Could JellyFin be the future?

[stuckless]

I recently stumbled on JellyFin, and while definately not a SageTV replacement, I wonder if it might be the future.

JellyFin is an Open Source fork of Emby. I guess Emby decided to go closed source.

Some of the frustrations of Plex is that you can't really customize it. Emby held some promise there, being open source, but then that changed... so maybe JellyFin is the way to go.

JellyFin does appear to support Tuners, Guide data, Live TV, etc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/...lyfin_vs_emby/
https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/1...mby-media.html
https://jellyfin.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

If you are on unRAID there are a couple Docker containers you can use to play with this.

It would be interesting to get some feedback on what others think.

[emveepee]

I like the concept of jellyfin being open source the main issue for me is the key Emby developers don't participate and it is a huge platform with several people involved. Emby development moves much faster then jellyfin too,

I wrote part of the NextPVR plugin and did the Emby port for NextPVR v5 and the Emby developers especially Luke where key in figuring out what I had to do since I know nothing about their plugin interface at all.

I haven't backported my v5 changes since I am not convinced there are enough jellyfin users out there at this point, I will see how that goes. For it to succeed you need developers and users.

Martin

[stuckless]

Yeah, I agree... Devs and users are key. That's why I'm wondering if perhaps moving to something like Jellyfin is the key, since, even as a new platform, they have way more developers than we do, but likely, right now, less users.

SageTV would become a pvr plugin in much the same way you integrated NextPVR. Not really my strong suit, but, that's my impression

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by emveepee

I wrote part of the NextPVR plugin and did the Emby port for NextPVR v5 and the Emby developers especially Luke where key in figuring out what I had to do since I know nothing about their plugin interface at all.
n

Maybe reading between the lines here, but was part of the difficulty the state of the documentation for the Emby plugin API? I haven't looked at it, so I don't know if it's good, bad, or other.

--John

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

Maybe reading between the lines here, but was part of the difficulty the state of the documentation for the Emby plugin API? I haven't looked at it, so I don't know if it's good, bad, or other.

Tuner plugins are slightly different from the regular plugin API which does have a nice swagger interface, but I would say the biggest issues for me

- trying to create a plugin that coexisted with the NextPVR v4 plugin
- total lack of understanding of the Emby interface
- figuring out the differences in the reccording rules

The API itself was ok, I am not found of Exception based errors I prefer handling return codes but that is a personal preference.


Martin

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Yeah, I agree... Devs and users are key. That's why I'm wondering if perhaps moving to something like Jellyfin is the key, since, even as a new platform, they have way more developers than we do, but likely, right now, less users.

SageTV would become a pvr plugin in much the same way you integrated NextPVR. Not really my strong suit, but, that's my impression

What jellyfin and Emby don't have is a Kodi PVR interface since they are like Plex designed to control the who media enivronment. Kodi is still my prime front end which is why NextPVR has a place.

From a SageTV and jellyin/Emby perspective I am not sure what that the plugin buys you. Like NextPVR, SageTV offers more tuner selection, but Emby has reasonable Silicon Dust and IPTV support which seem to be the key players now, and it has ok support for Hauppauge too so must users can probably just use the built in support.

Martin

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by emveepee

From a SageTV and jellyin/Emby perspective I am not sure what that the plugin buys you.

very true... just ditch sagetv and just use JellyFin (although I'd need hdpvr support in there)

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by stuckless

very true... just ditch sagetv and just use JellyFin (although I'd need hdpvr support in there)

How true. May old v4 setup had a Vista 32bit backend which isn't supported in NextPVR v5. I prefer firewire support, and HDPVR support with ac3 and that combination isn't available on many platforms.

Martin

[SHS]

All shouldn't jump to quick, Emby will get direct tv tuner
By the way you should check v5 of NextPVR Linux

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by SHS

All shouldn't jump to quick, Emby will get direct tv tuner
By the way you should check v5 of NextPVR Linux

This thread is about jellyfin (FOSS) and not the commercial Emby product. It is up to the community to see what tuners get added.

Martin

[SHS]

Originally Posted by emveepee

This thread is about jellyfin (FOSS) and not the commercial Emby product. It is up to the community to see what tuners get added.

Martin

Martin actual it not commercial product it still free but if want extra stuff that a diff story and be no diff then someone creating a jellyfin plug-in and sell it
Don't get ne wrong jellyfin is good spin off start

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by SHS

Martin actual it not commercial product it still free but if want extra stuff that a diff story and be no diff then someone creating a jellyfin plug-in and sell it

Currently Emby is free but the Live TV integration (except for recording importing) and advanced client support are not so basically. These features are what I expect SageTV users would migrate for. Besides now that Emby is closed source they can take away whatever free features they want (as they did with the NextPVR plugin) to entice people to purchase a premiere subscription.

Of note to SageTV users is the premiere subscription includes the Schedules Direct license in some countries so the lifetime plan is similar to the old SageTV license. This is also another reason that Emby might maintain a user lead over jellyfin.

Martin

[SHS]

Originally Posted by emveepee

Currently Emby is free but the Live TV integration (except for recording importing) and advanced client support are not so basically. These features are what I expect SageTV users would migrate for. Besides now that Emby is closed source they can take away whatever free features they want (as they did with the NextPVR plugin) to entice people to purchase a premiere subscription.

Of note to SageTV users is the premiere subscription includes the Schedules Direct license in some countries so the lifetime plan is similar to the old SageTV license. This is also another reason that Emby might maintain a user lead over jellyfin.

Martin

Yes exactly Live TV integration that what I refer to, If there plans work out well for them then there be no need for other 3rd party Live TV plug-in and it should get better integration, l hoping that it will be ever bit as good SageTV and it DVR features just a bit more modern in today day age with mobile & media device.

Yes sure those plug-in will be support just like yours.

In any case it be interesting in seeing what jellyfin become

[pjpjpjpj]

Am I misremembering or doesn't it require a "pay" codec to directly show MPG such as what most of America still sends OTA? Meaning any PVR that allowed live TV to be shown through it (and recorded it natively) would either need to transcode on the fly to some other format, or else charge money to help pay for use of those codecs?

As I said, I might have this all wrong, but I thought I read that here years ago....

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Am I misremembering or doesn't it require a "pay" codec to directly show MPG such as what most of America still sends OTA? Meaning any PVR that allowed live TV to be shown through it (and recorded it natively) would either need to transcode on the fly to some other format, or else charge money to help pay for use of those codecs?

As I said, I might have this all wrong, but I thought I read that here years ago....

The browser interface uses ffpeg for transcoding to h264 /aac in Emby and jellyfin.

Martin

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Am I misremembering or doesn't it require a "pay" codec to directly show MPG such as what most of America still sends OTA? Meaning any PVR that allowed live TV to be shown through it (and recorded it natively) would either need to transcode on the fly to some other format, or else charge money to help pay for use of those codecs?

As I said, I might have this all wrong, but I thought I read that here years ago....

I’m pretty sure the patent or whatever ran out about a year ago, so don’t have to pay royalties to use MPEG-2 decoders anymore. But, most modern software and hardware has moved on to newer and better codecs now, so don’t know how many companies will go back and add support even through it’s free now.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I’m pretty sure the patent or whatever ran out about a year ago, so don’t have to pay royalties to use MPEG-2 decoders anymore. But, most modern software and hardware has moved on to newer and better codecs now, so don’t know how many companies will go back and add support even through it’s free now.

But the issue is that OTA TV and (most) QAM, are MPEG-2 and will continue to be so for a long time, at least on the OTA side. So even though much of the world has moved on from MPEG-2 it is still a requirement for OTA content.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by wayner

But the issue is that OTA TV and (most) QAM, are MPEG-2 and will continue to be so for a long time, at least on the OTA side. So even though much of the world has moved on from MPEG-2 it is still a requirement for OTA content.

Exactly. My wife and kids still enjoy a lot of OTA content and our Sage system is the DVR for recording that, with playback via HD extenders. I would love to move from extenders to other sticks (Fire, Roku, whatever) that have other apps native right from the home screen, but if I were to leave Sage for another of these newer "media center" apps, it would still need to record and play OTA MPEG-2 on those devices. So I'm still sticking with Sage and putting extenders at all TVs.

I've toyed around a bit with Plex DVR since it works with my HDHRs, and I've considered trying Emby but haven't yet. Plex works and would be okay if we weren't used to Sage, but it's just not as slick as Sage and I can't bring myself to make the jump and retrain everyone in the house to use something that's not quite as good.

[wayner]

I agree 100% and the thing that I find lacking in pretty much all of the options to SageTV are the ability to skip around the file. Almost all of my use of Sage is for sports and I am constantly skipping commercial breaks, half times, timeouts, etc. Sage is awesome to skip around and most other options, including Plex and online streaming, are way inferior.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by wayner

I agree 100% and the thing that I find lacking in pretty much all of the options to SageTV are the ability to skip around the file. Almost all of my use of Sage is for sports and I am constantly skipping commercial breaks, half times, timeouts, etc. Sage is awesome to skip around and most other options, including Plex and online streaming, are way inferior.

And if you go to the list of available Plugins for SageTV, you will have many more reasons for it being superior to all others.