Is it a bad idea to use a laptop as a Jellyfin media server? Is it far better to use a desktop for that?
@ike Thanks. By the way, do you use an external USB-drive for data? Or is the SD card in the Raspberry Pi enough for your memory needs? Or anything else?
@hehemrin I use an external 1TB SSD via USB.
I did have to fuss with the streaming settings quite a bit to get acceptable performance. When I rip my DVDs, I also transcode to the appropriate resolution. When I watch a movie on the mobile app, there is about 10-15 seconds of buffering.
For music, streaming in mp3 or flac is just fine and no optimization is needed.
@hehemrin Here are the settings I use on the transcoding menu, which works well enough for me:
@ike Thanks! Is that Jellyfin or something else? I haven't really considered a Raspberry Pi for this. But seems as it is an option or a starting point to explore how it works and upgrade eventually.
@hehemrin Yeah this is jellyfin. I expect that if you are running on even a semi-recent laptop, you will have a lot more processing power than my raspberry pi and better UX with streaming higher bitrate media.
@maurirope @hehemrin I think I did once. I think I changed it back when I was on my local home network vs traveling and then forgot to change it back to Fast. Good point.
@hehemrin I love laptop servers. I run some, even. Two things, though.
One, if you need extended high CPU usage, you'll murder the fan. Laptops are best for things that just need to idle 99% of the time.
Two, consider ECC RAM, which I've found much more useful than advertised. It's harder to find a laptop with that.
@PKL Thanks. ECC RAM memory for error correction is indeed not anything I have thought of. It's something I have to learn more about.
@hehemrin I got some because the ZFS people scared the bejeezus out of me, but after running a bunch of stuff with and without, the difference in stability and lack of mysterious errors is totally worth the premium in my opinion.
@hehemrin Whatever works for you. Low power consumption and built-in battery can be beneficial 👍
@milosz Thanks! Yes, I also think low-power is an advantage for laptop. Although a desktop feels as most natural choice. Now when I have read some other responses, I may try a Raspberry Pi first so I at least can get an experience. And then maybe upgrade when I find a suitable surplus machine. Thanks for your response!
@hehemrin Probably depends on what you are serving, how many users, etc.
Im using a Raspberry Pi from 2014 to serve music and 480p movies to my phone.