MythTV- My Longtime Media Server

I’ve been running a MythTV server for over 15 years. MythTV is a DVR…and I use it to record television. Increasingly though, companies are locking down the ability for you to time-shift your own television forcing you to use their often less good hardware and software experiences. I still have a cable card, but the government no longer mandates cable companies to offer them. Several companies have already stopped supporting them, and most others will let you keep them until the day they can’t.

I could stick to broadcast TV, except…guess what? The new standard for broadcast, ATSC3, are starting to become encrypted and implement DRM. So, the future isn’t too bright there either.

MythTV does do personal media as well, but its way of doing it has remained largely unchanged for years. It might be the worst time to pivot to ripping to physical media. Last year, I commented on how sales of physical video media are tanking while physical audio media are rising. Since that time, I’ve been working on upgrading how I use the digital versions of my physical media.

I am foreseeing a future where I have to just watch the same classic shows over and over again because I can’t get anything new because they won’t sell them to me anymore. Remember, buying something on a streaming site is actually paying for a license they can revoke at any time without consequence. Which is not fine with me. But, rewatching classics I can get behind. I also found out I can raid the Walmart $5 DVD bin from their website. Time to finally watch the Shawshank Redemption.

What I’m happy with software wise is a moving target.

Plex

I set up Plex a few years ago to solve this. But Plex no longer seems to call itself a Personal Media Server. If you visit their website, it starts… “Meet your TV concierge. Need something to watch? We’re on it. Plex combines free movies & TV with the best free streaming services, so there’s always more to discover.”

Under the Question of what Plex is, they say, “A one-stop destination to stream movies, TV shows, and music, Plex is the most comprehensive entertainment platform available today. Available on almost any device, Plex is the first-and-only streaming platform to offer free ad-supported movies, shows, and live TV together with the ability to easily search—and add to your Watchlist—any title ever made, no matter which streaming service it lives on. Using the platform as their entertainment concierge, 17 million (and growing!) monthly active users count on Plex for new discoveries and recommendations from all their favorite streaming apps, personal media libraries, and beyond.”

It isn’t until the last few words that they even mention personal media library. It makes me worry about their priorities, especially after they added social features and made some of them opt out by default, including for existing customers.

Jellyfin- A New Option Emerges

By comparison, Jellyfin describes itself by saying that, “Jellyfin enables you to collect, manage, and stream your media.” It is a volunteer run open source project.

I like fully open projects and Jellyfin is pretty full functioning already. Some things I had to work a bit more to set up that happened automatically in Plex, but it still didn’t take that long to do.

Conclusion

I’m running both Jellyfin and Plex in parallel on the same library, to decide what I’ll use ultimately. Expect me to write more on this. Comment if you have any advice.