Tips, updates, and guides from the JellyWatch team.
Jellyfin requires your own server and media library. Stremio uses community addons for instant streaming. Compare philosophy, features, quality, privacy, and setup complexity to choose the right approach.
Plex alternatives in 2026: with Lifetime Plex Pass at $749 and remote streaming paywalled, the community is leaving fast. This guide compares Jellyfin, Emby, Immich, Navidrome, Kavita, Komga, Audiobookshelf, Stremio, and Kodi - which one fits your use case?
One Docker Compose file. Four specialized media servers. Every type of content covered: movies and TV (Jellyfin), photos (Immich), comics and ebooks (Kavita), and music (Navidrome). This guide provides the complete stack with shared storage, unified reverse proxy, and monitoring. The definitive all-media self-hosted setup for 2026.
Dispatcharr is a self-hosted IPTV stream proxy and connection manager that sits between your IPTV provider and Jellyfin or Emby. It manages concurrent stream limits, provides automatic failover between providers, offers real-time stream statistics, and eliminates the buffering caused by exceeding your provider connection cap. Complete Docker setup guide with Jellyfin and Emby integration.
Four self-hosted photo platforms, four completely different philosophies. This in-depth comparison covers AI face detection, mobile auto-upload, RAW support, video handling, storage architecture, and which combination gives you the best Google Photos replacement in 2026.
Tracearr is a self-hosted playback tracking application that records viewing history from Jellyfin, Emby, and Plex simultaneously into a single unified database. Unlike server-specific plugins (Jellyfin Playback Reporting, Tautulli), Tracearr provides cross-platform analytics, long-term history retention, and integrates with tools like Emby Wrapped and Reclaimerr for year-in-review stats and storage cleanup decisions.
WatchState is a self-hosted tool that synchronizes watch history and play state between multiple media servers and tracking services simultaneously. Run Jellyfin and Plex pointing at the same library? WatchState keeps watched status in sync across both. Migrating from Plex to Jellyfin? WatchState transfers your entire history. This guide covers Docker setup, multi-backend configuration, conflict resolution, and real-world sync workflows.
Is self-hosting actually cheaper than paying for streaming services? This detailed financial analysis compares the 5-year total cost of a self-hosted media stack (Jellyfin + hardware + storage + electricity) against the combined cost of Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, YouTube Premium, and Google Photos. Includes hardware amortization, electricity costs, and the break-even point for different library sizes.
Every tool in the self-hosted media ecosystem explained, how they connect, and the exact data flow from a user requesting a movie to it playing on their TV. Covers Seerr, Prowlarr, Radarr, Sonarr, qBittorrent, Bazarr, Tdarr, Jellyfin, and monitoring. Includes the complete Docker Compose and visual architecture.
