Jellyfin

Jellyfin is the free software media system that puts you in control of managing and streaming your media. It's a volunteer-built, completely open source alternative to proprietary solutions like Plex and Emby, with no premium tiers, no tracking, and no strings attached.

Key Features

Stream Everything: Movies, TV shows, music, audiobooks, podcasts, and photos. Jellyfin handles virtually any media format you throw at it.

Powerful Transcoding: Real-time video transcoding ensures smooth playback on any device, regardless of format or bandwidth limitations. Hardware acceleration (VAAPI, NVENC, QSV) dramatically improves performance.

Beautiful Interfaces: Modern, responsive web UI plus dedicated apps for Android, iOS, Android TV, Fire TV, Roku, Kodi, and more. Your library looks great everywhere.

Rich Metadata: Automatic metadata fetching from TheMovieDB, TheTVDB, and MusicBrainz. Beautiful artwork, cast information, and detailed descriptions enhance your library.

Live TV & DVR: Connect HDHR tuners or IPTV sources. Watch live TV, schedule recordings, and build your own DVR system.

User Management: Create accounts for family members with individual preferences, watch history, and parental controls. Kids see age-appropriate content only.

Plugins & Customization: Extend functionality with community plugins. Add anime metadata providers, intro skipping, sync with Trakt, and more.

Why Self-Host Jellyfin?

Plex and Emby have gradually locked features behind subscriptions and require accounts on their servers. Jellyfin is completely free forever—no Plex Pass equivalent, no premium features hidden behind paywalls. Your media stays on your server, and you're never dependent on external services for your own content.

Deployment

Jellyfin runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, or Docker. A NAS with a decent CPU handles basic streaming; add a GPU for hardware transcoding of 4K content to multiple simultaneous users. Storage requirements depend on your library—plan for growth with expandable storage solutions.

Network configuration is straightforward for local streaming. For remote access, use a reverse proxy with HTTPS. Jellyfin's low resource footprint makes it ideal for always-on home servers.