Tips, updates, and guides from the JellyWatch team.
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.
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.
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.
How much storage do you need for Jellyfin? Covers HDD vs SSD, best NAS drives, RAID options, shucking external drives, and storage planning based on library size and quality.
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.
Jellyfin library showing empty after adding media? Movies not appearing after a scan? This complete troubleshooting guide covers every cause - file permissions, naming errors, Docker volume mapping, NAS mount issues, and metadata scan failures - with step-by-step fixes.
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.
How much CPU, RAM, and storage does a Jellyfin server actually need in 2026? This guide covers minimum and recommended specs for every use case - from a single-user home setup to a multi-user 4K server - with real-world transcoding benchmarks.
Install and optimize Jellyfin on your NAS. This guide covers Synology DSM 7, TrueNAS SCALE, and Unraid - with hardware transcoding, Docker setup, and performance tips for each platform.
