How to begin setting up a media center?
I have 16TB NAS dedicated to storing TV shows. It is just a cabinet with ryzen 2600 and no graphics card. I have installed openmediavault in it to access it via smb to other devices. I am an absolute noob in setting up a server. Please tell me how I should go on about turning it into a media consumption machine.
P. S: I usually use VLC on android and MPV on linux to consume the media.
I would recommend setting up jellyfin as it has a nice streaming interface and it's pretty straightforward to set up
Seconded. It will work for your Linux/Android use case and has apps for some smart TV devices, if that's useful.
Nice interface and Jellyfin in one sentence, my heart. I get recommending it based on it being FOSS, but for the interface?
it's honestly pretty good I haven't had an issue and the overall experience has been awesome
Jellyfin or Plex are great front ends that can help organize all your media.
I personally use Plex, but have heard Jellyfin is comparable 😀
Plex is way harder to set up. Their UX is a mess and hasn’t changed in 20 years. All carried over from its chaotic days as an open source project.
Jellyfin can be challenging at times, but it’s a much more modern take on the premise, as mirrored by its UX.
None of this information is accurate
Hard? I did it really easily a few years ago. The hard part is naming everything correctly, not setting it up.
With Plex it also sets up remote access automatically which I don't believe Jellyfin does.
Plex setup is literally just installing it on a machine. It took me an hour because I decided to move it to a different machine after I set it up.
Lol, plex and hard to set up... Starting a docker container really is hard. And Jellyfin and a modern UI? Jellyfin where setting up HW decoding basically takes a degree? Come on man... Really?
Plex has a way better interface, especially on the client side
This is a guide someone on Reddit gave me years ago. Hope this will be helpful
I imagine most of your integrated torrent searches involve "linux distros" in 1080p and 4k. I'm a step above that because I have not even touched the qbittorrent app in months. It works automatically. An *Arr stack is a collection of software that tracks, adds, searches, organizes and downloads your media collection. My stack consists of Radarr - For tracking and managing movies. Sonarr - For tracking and managing series and episodes. Lidarr - For tracking and managing music albums, artists and songs. Readarr - For tracking and managing books. Prowlarr - Containing torrent tracker information to automatically add to the above 4 apps. Ombi / Overseer - Requesting media - Movies, Series, Books, Music qBittorrent - Downloading stuff. All this runs on a "home server" as Docker containers. Thy all have web interfaces that you can access, even qBittorrent. Your workflow is as follows: Say, you want to watch a movie that comes out in 3 months. You go to Ombi and put in a request for that movie. Ombi forwards the request to Radarr where the movie has its metadata downloaded and analyzed from IMDB and TMDB. Radarr tracks its release and once that happens it starts searching torrent trackers for a torrent meeting your search criteria like size, quality, etc. To search torrent trackers you need special queries that are handled by Prowlarr and distributed to all other *arr apps. Once a suitable torrent is found, it's sent to qBittorrent where it's downloaded automatically. qBit plays very nicely with the *arrs. After downloading, the file is moved, renamed, pampered by Radarr in the media library. A movie is no big deal but imagine you are downloading and renaming a series with 9 seasons. You can top that off with something like Jellyfin (like Plex) and you have your own homegrown Netflix. It sounds very complicated but it isn't. Eventually you have to go to Ombi to request and to Jellyfin to consume. And it really pays off in the long run. For example The Witcher S02E01 leaked a few days before its official release date on Netflix. I found out about it when I opened Jellyfin and saw a new episode waiting for me. It's set-and-forget.
First, do you need it for streamig to different devices (phones tablets, TV), or do you only need it for one device (e.g. the TV).
For the first option I'd choose Jellyfin, for the second option I'd choose Kodi.
Then decide on what device you would like to run it. This also depends on the first option. I can recommend NVidia Shield Pro. I've also run Kodi on a Raspberry Pi 4 before, sometimes this ran a bit laggy.
Finally, look for tutorials on YouTube.
Been pretty happy with emby also!
Plex is far better than jellyfin at the moment. Hopefully that will change at some point.
Shhh, best not to mention Plex on Lemmy. The jellyfin mafia will come down and tell you repeatedly how amazing Jellyfin is and why we should give up our lifetime plex pass' to use an inferior product cause its free and open source.
Setup jellyfin and pick up a 4k Google Chromecast for your TV. Then use the jellyfin client app on that. Nice and easy.
For sailing the high seas/acquiring more Linux ISOs, get a torrent-client, qbitorent is probably the most popular (and depending on where you are a vpn-subscription), then set it up with the arrs:
As others have mentioned, Jellyfin and Plex are good and pretty easy to setup. I prefer the minimalism of Jellyfin’s UI, but you’ll have more features with Plex, some features regardless of whether you want them. Emby is a similar option.
Those services running on your server will give you a nice interface and will handle the streaming from the server. You’ll need to do some setup to allow yourself to access the services on your home network either through a web GUI or the IP of your server via an app, and if you want to access the media remotely that will take a little more work to set up something like nginx proxy manager and a domain for remote access.
I recommend DB Tech’s videos on YouTube for guiding you through the process as a noob. His content is straight forward, just use the pause button if he’s moving too fast. He has been using OpenMediaVault for years (though just changed his setup) so his guides should line up quite a bit with what you’re doing.
If you want to play the files back on your TV…get an Nvidia Shield and run Kodi. Or an AppleTV and run Infuse. Both can connect directly to your network file share and build a nice looking library UI. No need for an intermediate server such as Plex or Jellyfin. But give those a try if you want.
oh boy ... you posted a question I'm not sure you were ready to hear an answer to .... the REAL answer is ... you're going to have to learn a lot and get more acquainted with a LOT of tech to get this to work like the sub is going to want you to.
Even tho I'm an infrastructure engineer. I'll play devils advocate.
The easy answer ... is to pay for a streaming service of your choice instead.
Otherwise, just setup a
Jellyfin or Plex media server on the NAS.
To view content, there are several options. Both servers have client apps for various platforms, this usually provides the most features and best experience. Another option is using a browser, both come with an integrated web server. The third option is through DLNA, which is a protocol for media streaming that many players already support, but it may be a bit more limited.
I would look into setting up Jellyfin as others said, there's multiple guides everywhere but you will need some knowledge for setting up a nice URL in case you want to access it from the internet, that's when you want to search for things such as free ddns... But it's quite a lot by then maybe
DDNS is only required for when you want to share it with other people. For accessing your own stuff from anywhere, there's tailscale. I set aside 30 minutes to read into it and set it up, but found myself with a working VPN between my phone and PC after just 3 minutes. And it's completely free for this use case.
I wouldn't know how to access Jellyfin through tailscale on a Android tv that is not in the same network, and that wouldn't necessarily be sharing.
I think the most relevant thing is that using DDNS implies exposing to the internet which for many self hosters is a big no no. As well if you only want one or two machines , maybe tailscale can be a very easy way to setup.... I guess it boils down to the OPs needs.