A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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If you're happy with the Roku hardware and you're going to cancel all your other streaming services, why not just firewall block the Roku from reaching out of your local network?
If you do that, Jellyfin will still work fine, and you won't have the ability to get posted ads or anything else from the Roku, so it'll just become a Jellyfin box.
I've taken this approach, sometimes these boxes will act up when they can't phone home. Definitely worth trying though.
Worth that at least before you start looking at different hardware.
Otherwise, it's the same thing if you have a smart TV, download the Jellyfin app, and then just completely stop it from being able to connect anywhere else.
Have you tried it with a Roku? My pi.hole blocks most things, but I haven't yet tried to completely block it from the Internet. In the past, I've had to allow some domains through my pi.hole or things would be completely broken, but that hasn't happened in a while...
I suppose I'd have to occasionally unblock it to get updates to the jellyfin app, which is doable.
AppleTV connected via Ethernet.
You’re chasing a unicorn with your requirements.
This ^
Simple, no ads, and handles HDR super well
And the Ethernet port is actually gigabit.
We have a couple Apple TVs. As much as I dislike the walled garden, they are very good for what they are.
For my parents, I got a $150 N100 mini PC (tiny little thing), installed Bazzite, installed Jellyfin, and got the Pepper Jobs W10 Gyro remote. You have to configure Jellyfin to know it’s running on a TV and to accept keyboard input (the remote acts like a keyboard), but then everything works great. It’s a little over your budget, with the added remote.
Excellent - thanks for the remote recommendation, it's one thing I've been struggling to find.
Not sure I like the gyro idea - I had a gyro presentation mouse in the past. Worked well, but how do your parents like the gyro element?
They don’t use it unless my dad is watching a perfectly legal sports stream in the browser. It works really well though. I have 3 of those remotes, cause I love them.
If you don't want ads creeping in everywhere, the only prebuilt option is appletv. otherwise you have to build it yourself :/
I use the ONN 4K Pro and the ProjectIvy launcher. You can completely hide the standard Android TV OS launcher and its ads. Button Mapper is another good app to have on Android boxes. The remote is full of app-specific buttons that I've either disabled or remapped to alternative apps
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flar2.homebutton
I have no idea which codecs are supported.
This is my exact setup. The upgrade from the smart TV was night and day. Apps load instantly and Jellyfin works great. Most importantly the remote is easy to use and can control the TV.
I second this setup.
I have 3 ONN sticks and they do the job. Great for the price. Just sideload Kodi, new launcher, remap buttons.
I even paid for button mapper. Totally worth it.
I second the AppleTV recommendation based on your disgust with the Roku UI ads, I am completely on your side there, but my similar search has bought me to AppleTV.
I currently run Amazon Fire Sticks which also have UI ads but my pihole is catching most of them and it’s dirt cheap with h.265 support. Plus it runs various hacked apps like TVMob, Cinema, and Cyberflix. That’s what keeps me from moving to an AppleTV or an n100 box already.
How good is Jellyfin on AppleTV? My understanding was the app was a bit lacking...
Swiftfin is the official Apple TV jellyfin app. Swiftfin is great on iOS, but hasn’t been updated on Apple TV for a while. It also lacks a lot of polish and features but it is being worked on. There should be an update soon.
I’ve been using infuse on Apple TV. Infuse isn’t open source and needs a subscription to watch most 4k hdr content. I think it’s worth it if Swiftfin gets an update soon.
Apple TV is definitely a better experience compared to Samsung and Android. Apps are nicer and there isn’t any ads, privacy controls and privacy statements are much better. Recommended content can also be disabled and only shows when your hovering over the relevant app.
Use SwiftFin app instead on Apple TV, but better than the Jellyfin app.
Oh I haven’t made the leap yet due to the jailbreak apps but I’ve seen read that Jellyfin is decent on AppleTV, about as good as anywhere else. Probably not as polished as you’d expect on AppleTV but serviceable. I’ll update if I end up buying one!
Any guide you recommend for tvmob, cinema, and cyberflix?
This worked best for me for Linux ISOs on my fire stick: https://www.firesticktricks.com/jailbreak-fire-stick.html
Edited to un-embed, thanks u/lka1988
Why did you embed the link? Just paste the link directly into your comment.
I use Kodi with the jellyfin plugin, but I can’t recommend that for ‘normies’ because the interface is not simple, and I still have glitches with it.
I’m also looking for a solution like yours, but wanted you to have that feedback.
I don't know how Kodi still goes on for this long. I messed around with it over a decade ago and had all the same issues back then.
I mean, it's free and it does work, so I won't complain, but I wouldn't push this on any but my most technical friends.
Technical friends are the best friends.
Some people want local serverless playback.
Nothing to add, but also interested in this same scenario. I could only think of the Nvidia Shield.
Nvidia shield is less user friendly than Roku I think
And it runs Google services, and it costs a fortune, and it hasn't seen a refresh in 6 years.
And has reliability issues, I got one for my mom so she could use my Plex server, it died just outside of warranty. She didn't use it often so it wasn't used and abused, just stopped outputting video one day.
Nvidia Shield. The regular version is $150 US and from what I understand it gives flawless playback. I have the pro version which is more powerful, but that's specifically for running games.
It's Android TV OS, so app selection is great. You can load Smart Tube Next on there to get YouTube without ads, and there's a very solid Jellyfin app. You can also use Kodi for local direct playback. Remote is perfectly functional, and you can use an app to rebind most of the keys.
I'm currently using a raspberry pi 5 flashed with Konstakang's Android TV image, it works pretty flawlessly and takes less than an hour to set up, assuming you have the APKs of everything you want to install. You don't need to mess around with Google play services because most TV android apps are also designed to run on firesticks which don't have it.
The one issue I have encountered is that the Jellyfin client very occasionally won't play some 4k HDR media in the default player (all my 1080p stuff works fine) so I also installed MPV and I turn on alternative player in the Jellyfin settings in the rare case something doesn't work.
LibreELEC on an old chromebook!
Way over-budget for your taste I guess but I still wanted to make a note here for representation sake. Look into the brand Zidoo. I have Zidoo Z9X 8K, it's the best client I could dream of! ~250$
Cons:
Pros:
I use Chromecast with android TV, it's about perfect with jellyfin, and if I were to domit again I'd probably spend the little extra for the 4k model even though my TV is 1080p (more horsepower). You can run a different homescreen to somewhat degoogle it.
Probably not what you're looking for given what you've lined up here, but I live and breathe with it every day and it's great, and as an added benefit you can cast from a lot of services or websites as well.
My plan is to use the $20 Onn (Walmart store-brand) Android TV box LTT recommended as being eminently jailbreakable about a year ago, but I haven't actually gotten around to hooking it up yet so I can't authoritatively endorse it.
Been using Onn boxes for years and absolutely love them. They are about as pure android TV as you can get. I would definitely recommend the 50$ pro version over the 20$ original though.
If it's an option, the Xiaomi mi box it's a cheap android TV device that plays probably everything. Costs around 60 euro in eu. If not you coul always go for Google TV with a custom launcher to block stock android launcher ads.
Google TV forces its own launcher on top after every goddamn update. They're becoming really obnoxious.
If they have a 5th gen or newer Intel CPU, Quicksync will work excellently for transcoding. No discrete GPU needed.