I’d be interested to know the status for the player apps on various platforms. For example, this is a nonstarter for me until it supports Google TV and iOS/iPasOS.
This is unfortunately a deal breaker for most home grown media browsers. They need to maintain apps on all the walled gardens their users are using, which is a ton of work IME.
Couldn’t this be addressed by standardizing around a protocol? That way client and server are decoupled and existing clients can work with new media server projects.
Well maybe, but smart TV and streaming box browsers are unlikely to implement all the functionality pertinent to a high-grade home theater experience. Apps are better here, so what I had in mind was closer to standardization around existing popular protocols like that currently used by Kodi and Plex, both of which have high quality clients for just about every platform out there.
There is some interoperability between other clients today. For example, I have a Jellyfin server but in order to connect to it on my Apple TV I use the Infuse Pro app. I think that works more because of a standardized file structure that each app creates its own indexes for, so an actual protocol that they share would still be an improvement.
Infuse implemented code specifically for jellyfin and it uses jellyfin's own API. The only common protocol is dlna, but it's pretty limited and only really used on local networks.
That would slow down development and new idea down a lot, I don't think it's even worth considering. It's probably easier to implement it on Kodi/Infuse/any other clients.
> It's probably easier to implement it on Kodi/Infuse/any other clients
Yep, it's definitely easier to get third party clients to implement your protocol. Kodi you can write your own plugins for, Infuse... requires their devs to care about your implementation. Chicken, meet egg?
That said, I also fully admit I have no knowledge of your codebase, nor any knowledge of how extensive / complicated the jellyfin (or any other comparable media server) client api looks like, and I assume you have a better idea!
Android and web only for now. I do agree that Google tv/chromecast is extremely important. ios/ipad/tvos is even harder since it's 100$ a year for a dev account to push it to the apple store and I don't own an apple device to write the app.
I want to focus on features before writing more clients, I hope to write Chromecast support in less than 6 mounts and google tv in less than a year.
I'm sure there's enough interest on HN to cover the $100 for a dev account for you and maybe get you a reasonable device to test on from Swappa. Maybe setup a donation link for an iOS/tvOS app? I think iOS/tvOS app would really make usage increase dramatically. People generally aren't against paying for software that works and makes things easier. Plex has become bloated and over-featured. Infuse is ok, but not great when trying to watch remotely, even over TailScale.
I do agree about the value of tv/native apps but for now I have a tiny user base, we are only 20 on the discord. I think it's still too early to have any kind of financial support on the project.
