this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Consider how many devices will use it at the same time.
Only you? A pi is fine.
A few friends too? An old computer with a rough equivilent of i5-2300 with integrated graphics should do the trick. 4GB Ram will do fine.
A small group that'll use it constantly? Plug in a GPU that supports hardware encoding, (Some low-end cards like GT 1030 doesnt support this feature, check this properly.) , upgrade RAM a notch more, like 8GB.
You can scale it higher for more people via logic; you'll also know how much storage you'll need; but it'll be a lot if you want to satisfy a huge group of people.
Any more recent Intel CPU with quicksync works well too. I have a $100 CAD i3 powering Jellyfin and it's able to handle ~5 1080p streams going at a time without any issues.
+1 for QuickSync. Intel 9th gen can transcode HEVC and they don’t have a transcode session limit like Nvidia. An i9-9900K will transcode a half dozen 4K streams without breaking a sweat. I don’t even run a GPU in my plex box anymore.
If you’re running your media server in docker, make sure you pass /dev/dri into the container so it can find the GPU.
I struggle to recommend using such a low end device for any media serving related proprieties that might require transcoding.
Even with the native Plex Media Server that my Shield TV Pro has and I being the main user it led to some undesired transcoding (like anime video files) making it struggle at times, which I consider is better suited than the Pi for these activities.
Usually you want to avoid transcoding, but sooner or later you will face it, and if you have more users using your server then this scale grows.
Me and my girlfriend but honestly I think only one instance will be going at a time
I use a raspberry pi 4 with 3 simultaneous sessions sometimes. Direct play, it works fine. It can't transcode at all, though.
I second that. I did reinstall it recently though, the whole system, and switched to docker for Jellyin. I noticed a few new movies are transcoding now and for one stream it is actually bearable. But I have no idea why it didn't work on my first install and why it is working now.
Same. Works fine as long as it's x264 content
If space isn't an issue, getting a cheap office surplus machine like a Dell Optiplex SFF line for ~$100 US vs the USFF so that it supports low profile PCI-E for a hba card for more storage, or nvidia quadro p400 for better encoding at like $30-50.
It will probably use a bit more wattage, especially with more HDDs, but still should be around 50w idle for even the old systems.
Yeah no we live in a tiny 700 sq ft apartment lol, smaller is better
If they're getting a used desktop (unless it's really old), it probably already has an Intel CPU with a decent enough integrated GPU to do transcoding without the GPU. Not only will that save OP money on their setup, but also on their power bill.