfin will still work fine, and you won’t have the ability to get posted ads or anything else from the Roku, so it’ll just become a Jellyfin box.
I’ve taken this approach, sometimes these boxes will act up when they can’t phone home. Definitely worth trying though.
Worth that at least before you start looking at different hardware.
Otherwise, it’s the same thing if you have a smart TV, download the Jellyfin app, and then just completely stop it from being able to connect anywhere else.
Have you tried it with a Roku? My pi.hole blocks most things, but I haven’t yet tried to completely block it from the Internet. In the past, I’ve had to allow some domains through my pi.hole or things would be completely broken, but that hasn’t happened in a while…
I suppose I’d have to occasionally unblock it to get updates to the jellyfin app, which is doable.
i have a roku express 4k and pihole shuts it down completely. it has the jellyfin app, nothing else. works great. I only open up internet to update the app from time to time.
I have a Rocku streaming stick and it won’t work without an internet connection
Oh, that’s absolutely horrible that they designed it that way. 🤮
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Nvidia shield is less user friendly than Roku I think
And it runs Google services, and it costs a fortune, and it hasn’t seen a refresh in 6 years.
And has reliability issues, I got one for my mom so she could use my Plex server, it died just outside of warranty. She didn’t use it often so it wasn’t used and abused, just stopped outputting video one day.
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LOS?
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No worries, it is just my internal frustration with Nvidia coming out in my comment. It could be a good device if it weren’t abandoned by them years ago while that fact seems to be lost in their current pricing. There isn’t really anything comparable on the market, but I don’t think it’s worth the price in it’s current form.
Idk what your usecase is but isn’t LineageOS the opposite of user-friendliness esp for older people? Isn’t it meant for tablets, not tv stresm boxes with remote controls? Or am I missing something
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For my parents, I got a $150 N100 mini PC (tiny little thing), installed Bazzite, installed Jellyfin, and got the Pepper Jobs W10 Gyro remote. You have to configure Jellyfin to know it’s running on a TV and to accept keyboard input (the remote acts like a keyboard), but then everything works great. It’s a little over your budget, with the added remote.
But Bazzite is a gaming OS, isn’t that very user unfriendly? Or do you auto start Jellyfin on startup? Or are your parents just… not boomers?
Bazzite runs the SteamOS interface. It’s extremely user friendly. It’s designed to look like a console.
You have no idea what ‘user friendly’ can mean for boomers. A button that says “Next” is already something that need to be talked about explicitly
I did similar https://github.com/zombiehoffa/hyprjellynix
Edit I tried your way and it works better but is slightly more annoying to setup than running a nixos update (but only slightly more and making the nixos config file was a pain in the arse).
Excellent - thanks for the remote recommendation, it’s one thing I’ve been struggling to find.
Not sure I like the gyro idea - I had a gyro presentation mouse in the past. Worked well, but how do your parents like the gyro element?
They don’t use it unless my dad is watching a perfectly legal sports stream in the browser. It works really well though. I have 3 of those remotes, cause I love them.
I use Kodi with the jellyfin plugin, but I can’t recommend that for ‘normies’ because the interface is not simple, and I still have glitches with it.
I’m also looking for a solution like yours, but wanted you to have that feedback.
I’m kinda of lost with this. I run 3 librelec units on RaspberryPis velcroed to the back of TVs in my house and once I set them up they run easy as. I set them by setting what my network folders are ( I’m a bit of a data hoarder so I’ve got each tv series in their own folders and each movie and their filled in its own folders) and then hitting scan. Is it because of Jellyfin that you’re having problems? I tried setting it up but gave up when I realised I’d have to let it be a server and frankly I don’t trust my in-laws not to fuck up and post all my details on their Facebook to show off their new personalise steaming services.
I guess you are saying you only run Kodi? Yes it is Kodi with the jellyfin plugin talking to a jellyfin server that is the source of the few woes I have with it. Honestly it works really well, but when something is wrong I would say due to the UI it’s beyond most non-technical people to sort it out easily.
Ah yeah. I gave up on jellyfin pretty quickly as I do everything on my local network and jelly isn’t for that I guess.
I don’t know how Kodi still goes on for this long. I messed around with it over a decade ago and had all the same issues back then.
Some people want local serverless playback.
I mean, it’s free and it does work, so I won’t complain, but I wouldn’t push this on any but my most technical friends.
Technical friends are the best friends.
- If you do not want stuttering, use a graphics card. Higher energy consumption but you can play everything
If they have a 5th gen or newer Intel CPU, Quicksync will work excellently for transcoding. No discrete GPU needed.
For how many devices?
As many as most GPUs without all the extra cost and power draw. Nvidia sets a transcode limit of 2 sessions unless you disable it. You really shouldn’t ever be transcoding 4k content. Most people will duplicate 1080p and 4k content and not share the 4k library for remote streaming/external users to avoid transcoding, and 1080p transcodes are no sweat. Furthermore, the goal should be to avoid transcoding wherever possible, so it’s unlikely that you’d have multiple people doing intensive transcoding simultaneously if you follow the above advice. You’ll want everyone to direct play as much as possible.
how many 4k streams?
As many as your hard drives or upload bandwidth can handle since they would be playing directly and not transcoding.
Thanks, it’s good advice that you do not need a gpu if you watch movies in 1080. It’s sufficient for 99% setups anyway
If it’s an option, the Xiaomi mi box it’s a cheap android TV device that plays probably everything. Costs around 60 euro in eu. If not you coul always go for Google TV with a custom launcher to block stock android launcher ads.
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👋😢
Way over-budget for your taste I guess but I still wanted to make a note here for representation sake. Look into the brand Zidoo. I have Zidoo Z9X 8K, it’s the best client I could dream of! ~250$
Cons:
- Android based (outdated AF but still)
- Maybe not so secure (http server always on while the device is on, atm)
Pros:
- Very good support of Dolby Vision, 4K (8K maybe?)
- Very pretty, both hardware and software very polished IMO
- The remote is glorious, tactile with backlight
- Lots of other cool things
- Very snappy Android experience
- it just works™
- The audio downmixing works great, compared to the Google TV which was very bad
- First party Jellyfin support among others
AppleTV connected via Ethernet.
You’re chasing a unicorn with your requirements.
This ^
Simple, no ads, and handles HDR super well
And the Ethernet port is actually gigabit.
We have a couple Apple TVs. As much as I dislike the walled garden, they are very good for what they are.
My plan is to use the $20 Onn (Walmart store-brand) Android TV box LTT recommended as being eminently jailbreakable about a year ago, but I haven’t actually gotten around to hooking it up yet so I can’t authoritatively endorse it.
Been using Onn boxes for years and absolutely love them. They are about as pure android TV as you can get. I would definitely recommend the 50$ pro version over the 20$ original though.
It’s surprising how slow open source is on replicating Roku. So many manufacturers could be using Linux to bypass androidTV and RokuOS bullshit. I suppose AndroidTV is good enough even despite that.
There are a couple of devices, a few months ago during a similar discussion on Lemmy I saved this but doesn’t seem to be many videos or reviews out in the wild
This is very interesting. Do you know anyone who has actually tried these?
I don’t but searching online there’s a couple of YouTube videos. Also there’s a couple recent threads on AV forums talking about the device. Seems like it gets plenty of updates and attention but no I haven’t gotten a solid recommendation yet. I’ll probably give it a shot here in a few months assuming that US store price doesnt go up further
Both use Linux under the hood. You can even install LineageOS on some TVs.
The only reason AndroidTV is bullshit is the manufacturers because casual users want shit like Netflix and Prime preinstalled. Google TV in particular comes with a lot of crap and the ads, which believe it or not some users take as a feature.
But that’s not inherent to Android TV as an OS, it’s exactly like Android phones and manufacturers preloading a bunch of crap to make an extra buck. If your run AOSP you get none of that crap, and it’s fully open-source.
I think it’s a chicken and egg problem. A FOSS Roku-replacement needs apps to make get popular, and manufacturers won’t port their apps until it’s popular. Basically, manufacturers need someone with a big marketing budget to help them feel comfortable investing in a platform, but that’s not going to happen with a nice FOSS platform.
Maybe if we collectively raise like $100M or something, we could put together a big enough marketing budget to convince some of the bigger names (Netflix, HBO, etc) to take the risk, and the rest will follow if it’s popular enough. Maybe.
I use Chromecast with android TV, it’s about perfect with jellyfin, and if I were to domit again I’d probably spend the little extra for the 4k model even though my TV is 1080p (more horsepower). You can run a different homescreen to somewhat degoogle it.
Probably not what you’re looking for given what you’ve lined up here, but I live and breathe with it every day and it’s great, and as an added benefit you can cast from a lot of services or websites as well.
If you don’t want ads creeping in everywhere, the only prebuilt option is appletv. otherwise you have to build it yourself :/
The aTV will give you the best experience when it comes to dark patterns. But just note, a new model is on the horizon, so hold out a little longer.
Not true, unless by “build yourself” you mean install Projectivy Launcher on any Android box that supports it.
What boxes support this then?
I run it on an NVIDIA Shield. Can’t speak to any others with certainty, but from a quick search, there are guides for installing on Fire Stick and ONN devices too.
I suspect it’ll run on just about any Android or Google TV device as long as the default launcher setting isn’t locked down, and even then you can probably enable it with a couple quick ADB commands.
LibreELEC on an old chromebook!
