Televisions that can stream platforms like Hulu or Max usually come loaded with technology that collects information on what viewers are watching, and buyers consent to have their viewing tracked when they open their new TV and click through terms of service agreements. Sometimes, data firms can connect those viewing habits to a voter’s phone or laptop via their IP address, promising a trove of information about an individual and the ability to track them across screens.
Other times, firms focus on dividing households into groups based on what they’re watching, how they use their TVs and how many campaign ads they’re seeing, which is a boon to political campaigns eager to target specific groups of voters. Connecting this data to voter files is increasingly a focus — a move that adds individual voting habits into the mix.
Jellyfin has a much nicer user interface and is overall a better way of doing things. But libreElec and Kodi are great at being a cheap open source client that handles lots of different codecs without much fuss.
I have a JF instance running on Proxmox as well, but it hasn’t won me over yet. Still, I know a lot of folks do prefer it to Kodi and others so there must be something to it.
I use Jellyfin through the Jellycon add-on for Kodi, running LibreELEC on a RPi 3B+ to get the best of both worlds.
This makes the content available for direct playback since Kodi supports most formats and codecs, assuming your device is powerful enough. The RPi 3B+ I use is happy with H.264 but can’t handle H.265, VP9 and other more compressed video files, though various other SBCs or USFF PCs have the capabilities if you need them. Or, if your server is powerful enough, you could set it up to let Jellyfin transcode the video to a supported format on the fly as it’s streaming.
For a better UX, I recommend using a skin like Arctic: Zephyr - Reloaded and taking some time to understand how to make relevant content available through custom widgets on the homescreen, such as New Episodes, Continue Watching, Next Up, etc. if you want a Jellyfin-like experience. I’ve done that, and it has been convenient at times to be able to use the TV remote through HDMI-CEC, though I must admit I mostly just initiate playback from the Jellyfin app on my phone by connecting it to the RPi, resulting in a more casting-like experience. However, I still use my TV remote for player control, but I can also use the Kore app for remote control of Kodi. I use that app for controlling the player of Kodi since it’s better at staying in sync with the Kodi playback status than the Jellyfin app, and because it can control the entirety of Kodi instead of just the current Jellyfin media playback.