[LeoLevosky]

I've been using Kodi for some years. I record TV on my PC via a satellite TV card, edit it to remove adverts and then save it as .TS files on my TrueNAS server.

This has been okay but now I want a dedicated media server. 

My question is which operating system should I use, which media server and which PVR system?

My satellite TV card is a TBS 6908x (I think).

I'd love to use an operating system with good ZFS support as this has been really good on TrueNAS. I was looking at Ubuntu but it doesn't seem to have a GUI for ZFS. Any other options that have good ZFS support?

As a media server I have been looking at Jellyfin but I'd like other recommendations as I haven't yet tried it.

For TV I have been using NextPVR which has been fine. But when satellite locations change there doesn't seem to be anyway of automatically updating NextPVR. Recordings then fail. My Freesat box updates automatically and it would be good to use a PVR that can do that.

Any suggestions and advice much appreciated.

[izprtxqkft]

this is quite a subjective topic as it pertains to each individual preference and technical ability

personally, i like jellyfin as a media server because i also use the apps on android phones and tablets to play my library and jellyfin can do live transcoding to accommodate
the jellyfin addon for kodi works rather well, in my case the first time i set it up (as well as the following 4) i did it incorrectly and it was all kinds of messed up
but once set up correctly it works really well and if you use trakt there is an addon for jellyfin that can track watches per each user account on jellyfin
a common resume state for media is also nice so as i move between devices the resume states and "in progress" is always there (start watching on main tv then after hours switch to a tablet seamlessly)

[LeoLevosky]

this is quite a subjective topic as it pertains to each individual preference and technical ability

personally, i like jellyfin as a media server because i also use the apps on android phones and tablets to play my library and jellyfin can do live transcoding to accommodate
the jellyfin addon for kodi works rather well, in my case the first time i set it up (as well as the following 4) i did it incorrectly and it was all kinds of messed up
but once set up correctly it works really well and if you use trakt there is an addon for jellyfin that can track watches per each user account on jellyfin
a common resume state for media is also nice so as i move between devices the resume states and "in progress" is always there (start watching on main tv then after hours switch to a tablet seamlessly)

That sounds really good, especially the resume state. What did you do incorrectly in the beginning and what do you run it on?

[izprtxqkft]

Server:

HP Elitedesk Mini
Intel® Core™ i7-9700T CPU @ 2.00GHz
CoffeeLake-S GT2 [UHD Graphics 630]
2x Samsang 970Pro 512GB NVME 3, 1 for os and 1 for cache/temp/encodes/etc
USB 3.1 external 4 bay enclosure

Client 1: FireTV Cube Gen3 accesses from kodi where mult content is merged in kodi from Jellyfin, Prime, Disney+, Paramount+ for a uniform all in one media library
Client 2: FireTV Cube Gen2 uses the native jellyfin client
Client 3: FireHD 10 Tablet uses the native jellyfin client
Client 4: Google Pixel 6 uses the native jellyfin client

i plan to add a FireHD 8 later but it hasnt been needed just yet, not sure the specs will handle this but it might

EDIT:

im not sure where i went wrong with jellyfin client on kodi the first 5 times but i just kept resetting and retrying until it worked
i know 1 of those attempts was due to having a master lock code set on kodi, it would not show anything from the JF library when enabled

[jbinkley60]

@LeoLevosky  I am partial to Mezzmo as the backend running the Mezzmo Kodi addon.   It doesn't quite fit the original criteria of ZFS support but the level of automation, Kodi integration and features more than offsets this technical need (IMHO).  Simple things like bookmark / watched status sharing, scraping new recorded content,  syncing Kodi clients, rebuilding Kodi clients, support for non-Kodi clients, transcoding and so much more are all automatic.   Here's a link to some of the features.  I don't have satellite tuners but have 3 OTA tuners where Mezzmo checks for new content every 3 minutes and automatically adds it to my library.  I have seen my setup record 6 OTA streams concurrently. 


Thanks,

Jeff