Are mini stick PCs practical to set up as a media player, eg with jellyfin? Some advantages are the small form factor that plugs straight into the HDMI port, and flexibility/privacy vs using a dongle from a shitty company like amazon/google/roku.
Are there any things to watch out for to ensure it has enough compute power and hardware decoding? I just want it to play HD video with a jellyfin app/browser page.
I’m assuming it’s no big deal to install Linux on (x86 hardware?), do you need to watch out for specific device support? Thanks
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I got a Minis forum S100 PC stick. It does work well with kodi. But! It can be a load of work to get going. This device is using a UFS storage chip. So not all distros will install on it by default and require some tweaks to load kernel modules at boot. I use the device with alpine Linux and kodi GBM on top (libreelec doesnt see the storage device).
Also keep a eye out for what the CPU supports on these lower end chips. Not all of them have great hardware decoding support.
Good to know
Get a raspi or some thinclient. Every of those sticks I’ve touched was totally crap. Slow, awful software, some come with malware preloaded and the whole experience is crap. There is enough space behind your TV for a raspi.
Ok, I’m going to try and wipe it and put a lightweight Linux system on it, it’s a lot cheaper than a 4B pi (although a 3B may be possible), will see how it goes
I run an older Raspberry Pi (B?) with Kodi + Jellyfin on it as my client for my TV. I know Pis specifically aren’t a great value proposition anymore, but the hardware is really unimpressive and it works just fine - so you don’t need much.
Do you know what number model it is? I tried using an old 2B but it was too slow and doesn’t have hardware decoding as far as I can tell. I’ve heard you need around 4B for media playback, but the price is not so great for a simple use like this. Stick PCs seemed to have some cheaper options, including hardware decoding, with the advantage of plugging straight into the HDMI port
I’m pretty sure mine is a 2B as well, but I’d have to go digging behind the TV to know for sure. I know it’s not newer than that. It works fine for me running LibreElec+Kodi+Jellyfin, but I don’t play anything more complicated than 1080p h264. If you want HD or Atmos or whatever complications, yeah, you’ll want hardware decoding.
The ethernet jack is also a plus for me, but I think most video will stream satisfactorily over WiFi these days.Ok interesting it looks like it does do 1080p H264 hardware decoding https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/pdfs/raspberrypi2modelb.pdf
Pretty sure I tested mine on video playback and it struggled (quite badly), but I didn’t check the playback format, maybe if you stick to the right codec then it works.
I tried using the pi 2B again, I’ve been using the GUI & browser to show jellyfin and the interface is so sluggish I think it would be hard to use regardless of the ability to play videos
You would need to use LibreElec or OSMC with the Jellyfin addon, Not a desktop and browser.
I’ll give it a try. I think it suggests model 3B somewhere but can try it with a 2B
All of the Raspberry Pi models have hardware decoding. Even a Pi 1B will play a 30 mbps 1080p bluray rip. I used to run OpenELEC on a 1B. The interface on XBMC was really laggy, but h.264 videos played smoothly.
You need a Pi 4 or newer for h.265 hardware decoding. The Pi 3 has enough power to software decode some h.265 videos.
The video player you use needs to be compiled specifically for a Raspberry Pi for the hardware decoding to work though.
The Raspberry Pi 5 doesn’t have h264 hardware decoding blocks anymore afaik. But it’s fast enough to do better and faster software decoding anyway from what I’ve heard.
I found this one on amazon
it advertises linux compatibility. So, I’d agree with you, installing shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve heard about a project called Plasma Bigscreen, might be exactly what you’re looking for. I’ve also heard flir remotes work pretty will with linux tv boxes. Those plug pcs have usb slots, you might want to figure out if you need an extension cable so the ir can reach the dongle.
Your link without the unique advertising id that tracks directly to your account:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GKYTMGB8
They had to hide the unique tracking info because otherwise the link becomes 8x longer
I have one of these, and it sucks as a portable PC. As a jellyfish client, it might do fine. One thing you should know, while the power is USBC, it only works with its own usbc, and that adapter is 24v.
Interesting, did you have windows on it, or did you throw a real OS on it? If so, what distro/DE?
It came with windows 10, and claimed to be upgradeable to 11 (it wasn’t). I used it with lmde, though, so the upgrade lie, while was a shite thing to do, didn’t really affect me.
Interesting, I assume lmde would be comparable to a say fedora based plasma bigscreen install resource wise. It’s not like you were using a super lightweight distro. I’m actually surprised the plasma bigscreen devs haven’t made a super light weight install guide based off alpine or a pared down debian or arch for lowend hardware like OP is asking about.
I’m hoping the BigScreen install would be better as a settopbox, but I wanted a portable PC lol
It was smooth enough, just slow. A bit expected for how intensive lmde is, but I really wanted it to work with that. Maybe I’m judging too harshly
I’ve been looking into these PCs as a replacement roku box since responding to the thread. I have a shield, and its fine, but I don’t think it’s worth the price. It’s glitchy and the 3rd party launcher sometimes flips out. It also keeps wanting me to up the refresh rate, but whenever I do, it breaks. My TV doesn’t like it despite it being supported.
It might be fine for that, I’m not sure. It kind of sucked playing HD video (hadn’t tried 4k), but it was trying to do so under a full lmde environment lol
Ok, I’ve been checking out some older ones for half the price (possibly used as well), the main requirement I’ve been checking is just hardware decoding, with a light weight Linux setup I think it should be sufficient.
The remote is worth considering, I might look into Bluetooth or RF based approaches as they are a bit more flexible than IR with positioning. Or even phone app based methods are possible
Some extra options you might want to consider:
- Having the device act like a DLNA renderer. You still need it to run a graphical stack and a DLNA app, but you can control it with a DLNA controller app on your phone, and tell it to fetch content from your Jellyfin server if you activate the DLNA plugin so it will act like a DLNA server. DLNA needs network broadcast so it will work if the stick/phone/server all all on local LAN but typically can’t cross VLANs.
- Having the device run a Tailscale client alongside Kodi or connecting to Jellyfin with a browser or client. If you also put Tailscale on the server you will be able to securely connect to it even on vacations (hotel TV for example).
Yea, with a full pc setup and OS I don’t think you’ll have a problem with watching media. Even if hardware isn’t available for your cpu (unlikely) software will be. In the jellyfin client you can change your player to vlc if you have any issues playing video.
To also answer the transcoding issue, Jellyfin should be able to handle it. I have had issues where the client thinks it can play a media stream so the server serves it, but the client fails to play it. I usually either download a different file or manually transcode it to a different filetype that I know the client can play. I wouldn’t think a celeron processor would have issues playing media. Those issues were on like firetv or roku embedded system boxes, not full pcs.
As a media client, totally. Lots of people run jellyfin on Android TV sticks and things like that.
I don’t run Jellyfin, so take this as is. From what I understand tho, Jellyfin does take a fair amount of resources to run in an ideal situation. Meaning it takes some RAM for multiple simultaneous transcodes, several users, large libraries, etc. A lot of the cheaper Stick PCs come with less than stellar specs. The Stick PC I just randomly picked because it was 8 GB RAM is a MeLE Business Grade PCG02 Fanless N100 Mini Stick PC 8GB. It retails for $350 USD. For half of that price, you could opt for an SFF Optiplex, bump the DDR3 RAM to max the mobo, and DDR3 is fairly cheap, and still have resources to run other Docker containers if you wanted. For example I run an Optiplex SFF with the i7-4790 chip and 32 GB DDR3 RAM. Currently I have 53 total containers running and it really doesn’t break a sweat. Total cost of the box plus RAM was about $175 USD.If you are going for the portability aspect, that’s where I think a Stick PC would function best. All that being said, you have options just depending on what your criteria are for running Jellyfin.OP speaks of a jellyfin client, not the server
Ahh, I missed that. So that would explain all the downvotes with no explanations why. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.
Haha. My brain went the same direction you did - After reading the post text, I thought OP might be looking to use the device as a standalone media player, not just client. I hadn’t noticed that OP specified “Client” in the title.
Well, there you go. I’m glad I plowed the field and saved you the embarrassment. LOL
Thanks for the suggestions anyway ;)
Pay no attention to the old fart yammering on. I’m surprised I didn’t throw in a couple ‘well, back in my day’. lol I hope you get it all worked out tho.
Upvoting for letting the post stay for reference ;-)