Are mini stick PCs practical to set up as a media player, eg with jellyfin? Some advantages are the small form factor that plugs straight into the HDMI port, and flexibility/privacy vs using a dongle from a shitty company like amazon/google/roku.

Are there any things to watch out for to ensure it has enough compute power and hardware decoding? I just want it to play HD video with a jellyfin app/browser page.

I’m assuming it’s no big deal to install Linux on (x86 hardware?), do you need to watch out for specific device support? Thanks

  • horus_son_of_isis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    If you’re talking about running a jellyfin client, not a server, get an android tv box. I have two tiers of ONN android boxes, 4k and 4k pro. I installed projectivy and smartube, as well as a client for navidrome and jellyfin. NO ADS EVER. I’m head over heels. The jellyfin client on the 4k was weird for a while, but I disabled a bunch of metadata plugins on the server and it straightened up.

    I suspect as long as you’re just playing things off the server and there is no transcoding or whatnot going on, you should be fine.

      • horus_son_of_isis@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        I hear you on that. Just sharing my experience with this new toy I really like. Someday we’ll be able to flash these android machines to a google-free OS, and that will be wonderful. Oh and it plays games in an emulator everything up to PSP.

        Edit: I think Kodi will run on practically anything, and there’s a Jellyfin addon (i think), but I don’t think you get the nice jellyfin UI with it.