I want to stream mkv files to Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows. Transcoding isn’t that important. Just want something convenient.
For the widest device coverage, Plex is probably your best bet. I run a Plex server and can watch from anywhere on our network because they have apps on everything.
An alternative would be Jellyfin. I haven’t used it myself but have heard nothing but good things. I’m just not sure how device coverage is.
If you’re only interested in locally streaming you really can’t go wrong with Kodi and samba shares. It’s tried and tested and has a way longer lineage than jellyfin. I’m a big fan of jellyfin and have it set up; but if I’m on my network I’m more likely to break out Kodi and stream on smb, or even just use VLC. Fewer issues generally.
I remember Kodi from the XBMC days, how much has it changed in recent years? I remember when people started selling “Kodi sticks” way back when that were USB sticks preloaded with openelec and had a bunch of pirate streams preinstalled that were pretty much garbage, and it severely tarnished the Kodi/XBMC name.
It will look very familiar to you from the XBMC days. I’ve been an XBMC/Kodi user since the days of soft modding original Xboxes — they’ve very much melt the same soul and the default skin still harkens back to those days. It’s gotten more and more stable over time, and while I’m sure there are still repositories you can add to add pirates streaming sources, I generally don’t touch those and use it as a “play anything locally” tool. If that’s what you need it for — loading up media from smb or local hdd — it will work great and still plays basically anything you throw at it.
Do you need it to stream simultaneously or are you okay with it streaming async? If the second, any common media server software should do you well, take a look at things DLNA compatible. That should stream to VLC easy for any workstation/phone and it supported by most smart tvs/media boxes.
If simultaneous, maybe something like obs studio could work?
I went through plex and emby but i finally settled for jellyfin. It has just what i need, a pleasant and minimal interface and it has a light footprint on my rpi. plus is free so no plex premium bullshit stuff.
I second Jellyfin.
Man, all this talk makes me miss AirStream. Only worked on Android, but it locally-streamed just about everything out of the box; combined with MX Player, transcoding wasn’t even necessary. But the devs vanished like 7 years ago and stopped updating/supporting the server software, so getting the app to communicate with the host computer was impossible.
Lots of Jellyfin love in here, love too see it. The sever end of is great, the client end though… not so much. If you are just looking for a plug and go, plex has the maturity of their clients with a very workable backend. just about every device out there as an up to date official plex app, right down to a windows app if you really want it.
Again, no shit on Jellyfin here, Plex is a business after all.
My setup is ghetto AF. I just run a Linux server with a minidlna service and samba running.
Any browser on my network can access //server and see my collection of videos.
To be clear, this meets your requirements 😎
I use vlc on my phone, my tv can browse it all natively, my gf can access it on her iphone. This server is part of my windows NAS.
(In case anyone is wondering, every time my main PC is idle for 20 mins it runs a sync between the server and a backup drive I have attached to my main PC, so it’s all duplicated for a hot-swap whenever I need. It’s amazing how low tech and resilient my setup is)
