Tips, updates, and guides from the JellyWatch team.
Three operating systems dominate the homelab space for running Jellyfin: Unraid (flexible, user-friendly), TrueNAS SCALE (ZFS, free, Docker-native since Electric Eel), and Proxmox (hypervisor with LXC and VMs). This comparison covers Docker support, GPU passthrough complexity, storage architecture, backup capabilities, community size, and total cost of ownership for each platform.
Run Jellyfin on Kubernetes using K3s for automatic restarts, rolling updates, and multi-node scaling. This guide covers K3s installation, Helm chart deployment, Intel GPU device plugin for hardware transcoding, persistent volume claims for config and media, Ingress with cert-manager for HTTPS, and horizontal pod autoscaling.
TrueNAS Electric Eel replaced Kubernetes with Docker Compose for apps. This complete guide covers installing Jellyfin on TrueNAS 25.04 with the new Apps system, Intel QSV GPU passthrough, ZFS dataset configuration, and automated snapshots for bulletproof backups.
Stop guessing encode settings. This guide gives you exact Handbrake and FFmpeg configurations that produce files every Jellyfin client can Direct Play - H.265 CRF values, dual audio tracks (EAC3 + AAC), HDR preservation, GPU encoding, and batch automation with Tdarr.
Not everyone has a home server. A VPS from Hetzner (€4.50/month) or Contabo gives you a dedicated Jellyfin instance with a public IP, 1 Gbps bandwidth, and 24/7 uptime. This guide covers VPS selection, Docker deployment, storage mounting, the no-GPU reality, and when Oracle free tier is enough.
Hardware transcoding in Docker requires passing your GPU into the container. This guide covers Intel QSV, NVIDIA NVENC, and AMD VAAPI passthrough with verified Docker Compose configurations, driver checks, and troubleshooting for every common failure.
That old laptop gathering dust can become a powerful Jellyfin server. Covers minimum specs, Ubuntu Server install, Docker setup, hardware transcoding on older GPUs, power management, and 24/7 operation.
Which GPU gives the most transcodes per dollar for Jellyfin? Compares Intel Arc A380/A770, NVIDIA GTX 1650 to RTX 4060, and AMD RX 6600 to RX 7600 with real-world benchmarks, tone mapping quality, and AV1 support.
Run Jellyfin on Proxmox with hardware transcoding in an LXC container or VM. This guide covers Intel QSV device mapping (3 lines of config), NVIDIA PCI passthrough, NAS storage mounting via NFS/SMB, performance tuning, and the community helper script that automates the entire setup.
