Tales From The Crypt: Proxmox Chapter 3 - Jellyfin

[npetrele]

I turn my attention to Jellyfin media server on Proxmox this chapter. Last chapter, I installed Jellyfin and then converted it into a template. I saw no advantage to doing that, so I deleted both the server and template and installed Jellyfin as a virtual machine. This is what my datacenter looks like right now.

It's simple and compact, just perfect for a cheap-o underpowered mini PC. 

Jellyfin

I installed Jellyfin as the media server. It runs fine on this cheap hardware. Plus, Roku has a Jellyfin channel available, so I can stream from the media server with Roku. 

But the mini PC doesn't have enough built-in storage for all my video files. Fortunately, I have a 1 terabyte removable USB drive with all my movies. I plug it into my TV, which can read all the videos. All I need to do is plug the drive into my mini PC, and Jellyfin should be able to serve up the videos. 

So I go into the Jellyfin server on Proxmox, select "hardware" and add a USB device. As you can see, my USB hard drive shows up. It's the Western Digital Passport drive. 

There's a catch, though. The drive is formatted as NTFS. Jellyfin reads NTFS with no problem, but the performance isn't very good. So I format the drive as EXT4 and copy all the video files back onto the drive. Now Jellyfin runs like a champ. I go to my TV and watch a couple TV shows and an old movie I know as "Horror Hotel" (It's called "City of the Dead" now). 

I'll probably install Ubuntu as a container, but that's as much as I'll put on this mini PC. It's having no trouble handling everything I've put on it, and it runs without any cooling necessary. If you haven't tried Proxmox, get yourself a cheap mini PC and install it. You'll be glad you did. 

[npetrele]

Incidentally, you'd think they hired Claudio Fragasso to direct Horror Hotel (he's infamous for adding fog to everything). Every outdoors scene is shot at night (probably in a studio) and has about 1 to 3 feet of mist/fog. Either that, or they used 10 tons of dry ice to generate a continual mist. It's a must-see movie if you like old B horror movies. It even stars Christopher Lee, who was very young at the time.

[davidn#]

For movies streaming from Jellyfin, it helps if your Proxmox has a good graphic card with some GPU power.
I personally like Asian B horror movies (Korean, Japanese, Thai). Will check out Horror Hotel.

[npetrele]

Me, too. I think the Japanese version of the Ring (Ringu) is so much better than the American version. I'm watching a Thai TV series right now on Netflix called Delete. I also recommend the Korean show The Glory, but the first few episodes are hard to watch. After that it gets really good. I saw Horror Hotel as a kid at the drive-in theater, so I'm biased, since it's nostalgic. Don't know if you'll like it.