The more I think about it the more there needs to be an ID3 equivalent to video media so the meta data is stored with-in the movie container versus a central database.

Kodi and their meta helpers can create a local meta file. Next step is to push it into the media container.

CppCon and other video recorded events would benefit from this. The shared video file would contain the details and remove the energy to search for the source and other meaningful information.

I remember going through and manually keying in the id3 tags on my mp3s using WinAmp, because without them the dash between the artist and song look slightly different. That was a lot of work over a dash.

> I'd have zero clue where I am in the 100+ series I'm tracking

curious question then - do you remember the content of what you were watching? i totally get that you don't know on what episode you are and i used and love Jellyfin myself, but if you're watching 100+ series "at once" i'm starting to wonder if you even remember the last episode of a show if you rotate so heavily, know what i mean? i barely remember an episode after a week, even if i exclusively watch one show. so either my memory is even worse than i thought, or - you have the memory of a savant ;)

Unfortunately i don't have the luxury to watch a lot of shows during the week. Usually the max is around 5 or so. Call me strange, but sometimes i actually like it that i forget what i was watching. Makes me kinda of realise it's still a little luxury leisure. Usually i get happy when i realise there's more show to watch (happened with Foundation). Or i keep ignoring it, because interest was lost over time (happened with Rick and Morty). The kids tend to watch a series back to front and then ignore it completely once they lose interest.

I still have artifacts in my dirs of TOSORT, TODO, and DONE.

Usually subtitles are not that hard to find.

I would equate browsing for a movie to watch in a Jellyfin library (or Netflix, etc) on the TV to someone browsing at Blockbuster to find a movie to rent, seeing what is available on their DVR, or maybe even the TV Guide.

I think the media servers started as a way to avoid tapes/DVDs and making it easier to get content on the TV. It’s a much better experience than a 100 DVD changer. Now, it evolved based on anxiety around streaming services and never knowing when the TV show you’re watching will get pulled, or your favorite movie will lose availability… and wanting to maintain access. This is especially true as companies, like Sony, remove digital copies of movies people “bought”. So any digital file with DRM from a company is only good as long as they decide to keep offering it, which isn’t forever.

> you just turned on the TV, selected your channel, and there was your show

You've just described the media experience. When I was a kid I spent so much time just flipping through channels. The same activity today is a vastly different and inferior experience. Modern televisions take forever to change channels.

Jellyfin took me 20 minutes to setup with docker-compose. I’ve never customized anything about it aside from pointing it at my media library. It’s way less effort than making an SMB share play nice with a smart TV.

My personal media library has over 600 moves and 70+ shows and around 8,000 books. There is no way I can watch and read all of it in my lifetime. But I do find joy in being a little librarian and I also care deeply about art and like to keep my own little nest. All of it is sharable with anyone i like anywhere in the world. I do use jellyfin but i don't think I have ever switched its theme though.

Either way, yeah one of the joys of running a home lab to me is definitely the managing and maintainence to me and I don't think its any lesser pursuit than watching the media itself

i've used this plugin a lot, and it is nice, but a bit hit-or-miss. it analyzes all episodes of a show to start seeing a pattern in the beginning of shows, or checks chapters which my files rarely had. works well for most shows, but if a show has unique intros for every episode, it doesn't really work. also had trouble with 100% consistent intros, but i never really figured out why that happened.

kind of a 50% solution, works a lot of times but a lot of other times you still end up scrubbing. (also consider that if you install this plugin onto a large existing library, it's going to take a considerable amount of compute and real-world time to do complete it for every show).

It does work with Kodi, you just need to add a client-side plugin for Kodi to support it: https://github.com/SgtJalau/service.jellyskip

I just bring a $25 Onn 4k Google TV “box” I use for travel that’s roughly half the size of a deck of cards and pre-configured with Jellyfin/ad-free home screen/etc in addition to the travel router linked to my VPN.

Less due to security and more because I’ve seen hotel TVs that literally had like 5 sec latency for any button press and are full of ads so I don’t want to deal with that.