I currently have two TVs, one I use an appleTV with and the other with a googleTV HD (device formerly known as Chromecast), but they both have issues.
The jellyfin app on appleTV is messed up, it fucks up audio and subs all the time, and in general has a hard time with media that has multiple audio tracks, not using the audio I select with the remote.
The googleTV just stutters with almost everything, direct stream or transcoded doesn’t matter. All of my library is just 1080p, I have proper wifi to it, all mobile devices stream just fine.
So neither of these provide me with a solution that really works.
What solutions can you recommend, that allows for seamless navigation of jellyfin with my remote? I don’t want anything resembling a mouse/keyboard combo for navigation whatsoever.
With WebOS app, I’ve noticed sometimes when watching TV shows, if I select one audio track, it will
- go to the next episode
- keep the desired audio track selected
- play the original/nase starting track.
To remedy it, I have to switch from the current selected audio track and back ¯_(ツ)_/¯
As far as possible solutions to bad app behavior on your device - get a separate TV device (roku, etc) or some pc or SBC run a jellyfin app on it. You’d want to research first to see if you could use your existing remote somehow (e.g. maybe an IR receiver)
I think jellyfin offers DLNA support? You could enable it localy and see if your TV(s) can access files that way, without the jellyfin TV app as a middleman
Or just install minidlna. It works and it’s easy to set up.
Plex, unfortunately, is the best answer for this right now. Easiest to set up and maintain, the client apps are fine, you may have to fiddle with the Apple TV to be pain free though.
I have a few raspberry pi’s with kodi running and linked to my media served over nfs, which works well, just not as polished and fast as plex.
Personally, as soon as the Apple TV client gets fixed for Jellyfin, will probably drop plex altogether. The iOS app is stellar so not sure why it hasn’t been ported yet. I also have an easier time with my media playback with Jellyfin over plex, and you don’t need to pay for good hardware transcoding, it’s just the ui is so god awful!
I’m not touching Plex ever, so I’ll have to find another solution, or demote the appleTV to the bedroom because my wife and I watch most things in English anyway so we don’t change the audio track like the kids do.
I use Emby. It’s similar to Jellyfin, but the Apps get a little more attention to detail. Worth a try, and if you don’t need gpu transcoding you don’t need to pay.
But, if I was still using an Apple TV, I would use Infuse.
Have you tried non official jellyfin clients? I had issues with the official app on AppleTV as well, so I switched to Infuse. The free app supports most things and I think the paid gives access to additional codecs if I recall correctly. The pro upgrade isn’t too expensive and the app is sleek across Apple devices. Only issue I’ve really had is sometimes if a video is not played to the end (as in, stopped during credits) it still shows up in the continue watching, but that might be a problem on my end.
I think MXPlayer is similar on Android which might be worth checking out.
Nah, I think that’s an issue with the jellyfin server. It happens to me too, using Swiftfin on AppleTV.
I think that’s an issue with the jellyfin server
It’s just weird that audio tracks works correctly on all other devices, this is only happening on the appleTV.
…I meant the keep watching thing. I get that a lot if I skip to the next episode right at the outro of a show.
Aah, this is an issue consistently on both movies and shows, also when starting. If i select anything other than the default track, it doesn’t actually select what I pick but something else (like it picks Finnish even though I select Danish, and it shows I select Danish). Again, this only happens on the AppleTV, all.other devices switch correctly.
You may want check out Infuse for the AppleTV. I have found it fixed every audio drift and video jitter concern that I’ve ever had with Plex or Jellyfin.
You can point it either directly at an SMB share, or a library hosted on Jellyfin or Plex. The advantage of this is it caches the artwork in the library, not on the AppleTV, because the AppleTV will periodically flush its local cache, leading to long re-fetching times and waiting to watch things.
I have no recommendations for the Chromecast.
I’ve used a bunch of different solutions over the years, but currently I just run Gerbera and it streams my local library to my TVs because of the sheer ease. It’s not perfect, fast forward and rewind can be iffy to get working with some configurations, but otherwise it has been a smooth experience.
It has to be user friendly enough for a literal 5yo though
The jellyfin problem is probably it downmixing surround 7.1 really shittily. You can run tdarr to downmix surround into stereo before you watch. Kind of a pain but it’s the only workaroumd I’ve got for the shit audio
I went the other way and just set up 7.1 sound. Being able to control the music and the speech channels has been really useful.
Not a bad idea honestly. That’s my next project after a home server upgrade.
I’m not getting sync issues at all, the jellyfin client on appleTV simply doesn’t select the audio track I select when I choose something different than default. It works perfectly fine on all other devices, just not appleTV. I only have stereo devices.
What did I write in my OP to suggest audio sync issues? You’re not the first to think that’s my issue, so I must have worded something poorly…
I think there’s miscommunication. I don’t mean you’re audio is out of sync, I mean that the file being played has 7.1 as the audio track, then when jellyfin downmixes it to stereo for you speakers it sounds like absolute ass.
The “doesn’t select the right audio track” is another issue that I personally don’t have, but the downmixing one is something that seems to be baked into Jellyfin for TV.
Aah, the audio quality if fine for me, I don’t have exceptionally bad audio quality.
I am using the “Chromecast with Google TV” connected to wifi via 5ghz and use mkv files from collection via Jellyfin. I used to transcode from the i7-8700u but larger files took too long to start playing (with quicksync and proper drivers and passthrough) and tried turning off transcode and surprising works fine without issues. Ive tried 15gb files without issues.
So i would suggest checking your set up to make sure not something configured wrong and if you use mkv files try turning off all transcode to see if it works better.
Got an amazon firestick pro 4k. Have just a 1080p TV, but the pro4k hardware is just better than the other models.
Fully satisfied. Works beautiful with Jelly fin TV app.
Has amazon advertising tough, so YMMV.
I enabled the DLNA server in Jellyfin. And that works okay with my LG webOS TV. But it’s down to the quirks of the TV which also likes to enable subtitles and the default audio track.
My solution to that issue is to share my media over NFS with a raspberry pi connected to the TV, the pi runs OSMC (https://osmc.tv/) and has the media direct. you can control OSMC on the pi with your TV remote
I stream from Jellyfin to an Apple TV without your issues. It might be a network or configuration problem.
Have you tried Infuse, SenPlayer or other clients?
It might be a network or configuration problem.
I’m not sure how a network issue would cause the jellyfin client to select the wrong audio track? E.g. when I select Danish, it sometimes uses the Finnish or Swedish track. This only happens on the appleTV, all other devices use the selected track correctly.
I have not tried other clients, none show up when I search for jellyfin in the app store on the device, so I wasn’t aware there were others for appleTV.
As suggested above, I would try Infuse player. I recently switched from a Kodi/Jellyfin setup to an Apple TV/Jellyfin setup and I’m extremely happy with it. Infuse has a free trial, and then you can choose to pay a few different ways (they do have a rather expensive lifetime option, but it might be worth it). The Infuse app has no trouble playing directly from my Jellyfin server, no transcoding, even for full 4K Bluray rips, and yes it even supports Dolby Vision (which the native Jellyfin app struggles with). No hiccups, no issues with multiple audio tracks or subtitles, it’s just buttery smooth direct playback.
It also has a couple different ways of interacting with your Jellyfin library, so it feels completely seamless to me.
I’d rather avoid paid solutions, especially anything subscription based.
Totally understandable. I was hesitant about it too, but to me it’s sometimes worth a premium to get something that just works, and Infuse works better than any player I’ve used in the past. To each their own, good luck!
Does it need to use the remote? I have a Chromecast (the casting device, not the app running device) and I use the Jellyfin app on my phone and I cast to the Chromecast. Works fine for me.
Doesn’t need to be the remote, but it does need to work independently of other devices than what’s connected to the TV. Having to cast from a device doesn’t really work with how we use TV watching in our house, especially for the kids since they don’t have their own phones or tablets to do it from.
Since you are against using plex even with using it only locally I would suggest you look into the Jellyfin clients support. Specifically look at each client device documentation and take a look at what audio and video codex they natively support. If there is one they both support then I suggest you do some testing and stream a movie or show that is encoded with that specific format. This will let you know if it will work across both clients whether it’s a stream issue hardware issue or Wi-Fi issue.
This will prevent transcoding that can cause audio sync issues.
Edit - if that works then I suggest you convert you library to that format.
I don’t have audio sync issues at all. I have issues with appleTV using the wrong audio track when I select something different than the default. E.g. if I select Danish, it shows that it’s using the Danish track but it’s actually playing something else like Finnish or Swedish. This behaviour is only on the appleTV and no other devices.
There used to be a similar bug in the Roku jellyfin app.
If you can recreate the subtitle issue using test file 5 from this repo, it might be worth submitting a bug report. https://github.com/ietf-wg-cellar/matroska-test-files
I don’t have specific troubleshooting advice to give, but I have been using an Nvidia Shield Pro as my main streaming device for about 4 years now. It is overpriced for what it is, but it has been rock solid for streaming via both Jellyfin and Plex.
The official Jellyfin app is definitely not as polished as Plex, but it has consistently worked for me on the Shield.
I will agree, I got an Nvidia shield pro two years ago, I was a bit afraid because it’s a product from 2019, but damn it’s been rock solid, it plays everything, it’s quite open and not limited like some other boxes, it’s even faster than the most Samsung smart TVs that I have tried, I can’t recommend it enough, even at the end of 2024 it doesn’t have any issues when playing YouTube and Plex.
