Thanks to @[email protected] and @[email protected] Windows event viewer put me on the right path. The errors were coming from the .net installation. Which reminded me that I had recently uninstalled visual studio, and that jellyfin uses .net. Rerunning the jellyfin installer fixed the .net issue and I am up and running again.

Winner winner chicken dinner. It's been a few years since I had to do any real debugging on windows and I totally forgot about the event viewer. Thanks for the tip.

For anyone reading along, looks like there is a problem with my .net installation. That is probably because I uninstalled visual studio recently. It "shouldn't" have caused an issue, but M$....

Mine doesn't handle forced subtitles right or something. But I haven't started trying to tweak it yet. But when I watch like "invasion". It struggles during the Japanese scenes. The subtitles get out of sync and then eventually stop showing up all in one episode. Someone else mentioned something that might be the same and a trick for it that I will try soon.

So do you set the torrent client default download dir to videos? And the system is smart enough not to make a copy there because there is already one visible to the client?

by the way... great discussion. I'm reading along and learning of things I didn't think of before. So thanks.

Thanks, that had info I could work with.

Most people point out I am not worth their effort to trace for a few movies. But I am curious, if say I use a specific browser when on the vpn and only use a few very specific accounts like this one which I don't use when I am off the vpn. How do they identify me.

That seemed to work for getting the web UI to start in English. But the roku still didn't play English. :(

yeah, I am totally with you. For the media server, I just don't know how much money I want to put into backing it up. For the important stuff. I really wish I knew of an offsite backup that I felt like I could trust. But most business models' these days seem to be hinged on hoping nothing ever goes wrong... or just paying if it does.

Well, mainly it is just what I read in various "guides". But also it sounds easier to assemble... the minipc is just a box, no need to do any hardware stuff. And I think the NAS is pretty much the same. Plus it would allow me to easily start small on space and then add more (I think).

Also, I think it would be quieter. I assume putting it all in one would mean basically a tower with lots of fans and what not. The minipc is supposed to be pretty quiet. Don't know about the NAS though.

Can you elaborate on why you wouldn't recommend it for someone just starting out?

Budget is really more about value than anything, I have money to spend, but I don't like to overspend or waste. Otherwise there are things I know, and things I don't. :) I do know linux, and some docker. I have built a few pc's over the years. But I don't really keep up with hardware stuff. The idea to have a NUC and a NAS just came from what I was reading as it seemed to be what people do. And the plan was to get a pre-built NAS and a mini pc. That way the whole project doesn't get so big it is overwhelming. The software stuff can be complicated from what I read. But I work in software, and I could use more time with docker and such. I was pricing things out when I got thinking about the connection between them, and thus how many ethernet ports I needed on the minipc. It sounds like people are saying that network speeds through a switch should be more than fast enough. I know this is probably the more expensive route, but I think the total cost may be at least reasonable. The minipc is like $169. Seems like the NAS is like $500. And a few hundred for drives. So maybe under a k. The way prices are these days, that doesn't feel terrible. But I don't really have a scope on costs for hardware.

"or a 6 year old that gets 5 minutes alone with your mouse" haha. I have a 10 year old with a tendency to be inquisitive with electronic devices. He is pure of heart, but we joke that some day the NSA is going to come knocking. He wouldn't hack a bank to get money, he would just be "exploring" what is possible instead of reading directions. lol. Question though. When you do want to delete something. I am guessing you logon to your media server and do it from your user account?

while enabling the subtitle burn-in for all complex formats helped... the subtitles show up a little early. And instead of just forced, it shows them all the time. It also didn't totally solve the problem. Seems like the issue is triggered at the transition points where forced subtitles would start or stop. The playback jumps to some others spot in the show, and the subtitles end up being from a totally difference scene. :(

There are a lot of things there I don't know much about... yet. People have said that the issues in the news don't apply to the linked mini pc because it is a 12 gen. I haven't even picked a distro to install on it yet, so I don't know much about the versions. And I don't have any idea what ReBAR is in this context..

And you are using a reverse proxy because you want to expose jellyfin to the general internet? And you don't want to have to trust jellyfin's security (which is very reasonable) ?

ok, I see. So network is fast enough. That works for me. The miniPC only has 500gb. So that is why I figure I need the extra storage. As for a backup, I figured I would have to raid it. The only other option I can think of would be to run a second NAS or something. And that seems like overkill.

It does help thanks. And part of this set of questions was just me exploring stuff thoughts and looking to learn... so I have a follow up question or two.

You mention docker volumes make a lot of sense with multiple nodes. How does that work out? We use pv's and such with k8s at work, and the ones we use can only be mounted on one node at a time. From what others have said, allowing many write from multiple nodes has a lot of complications. Do docker volumes handle writing from multiple nodes?

And... "streaming video isn’t super latency sensitive". I'm super new to streaming video. I would have expected it to be sensitive to latency. I mean you expect the video to keep playing and not stop. Whereas most of the things I work with (api's and what not) can have an extra second or two to respond with little relevant difference. So clearly there is some depth here I don't understand.

I thought there was a raid setting where it basically duplicated the data across the drives such that if any one of them fail it can recreate the data. That should at least cover the "local" backup part. For more important things like family videos and such I have external drives that are offline unless I am uploading new videos and such. But really I should have some kind of offsite backup for that kind of stuff.