Yeah, transcoding entirely off - directly stream stored 720/1080p files (downloaded like that, although I did use handbrake on the pi once to transcode Space 1999 season 1. Took about 2 days I think).

Someone else was just talking about Wyse thin clients. I’m fairly sure that a $40 Wyse thin client out performs even the best Pi 4 (maybe 5 sometimes). If I can’t find a way to fix mine, I may have to buy a few for uh…science. IIRC, they idle at about the same as the Pi

Oh man I love those wyze thin clients. They can’t go for much more that $40 these days.

I hope people keep sleeping on em - I could use a Raspberry Pi replacement or two

It’s very ok, as long as you don’t expect multiple 4K streams at it.

I ran JellyFin on a Pi 4 for about 3 or 4 yrs before it started acting up. So long as you don’t transcode, it works wonderfully well. I had it serving upto 4-5 x 720p streams at same time. IIRC, it can just about do a single 4K, 60? Never tried - all my media is 1080p or less.

IIRC, mine is overclocked and undervolted using PiTools (and is in a Argon 40 case with a m.2). The Argon 40 case (I think) is causing it to short (something with the daughter-board? Dunno). Better options these days.

Paperless I don’t use but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible.

Don’t try Immich unless you like pain (or turn off the AI stuff)

I actually (just last night) abliterated a Qwen3.5-2B for this sort of purpose (well, more specifically, to fit neatly into a socket for a project). It’s fast and light, cooked for edge devices, and should have inherited all of base Qwen’s tricks (~200 languages, vision etc) polaris-heretic-Q4_K_M-GGUF

Try it and see if it works? I inadvertently made it really fucking love dotpoints (GPT-OSS 20B disease) so am trying to unfuck it right now.

Else - I can recommend something like Granite-4H or the old Qwen3-4B 2507 instruct

granite-4.1-3b-heretic.i1-Q4_K_M

Qwen3-4B 2507 instruct

It’s a more convenient method for some to pirate content, as it requires comparatively little set up. Think: Netflix but yaaar. You pay upkeep but they ensure content is there (as best as possible).

Other similar options include things like Flixify and FMovies.

It always surprised me folks into self hosting prefer pirate streaming. That’s still someone else computer - I’d rather D/L it myself when possible. I get it though - some of the services are very good and near Netflix level convenient.

Don’tBe Evil

Since you posted this last, Google did the dirty and U2’ed Gemini into chrome without user’s permission.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/chrome-is-quietly-downloading-4gb-ai-model-without-your-permission

So, “positioning and walled garden” rather than “for the good of all man kind” seems to be the play here. ICBW and YMMV.