this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Specifically I'm wondering about the TV frontend UI. Presumably most people are going to be using an android tv box like fire tv or chromecast? Something else?

I recently picked up a new chromecast 4k that has the "Google TV" OS on it and... I'm having a hell of a time coming up with a UI that looks similar to the stock one (with movie recommendations, up next, my watchlist, etc) but that hooks into piracy streaming services.

For launchers I found projectivy, but I noticed that the "channels" feature which pulls in that sort of thing is remarkably limited. Streaming-wise I've got stremio and cloudstream, and only stremio lets me pull in my library into projectivy. Which is okay but I can't get that synced with trakt or getting recommendations; it all has to be managed from stremio.

whereas cloudstream doesn't really have any connectivity at all. There's a few streaming services that somewhat pull things in but it's not great. Netflix doesn't seem to hook into it, nor plex. It ends up being better to just use the stock home and manually launching into stremio/cloudstream when I want them.

Surely there has to be a better way to do this? The stock home screen is nice with free live tv, movie recommendations that link into various paid streaming services, etc. I'd just like to hook in something like stremio, plex, etc. instead, but that seems impossible?

What exactly do y'all do for your setups? Trying to manage my google play watchlist/likes independently of trackt, and then also managing my stremio library separately from both just feels like hell. I end up having to take mental note of the stuff I see on the home screen and manually searching it up.

The live tv channels that the stock homescreen has is seemingly not replicated anywhere else which is a bit disappointing. I saw the old android tv menu get really close to what I'm after, but I can't manage to get it working on my newer chromecast. The menu installs, but the channel feature doesn't work, making it pointless.

Is there a better way?

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Running jellyfin and *arr servers on promox running on a small form factor . For the tv i’m using a roku stick with jellyfin channel.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Similar but I'm running either Nvidia Shield or Google TV. I use Kodi with the Jellyfin for Kodi plugin as the front-end. It's great.

[–] brian 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Has the Jellyfin app improved for Roku in recent years? Last I tried it, maybe 2 years ago, it was near unusable from a UI perspective

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It is certainly usable. Though for whatever reason the series "invasion" from apple tv gave it fits. But everything else I have watched on it was fine. I've only had mine setup for a few months though. Roku in one room, tivo stick (android) in another. The tivo stick handled invasion. Both needed some minor tuning though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah it's the weakest part of the setup on a Chromecast TV running the android app. Works really well mostly though the interface could look slicker. There must be hardware deciding unavailable for some stuff because the odd bit of media is ultrasluggish.

[–] Sethayy 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Depends on the hardware you give it I'm pretty sure, a later gpu will support all codecs but older ones might not be able to encode/decode even h256

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I've got the 4k one with Google TV and it still doesn't have hardware deciding for some of my collection. Not much, maybe 1%.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

thanks, do you have any guide or additional info on setup?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You will have to install proxmox on a computer ( that is an os you will have to create a bootable USB key for that ) here the website to check that out : https://proxmox.com/en/ And all my server are lxc, i launch all the lxc’s with those open source script : https://tteck.github.io/Proxmox/

Just search for the jellyfin one ans the *arr that you think you will need .

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Plex with Apple TVs. This requires a lot of transcoding but I have dedicated hardware.

I've tried many alternatives over many years but they all eventually annoy me. I've been doing this long enough to know eventually something better than Plex will come along but that day has yet to come.

I don't have any streaming services. They are all terrible and I prefer to put that money towards more hardware, mostly hard drives since my library is of the data hoarding style, ever increasing.

My setup is entirely automated via various watch lists.

IMDb watch lists and Plex watchlists as well as various lists setup to retrieve based on cast / director involvement that feed into Radarr and Sonarr allow titles to be added from my phone.

The added benefit of a my automation setup is that I can lose a hard drive and the system will self heal.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Would you mind providing a bit of detail about the Apple TV transcoding thing?

I’m new to the plex server space and I’ve been working with a bit of a similar setup, hosting off of an Nvidia shield but streaming it to an Apple TV.

So far I’ve had some stuttering problems in plex that seems to have existed for awhile with HDR content. What gives?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Stremio + torrentio + Real Debrid
Works like a champ on Chromecast

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I like how nobody bothered to read the post and actually answer OP's question...

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Jellyfin + arrs

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Chromecast with Google TV Stremio + Torrentio with real debrid

Changed the button for Netflix on the remote to open stremio and now I just hit one button and boom... everything I want to watch is in front of me. All for $3/month.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would also like to know how to remap the buttons.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

It's an app called button mapper

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have the exact same setup. How do you remap that button

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

An app called button mapper. Available on play store for TV. Just search for it like any other app

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Shield Pro on the TVs, but they're starting to show their age. If no one puts a powerful chip into a new Android box in the next year or so, I'll probably move to AppleTV units. I wish there was an alternative, but nothing else has the horsepower that they do.

[–] vulgarcynic 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have super high hopes we'll see a 3rd gen Shield TV around the time of the new Switch launch. IIRC, the og Shields and Switch share the same Nvidia Chips.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I really hope so. We've been extremely happy with ours. And, IIRC you're right. I think the Switch has a slightly newer revision, but it's almost entirely the same chip.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

It’s a shame that AppleTV doesnt support TrueHD atmos. That seems to be the one feature that the Shield stands apart on, although the new model Firestick now support it, too.

I tried Kodi on Firestick 4K and the whole experience is super clunky compared to the AppleTV.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Show their age how? My 2015 pro is still awesome on GF Experience v8.x with GFN, Kodi and SmartTube. Installed an SSD a few years back and breathed new life into it.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

I'm old school. Qbittorrent on the computer, hdmi lead running to the TV

Python for the search function on Qbittorrent

Though, reading this thread, I do pay for realdebrid and I clearly don't have a clue how to use it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Synology NAS ---> Plex Media Server VM ---> TV, Chromecast, Roku TV (which supports a lot of formats w/o encoding), Other devices

Yes I know Plex is getting a lot of crap but it still works and the encoding support is better than Jellyfin. I have Jellyfin ready to go if this ever changes but I am a happy Plex Pass customer.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Jellyfin on my Synology NAS with all the extensions to get me subs and metadata

Using on Findroid changing media playback to MPV in settings and using respective Jellyfin native desktop clients on Ubuntu and Arch

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ty for the heads up on Findroid!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah with the mpv player integration, you can play a lot more media codecs and subtitles work better if they haven't been working in the normal jellyfin app.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Looks like it's coming to Android TV soon too!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have an Nvidia shield on the TV. The main media app is Kodi.

Backend I have Plex (also used for remote and and phone access)

For getting content I use the *arr stack

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Ah, this is what my brother is doing I think. I used to be into kodi but it's so clunky. The plex+*arr stack seems cozy for delayed streaming (mark what to watch, watch it later) but does it end up working for streaming? I was also under the impression it's not that great if you lack usenet?

Does it do recommendations? Every time I've tried getting into kodi it was pretty clunky/slow/etc. Hence my desire to get my setup on home screen then launch directly into a stream. Kinda sounds like everyone just launches into an app first.

[–] vulgarcynic 3 points 11 months ago

For recommendations I use Overseerr. It provides a great web front end for requesting to Radarr and Sonarr as well as provides links to what's trending on the major streaming platforms and TV networks.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Beelink mini PC running windows with Kodi and real debrid with a VPN. Outputting 4k through my receiver. Wireless keyboard and a Sofabaton U2 remote.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

AppleTV 4K + Infuse app.

Streaming from my local media server.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Someone is gonna bust my balls but whatever. We have an Alienware R8 hooked up to a 20 year old Sony flatscreen tv and an LG sound bar. No fucking about at all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I use a small form factor PC running Linux with KODI as my media player. I have a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it as well as an IR media center remote.

[–] can 3 points 11 months ago

Stremio on firestick with torrentio addon (and optional debrid)

[–] Codilingus 3 points 11 months ago

Odroid N2+ with CoreElec/Kodi

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I have a shit spyware android box with Emby installed, use Emby server (lifetime sub) i use it on my phone too. Have been usingn Emby for about 5 years with 0 issues. Have even brought my server across 3 or 4 installs

My Emby server is also my main PC so to preserve my SSD's i use a ram disk to store the transcoding data

Emby has lots of plugins for statistics so I dont bother with Trackt but does have a telrackt tv pkugin for auto syncing

Jellyfinn is the same base software as Emby but ive never used it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

100% Roku. Best Plex interface.

Android Plex interface sucks, and don't even get started on the abortion that the IOS Plex interface is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I have a roku tv and it's kinda the reason I ended up buying a chromecast. Other than paid apps and plex it seems entirely useless for convenient piracy streaming. It also doesn't pull anything into the home menu, and sticks to app launching. Not really great.

Plex is nice but I haven't leaned into it entirely yet. I'm not sure it can end up replicating the streaming experience? But it's nice as a media server.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Jellyfin running in Firefox on ArchLinux ARM on a Radxa Rock5b SBC.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I went on a deployment, got a nice gaming laptop for that. When I got home back to my desktop, I basically had no need for it so I hooked it up to my living room TV. At first I just played some controller friendly games on it, but now I use it as the entire media center with Stremio and qbittorrent and the likes. I use unified remote to have my phone as the remote.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

*arrs / Jellyfin on a custom NAS running unRAID

For my daily driver tv, it's an android TV with the projektivity launcher (maybe spelled that wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's a k in there). It is a huge improvement over the stock launcher.

I'm also working on a media TV for my wife that's actually a NUC running mint. Suboptimal distro choice but I want her to be able to use it as a desktop if she needs. On top of that is flex launcher to launch Jellyfin, YouTube, steam link, etc.

I had tried to make KDE bigscreen work but just could not get installed for the life of me.

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