Tips, updates, and guides from the JellyWatch team.
The Intel N100 dominated budget Jellyfin servers. Now the N150 and upcoming successors push performance further. Compare specs, transcoding benchmarks, and find out if it is time to upgrade your media server.
The Raspberry Pi 5 with an NVMe HAT finally solves the Pi storage bottleneck. But does it make the Pi 5 a viable Jellyfin server in 2026? We benchmarked library scan speed, metadata loading, Direct Play performance, and compared it head-to-head against the Intel N100 mini PC. Includes NVMe HAT installation, Docker setup, and honest recommendations for when the Pi 5 is enough and when you should spend $50 more on an N100.
How much electricity does your Jellyfin server actually use? We measured real-world power draw with a Kill-A-Watt meter across 8 common setups: Intel N100, N305, Synology NAS, old laptop, desktop PC, Raspberry Pi 5, Nvidia Shield, and a full rack server. Includes idle vs transcoding watts, annual electricity cost, and the break-even point for upgrading hardware.
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.
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.
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.
Which NAS should you buy for Jellyfin in 2026? This buying guide compares Synology, QNAP, Asustor, and DIY builds - focusing on hardware transcoding support, Docker compatibility, Intel vs AMD CPUs, and price-to-performance.
Run and optimize Jellyfin on Windows 10/11 in 2026. Covers installation as a Windows Service, Intel QSV and NVIDIA NVENC hardware transcoding, firewall rules, Windows Defender exclusions, sleep prevention, and remote access via Cloudflare Tunnel or Tailscale. Not to be confused with Windows Server - this guide targets home desktop PCs.
