Jellyfin/YT/Twitch TV box (Raspberry pi 4)
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I had a Rapsberri Pi 4 (4GB) laying around and installed kodi/libreelec to use it with my TV.
I need it to do 3, maybe 4 things, but the experience was rather underwhelming.
- Jellyfin client
I run a jellyfin server on my NAS. The jellyfin add-on needs several seconds or even a minute plus to load the content of big folders.
Jellycon has a different approach, but doesn't let me browse folders, which is a must for me (I use pinchflat to download some videos from YouTube channels. They are organized in folders)
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YouTube
Ideally I would love a freetube client for watching one off videos or finding a video on a certain topic. The YouTube add-on requires API access, sadly. -
Twitch
The add-on works great. -
Remote
I have a IR Mini Keyboard that works great with Kodi/libreelec
I was considering installing a lightweight Linux distro and installing freetube and a browser for twitch and jellyfin.
Does anyone use similar hardware? Is there a better solution for my use case?
(If there is a better affordable hardware solution, I'm interested as well)
kodi and its derivatives are not something you should be using. it's shit software on so many levels and we should burn it in the deepest volcanos we got.
try one of these:
-
run lineageOS TV (konstakang images) on it and install regular ATV apps for the services mentioned. so, like googletv except there's no spying and ads and shit.
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create a normal linux box that has a DLNA sink e.g. using macast. there's no remote control, you use your android/iOS device to send it stuff, like movie from Jellyfin or a youtube video, and it plays it back and allows some control (pause, play, rew/ff, etc)
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dedicated Jellyfin box; same as 2) but boots right into jellyfin client. it can be run in TV mode where it reacts to only up/down/left/right/enter/back, via gamepad or remote controller. if yours isn't recognised, you can emulate it with InputRemapper.
not familiar with how twitch does stuff.
you also have the option of installing a normal raspi distro and then using a wireless keyboard and mouse/touchpad to run it, but I am of the opinion that once the device gets placed by the TV, it loses all keyboard and mouse privileges and should only be operated via the TV's remote.
- Jellyfin client
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Thanks for the info.
I used the piped addon for youtube.
I have been using piped and invidious in the past as well, but with youtube cracking down more and more I have trouble finding usable instances at all. Hence my switch to freetube, which mostly works so far.
Ah, I host my own instance of piped, that solves a problem
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kodi and its derivatives are not something you should be using. it's shit software on so many levels and we should burn it in the deepest volcanos we got.
try one of these:
-
run lineageOS TV (konstakang images) on it and install regular ATV apps for the services mentioned. so, like googletv except there's no spying and ads and shit.
-
create a normal linux box that has a DLNA sink e.g. using macast. there's no remote control, you use your android/iOS device to send it stuff, like movie from Jellyfin or a youtube video, and it plays it back and allows some control (pause, play, rew/ff, etc)
-
dedicated Jellyfin box; same as 2) but boots right into jellyfin client. it can be run in TV mode where it reacts to only up/down/left/right/enter/back, via gamepad or remote controller. if yours isn't recognised, you can emulate it with InputRemapper.
not familiar with how twitch does stuff.
you also have the option of installing a normal raspi distro and then using a wireless keyboard and mouse/touchpad to run it, but I am of the opinion that once the device gets placed by the TV, it loses all keyboard and mouse privileges and should only be operated via the TV's remote.
Did they fix harwarde decoding on the Konstakang build? Last I tried 4k content was unplayable.
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I can recomend https://github.com/firsttris/plugin.video.sendtokodi for youtube .. you can share the videos from your phone but you have to deactivate the youtube-addon .. the advantage is you can share videos from a lot of other sites to .. there is a list of site that work with this addon on github
as backup you can try youtube for trailers from the slyguy-repo .. this addon works without api
https://www.matthuisman.nz/2023/11/youtube-for-trailers-kodi-add-on.html?m=1
Cool, so this puts yt-dlp on Kodi and downloads videos before watching them. Hopefully this works better for older hardware than the YouTube plugin, which I think has to use more computationally expensive methods to stream from YouTube directly with the cat and mouse game between yt and them.
Do you know, does it keep the video files it downloads, or does it delete them automatically?
-
kodi and its derivatives are not something you should be using. it's shit software on so many levels and we should burn it in the deepest volcanos we got.
try one of these:
-
run lineageOS TV (konstakang images) on it and install regular ATV apps for the services mentioned. so, like googletv except there's no spying and ads and shit.
-
create a normal linux box that has a DLNA sink e.g. using macast. there's no remote control, you use your android/iOS device to send it stuff, like movie from Jellyfin or a youtube video, and it plays it back and allows some control (pause, play, rew/ff, etc)
-
dedicated Jellyfin box; same as 2) but boots right into jellyfin client. it can be run in TV mode where it reacts to only up/down/left/right/enter/back, via gamepad or remote controller. if yours isn't recognised, you can emulate it with InputRemapper.
not familiar with how twitch does stuff.
you also have the option of installing a normal raspi distro and then using a wireless keyboard and mouse/touchpad to run it, but I am of the opinion that once the device gets placed by the TV, it loses all keyboard and mouse privileges and should only be operated via the TV's remote.
How is this the first time I'm hearing about a lineage TV OS?!
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-
I had a Rapsberri Pi 4 (4GB) laying around and installed kodi/libreelec to use it with my TV.
I need it to do 3, maybe 4 things, but the experience was rather underwhelming.
- Jellyfin client
I run a jellyfin server on my NAS. The jellyfin add-on needs several seconds or even a minute plus to load the content of big folders.
Jellycon has a different approach, but doesn't let me browse folders, which is a must for me (I use pinchflat to download some videos from YouTube channels. They are organized in folders)
-
YouTube
Ideally I would love a freetube client for watching one off videos or finding a video on a certain topic. The YouTube add-on requires API access, sadly. -
Twitch
The add-on works great. -
Remote
I have a IR Mini Keyboard that works great with Kodi/libreelec
I was considering installing a lightweight Linux distro and installing freetube and a browser for twitch and jellyfin.
Does anyone use similar hardware? Is there a better solution for my use case?
(If there is a better affordable hardware solution, I'm interested as well)
When I was considering what to run, I found LineageOS TV provided the best experience for being able to get all the other TV apps, and even Jackbox Games. Many TV apps offer some content free with ads, which can be taken care of. Android TV interface only shows Android TV apps in the main app drawer though.
I loved Debian with KDE Big Screen on the pi for the customizability. You can run scripts like fetching tv schedules right on it (or you can just do this on your jellyfin server), and generally you have more customizability. I run PWAs as well via Firefox. I found Steam Link difficult to get working unless on Buster or earlier.
For remote, I tried out all the ones on Amazon, and found USB connection to be most reliable, and there's one that has a keyboard on the reverse, and an option to do voice control from the remote that's a major
- Jellyfin client
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I have much more powerful hardware than you but Jellyfin shouldnāt take more than a few seconds to load directories.
That has been my experience as well with accessing it via the web interface. I read up on the kodi addons a bit more. As I understand it the jellyfin addon integrates the jellyfin library and has to sync it. I think this causes the delay for me. I think I will give Jellycon another try, since it accesses the libraries themselves. I will take a look at my media management and refine the folder structure to make it work.
TBH I find Jellyfin works best with media that can be scraped or that Iām willing to create nfo files for.
Metadata is actually an aspect I have little trouble with. There are solutions for TV and movies and pinchflat actually provides metadata for the youtube videos in a format jellyfin can use.
FWIW while my hardware serving Jellyfin is more powerful, my hardware accessing is not much more, I forgot to mention that detail
I typically use a ugoos android tv box flashed with coreelec. I believe itās more powerful than a pi for this application but itās not particularly powerful.
I use Jellyfin for kodi over Jellycon. Iām not saying one is better than the other, Iāve never tried jellycon, but that is what my experience is based on. In my experience initial library scans are very lengthy (building db from scratch) with the size of my library, 20-30 minutes. This never is necessary at this point though and was only needed because I was testing something for coreelecs nightlies that required me to trash my db a lot. Typically I login and it updates within a few seconds, even if Iāve recently had a somewhat hefty update. It does help that the ugoos has fairly speedy emmc here - my initial testing running coreelec off of the sd card this was a bottleneck. Flashing to internal emmc and enabling hs400 mode made this notably quicker
Pinchflat is interesting! Thanks! I have been looking for a better YouTube archival tool
IMO kodi plugins are very hit/miss. This is why I prefer the setup I have where storage nas runs Jellyfin then flashed android box runs coreelec. Kodi and Jellyfin both have IPTV plugins, for example, but they are terrible. So when I want to use IPTV I boot to the degoogled android side and use tivimate, which is much more stable and convenient. I also have an APK for youtube there with adfree and sponsor block integrated. There is a build of freetube for android but unfortunately I cannot get it to work on the box. I donāt watch a ton of youtube though
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kodi and its derivatives are not something you should be using. it's shit software on so many levels and we should burn it in the deepest volcanos we got.
try one of these:
-
run lineageOS TV (konstakang images) on it and install regular ATV apps for the services mentioned. so, like googletv except there's no spying and ads and shit.
-
create a normal linux box that has a DLNA sink e.g. using macast. there's no remote control, you use your android/iOS device to send it stuff, like movie from Jellyfin or a youtube video, and it plays it back and allows some control (pause, play, rew/ff, etc)
-
dedicated Jellyfin box; same as 2) but boots right into jellyfin client. it can be run in TV mode where it reacts to only up/down/left/right/enter/back, via gamepad or remote controller. if yours isn't recognised, you can emulate it with InputRemapper.
not familiar with how twitch does stuff.
you also have the option of installing a normal raspi distro and then using a wireless keyboard and mouse/touchpad to run it, but I am of the opinion that once the device gets placed by the TV, it loses all keyboard and mouse privileges and should only be operated via the TV's remote.
I'm not very familiar with Kodi, why do you recommend against it?
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-
Cool, so this puts yt-dlp on Kodi and downloads videos before watching them. Hopefully this works better for older hardware than the YouTube plugin, which I think has to use more computationally expensive methods to stream from YouTube directly with the cat and mouse game between yt and them.
Do you know, does it keep the video files it downloads, or does it delete them automatically?
I don't know .. i do not realize a download .. I only watch the video I wan't i think it is only in th cache ..
-
I had a Rapsberri Pi 4 (4GB) laying around and installed kodi/libreelec to use it with my TV.
I need it to do 3, maybe 4 things, but the experience was rather underwhelming.
- Jellyfin client
I run a jellyfin server on my NAS. The jellyfin add-on needs several seconds or even a minute plus to load the content of big folders.
Jellycon has a different approach, but doesn't let me browse folders, which is a must for me (I use pinchflat to download some videos from YouTube channels. They are organized in folders)
-
YouTube
Ideally I would love a freetube client for watching one off videos or finding a video on a certain topic. The YouTube add-on requires API access, sadly. -
Twitch
The add-on works great. -
Remote
I have a IR Mini Keyboard that works great with Kodi/libreelec
I was considering installing a lightweight Linux distro and installing freetube and a browser for twitch and jellyfin.
Does anyone use similar hardware? Is there a better solution for my use case?
(If there is a better affordable hardware solution, I'm interested as well)
I just installed a port of AndroidTV on mine and then changed over to an android tv box because they have a remote that just works etc. Connected to our surround sound system>projector it is just easy to do. I don't even bother with plex anymore as the NAS box just serves files over ethernet/wifi and the box can, if needed, just download the file. You can then, of course install apps on android and do it that way if needed
- Jellyfin client
