Turn your Old PC into a new 4K Blu-ray Dolby ATMOS Streaming Server!

Today on TwoGuyzTech, Rob is going to be talking about how we repurposed an old Dell Optiplex desktop PC as an affordable and powerful In-Home Media Streaming Server using the open source Jellyfin software.

🔊 Recommended Home Theater Gear 🔊

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[jeffjordan]

Started using Plex about 10 years ago. Once they started charging people, I switched to Jellyfin about 3 years ago. Haven't looked back. It handles everything I throw at it. All my home videos, ripped videos, photos, digitized slides, books, etc. I installed it on my lowest power computer. A single core processor with 2 Gigs of RAM, 12TB drive, running Lubuntu headless. Haven't shut it down in 3 years. I installed it by hand along with Nginx, running another service that stored magazines. Glad to see I'm not alone. Thanks for the video.

[MuhChicken]

Great video. I went the NAS route and it cost me about $2, 500.00. My best friend went the Raspberry Pi 3B route with a 2TB external USB drive and it works great for him and his DVD rips. I have a lot of Blu-Ray content and around 16 TB of files, whereas he still has free space with lots of DVD content. I guess it all depends on the individual needs, so whatever you can afford will probably be okay as long as you do your research before getting started. For what it is worth, I'm Plex Lifetime and he uses OSMC. So, there is a tier for whatever you can afford. Thanks for the great videos, I'm a subscriber now...

[JoseLgamer]

You can use the included windows 7 or 8 key to activate windows 10. It's worth noting that if the computer came with windows 8 or 10 the key is embedded in the UEFI firmware, and windows will grab it automatically.

[mattball]

I’ve run similar hardware in the form of DellOptiplex i7 with 16gb ram and a bunch of 8tb drives. Worked perfectly and I would recommend looking at Emby software running on Windows.

[nithwk]

I use openmediavault myself however I also have other things shared like emulators and rom sets. I have 2x 8tb externals and 2x 18tb externals connected to it. For playback I have an apple tv with infuse pro and a zidoo z9x rather than a transcode setup like yours though there is nothing wrong with that setup it's all about preference.

[enlightment]

I love the idea. I bought a NAS and found out quick that it is great for a file server but streaming is not it's forte. I then watch this video and a few others and remembered that I had an old gaming PC with an Intel i7 processor. I'm like 😊. It only has 16gig of memory, but it is an i7. LOL the video cards only have 1gig on each card. I still use it but mostly just sits there. I used it in the past for ripping and encoding dvds to divx. Hehe

I needed the reminder for sure. It took me a little to remember how to drive map, but all is well. Next is setting up an Ubuntu server and Plex on it. Ill use the NAS to store the 4k Movies and the gaming PC as a Linux Plex server 😊.

I'm hoping that it will be okay to run IPTV including OTA with Plex. I was looking at some of my other choices and was like no way I'm spending 1k on a media server. Good lawd... 😮

[cds]

Finally a tech channel sharing my reality! Blu ray forever!

[davidkrocks]

just be mindful that I have attempted to do this, but the dell desktops are not too power efficient. I was getting close to 30-50 watts at idle/max. Its probably easier and save some efficiency just to use your modern desktop as a media center, YRMV.

[gregbenwell]

WHAT I don't like with Plex on a recent install is that it "showed my movie and music list ON the internet", and my feelings and logic is, MY FILES should remain private to my own usage ONLY!!!!

[doctorno]

Pretty good video and covers all the basics.

I started off with a setup like this. Recently went all in on a new build in a fractal design define 7xl loaded up with x5 10tb wd red hdds.

Specs for the system are overkill for a media server but I use it for full access to my steam library for couch gaming on a 65 inch lg c2.

Also have big box running on it for all my retro emulation needs. Makes for a pretty good all in one entertainment unit.

[njswk]

im very new at this stuff..

so i just made my own jellyfin server with my main PC right now. it got r5 57500f and an rx 6600.. its been running for like 3 days. and before it uses the CPU . Theres no issue as far as I can remember and itr works fine. there's only 2 client in my house. living room tv and my parents tv. I'm saving the movie files on an external SSD. (this is why it trying to use my old dell optiplex as an server so that I can use an internal storage too) but. today while I was watching the movie from living room tv it got sick sick sick lots of buffer. the first 8-10 minutes it works fine. smooth

but after that it buffers a lot and stuttering. i haven't tried hardware acceleration since I know my CPU is capable doing this. 2 tv, only mkv 1080p format with x264 sdr (most of it) I got some HEVC/ x265 file. and I'm only downloading the file in 1080p.

my upload speed is about 15 Mbps average.

my question is
How can I fix this?
should I use the hardware accell?
should I change my server from this PC to the dell optiplex 3020 which has an older CPU and GPU?
Should I change to my i7 3370 and rx 570 (old pc)?

Note
I am not someone who understand coding or anything. I'm very new at this topic. so pls explain it as easy as u can... THANKS!

I just realised my CPU in task manger didn't put his effort into it. last night I updated my windows 11... does that could be the problem?

[joshdekubber]

Very interesting! I'm gonna share this to my Discord!

[Herigrosir]

saya pikir jellyfin selalu menggunakan stracoding dan itu menjadi kelemahan dan memberatkan kinerja server
yg bagus dan simple adalah

buat folder sharing / smb di server
di clinet anda bisa membacanya cukup dengan vlc di jaringan lokal network

selesai, itu tidak menggunakan trancoding
client tidak melihat gambar dan metadata, hanya melihat folder dan nama folder aja
tapi tidak memberatkan kinerja server, jika 1 movie di putar secara bersama sama oleh 100 orang client 😅

[Phoenixbrady]

im building a new pc soon, first one, and will have an old hp eny h8 1590 (i think) i will cannibalise for this project. if im right its got intel i7 3.4ghz, and 16gb of ram.

[Justacuase]

On his example PC and with the HDDs he used, there are a few things to note
You actually don't need UEFI support in the Bios, as long as the Host operating system supports GPT you can use the 4 TB HDD or larger, you just have to setup the Boot Disk as MBR, and then any additional drives can be GPT
And the Only reason his example computer don't support Windows 11 is because of no TPM support
Which you can still run a custom install command to ignore that requirement
That PC will Run 10 or 11 no problem, and not slow either for the intended purpose of serving up network shares
I would go even one further and use a separate PC to do your Transcoding and Rips

[tcttvradio]

we had an xp computer plugged into the tv with a folder full of movies on back in 2010. My xp mini computer still runs fine today. There's no need to plug it into the internet it just runs and doesnt need updates. On my older laptops and computers we forced windows 11 education onto them.

[roynorton]

Useful video but why complety miss out any info regarding the audio setup?

[jmarfree]

Why not just use kodi and connect to a pc on the same network with your media? It's ALOT cheaper and an easy setup.

[Smart-Skippy]

The AMD Radeon RX6400 GPU uses just 7 watts to 13 watts of power and can output HDMI 2.1 4K 120hx 4:4:4 RGB. It is dirt cheap and runs purely from the PCIE power. No extra power required. One caveat... No AVC1 audio.

[kendrakirai]

I’ve found that my Core 2 Quad Q6600 works fine for anything under 4K streaming, which I don’t need because I have literally nothing that I can watch 4K on anyway. Where it has problems is when there’s three or more streams going at 1080p with transcoding.