its kinda crazy having your own personal netflix, right?
i originally used it so my kids could watch cartoons in school
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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You used it for what?!? Why the heck would you let your kids watch cartoons in school?
cuz my kids are awesome, and most of the schools sucked. its cool, they were consistently the best performers.
they earned being treated like they might some day be adults.
Didn't you want them to hang out with their friends instead of watching cartoons during the day? Or maybe make friends?
I wouldn't discount how having that access to cartoons probably made them more friends on its own.
School may have been a long time ago for some of us, but I don't think buddying up with the kids who could get you access to things has ever fallen out of style.
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its kinda crazy having your own personal netflix, right?
It truly is!
Yeah, I keep a “Kids” profile on my Plex/Jellyfin server, specifically so I can throw Bluey, Mr Rogers Neighborhood, Miss Rachel, etc on and not worry about it. Elsagate (which is still a big problem) means you can’t just put on YouTube Kids and expect auto-played content to stay safe. But with my server, running solely on content I have curated, I know that everything in that “Kids” profile is going to be safe.
my kids went their entire childhoods without suffering commercial-filled television (still dont).. its extends well past the pre-k stages.
Personally, I think that installing it on a bare metal Windows Server system is quite an achievement.
I have it installed using docker compose on Linux. So my setup is rather unspectacular.
Hey you can always set up GPU rendering and like a tmpfs transcoding cache volume if you want your compose to look a little more complicated
tmpfs is overkill. I just use a crappy old 128G SSD and it's still way faster than needed for all of my transcodes combined.
Anyway just my 2 cents.
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Windows can run docker, so there's versions of most things that will run on windows.
JellyFin has a native windows version.
Yes, but not everything does. But luckily, Docker exists on Windows. So anything that runs on Docker can be run on Windows.
Given, Docker’s implementation on Windows is… Uhh… Not Great^TM^. Because it’s basically using WSL to trick Windows into supporting a Linux file system. So it has some quirks. But it does technically work.
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I know this is probably “the usual” for everyone here, but I’m genuinely excited that I managed to get it all running smoothly.
Heh! Don't let anyone dampen your enthusiasm. It feels great when I am toiling away at something and finally all the pieces click together. I might have to walk away a few times and put the project on hold, but I keep whacking away at it. When it does work, it's always a childish joy that comes over me and always gets a fist-pump.
What equipment are you running that Windows Server on?
Right now its a Thinkpad T480 with 64G ram and 1tb ssd. If it turns out we use Jellyfin enough I plan to get something more powerful for it.
64g of ram is pretty darn powerful already!
Honestly thats already plenty - 8th gen intel igpu is pretty solid, about the only reason to change from that is going to be native AV1 (enc/dec added at meteor lake, tiger lake for dec only).
My setup is basically the same chip thats in my t480, but in a lenovo tiny. Family and friends make use of it, and it doesn't break a sweat with 6 streams going.
Right on that's great to hear
Nice! Rock on with yo' bad self.
How do you like that?
Thanks, I hate it.
lmao harsh but fair
Time to setup an arr stack.
Just when you think you've got all the arrs you need, you find another that could benefit your stack.
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Asking out of curiosity: is there a specific reason you're running Windows on your server? I used to do the same on my home servers because that's what we used to have at work, and I wanted to learn and test some stuff. But it was a difficult road, to put it mildly. Simple things, like getting Docker autostart on boot seemed almost impossible. At some point I just gave up and switched to Linux.
You have trouble getting Docker to auto-start on Windows? I thought that was the default behavior…
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My journey began with windows, Jellyfin, and qbit. Nice you have done the same! Only reason I switched to Linux is because I wanted servers and hated unraid
Jellyfin is great! Glad you got it up and running!
Jellyfin is great for single-file movies, but sadly can't play DVDs properly, unless you rip the movie out into a single file first. I hope they add proper DVD/BlueRay support with menues etc at some point. Because where do you get legal movies and shows other than on DVD or BlueRay?
This isn't really the usecase, you'd be better off just playing it with VLC from a BD/DVD drive with the menu plugins. Netflix won't have DVD menus either. Ripping is necessary for this to make your physical copies accessible via Jellyfin. May want to check ARM (Automatic Ripping Machine) to streamline the process. Legally, this is perfectly fine in most jurisdictions, because you are creating a backup of your purchased property.
unless you rip the movie out into a single file first
I don't see the problem with that. It's what I've done with every single disk I own. Why would I bother with badly-written menus, pointless extra content and tons of ads and copyright warnings I need to sit through before I can watch what I paid for?
Even with all the right hardware and community-recommended open source software, there are still plenty of unique hostile choices made in BluRay publishing that means playing my stuff in realtime from the disc before ripping has about a 75% success rate. Many of them scramble playlists and bend the standard to make it unplayable without using their official license.
And that’s if you know where to get the legally grey key files to decrypt them in the first place.
Interactive media like menus is a nightmare to support. Kodi has some support but only on pc. Also to your last sentence it’s a grey area, if you rip the disk to any format you’re essentially violating copyright because making a copy requires circumventing encryption, which violates the dmca (assuming USA). Might as well just use makemkv then, unless you’re real serious about archiving literally everything
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Congratulations! I’ve been using Jellyfin for several years now and the quality has consistently improved. It’s a great tool.
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