Here’s my conundrum, I’m using an old PC to watch movies and shows. It works well enough using the regular file browser and video player but it is not powerful enough to run jellyfin as server and client.
I guess that what I’m looking for is a pretty browser.
I tried searching for media library managers, most results were for configuring jellyfin so when I excluded the word server all the results where music managers and dvd collection catalogues.
Jellyfin has been fairly clunky for me too.
But I don’t think you’re going to gain much just by ditching the media player in jellyfin. I feel like the overhead is scanning, scraping, and displaying the media (ie. the browser). Then playing the media is just loading a player that you would need anyway. You might be able to hook up an external player but I doubt that would help much.
Personally I use Kodi instead but I think you’ll run into the same issues there.
The problem probably isn’t the software but more the 15+ year old hardware. It’s more suited for like a PiHole than a media center.
Yes, the more I look into it the more convinced I am that it is time to retire that old thing and buy a new one. I guess it will be a good excuse to get a new PC for gaming and relegate the current one to media player duties.