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.
I guess you meant something to act as a remote desktop? Something lightweight better than a remote desktop for your use case is to setup a FTP server or a samba share. You will then use some media player client to read from there
No, the other way around, something to work locally. I can’t reach that PC with wifi or ethernet, so I have a big HDD attached to it.
Right now I using it like a regular desktop PC, ile browser and vlc, it is fine but it would be nicer if I could a user interface more similar to what you get with jellyfin since I’m using from a sofa.I tried jellyfin but it is an old PC it can’t run all the services at once.
Oh ok, the first thing that comes to my mind is Kodi. Depending your pc it might be a bit slow but that should work.
Edit: are you on linux or windows? If windows, you should really consider linux. Old pc comes back to life with linux as it needs way less ressources than windows
I’m on linux. That old PC is a refurbished HP Compaq 8000 I bought for 40 euros I don’t know how many years ago when it was already old.
I’m aware that at this point I’m asking too much out of that poor thing but it kept me thinking if there was a way to get just the interface of one of those media servers as a way to browse then open the file with the default player.
You should really try Kodi. There are a ton of alternative theme options for it and the video player built into it can play anything
