Why We Run Our Own TV at Home: Jellyfin Instead of an Algorithm for the Kids
Not a home-server tutorial. More an answer to the question I get most often: "So what do you actually need that thing for?"
The cartoon that turns into something else
Anyone with small kids knows the moment. You put on a cartoon, step into the kitchen for a minute, and when you come back something completely different is playing. Not necessarily something terrible, just something you didn't choose. Louder, faster, in screaming colours, with ten more thumbnails underneath, each promising even more.
YouTube and the streaming services are built around one thing: keep watching. For an adult it's an annoyance you can ignore. For a three-year-old it's a row of colourful pictures they learn to operate before they can tie their own shoes. And Netflix, once "the safer one", now quietly mixes in things I'd rather keep away from the kids, too.
So I decided the choosing wouldn't be done by an algorithm, but by us.
A library instead of a feed
The answer is Jellyfin: an open-source media server that runs at home and looks like Netflix, only without ads, without "for you" recommendations, and without anyone collecting what you watch. Whatever is in it, someone in the family put there. Whatever isn't, can't show up.
In practice that means:
- Everyone in the family has their own profile. There is a single admin. The other profiles are restricted and see only the libraries meant for them.
- The kids' library is kept separate from everything else. The same disk holds grown-up series that have no business reaching the kids, which is exactly what separate libraries are for. I went through the kids' content once by age rating and genre, and anything above the line stayed out. Along the way it turned out the automation isn't infallible either: Jellyfin matched one animated film to a completely different, older film with the same name. A human check is worth keeping.
- One app for everything. Films, cartoons and live TV sit side by side. How I got our paid TV package into Jellyfin as well is covered in a separate article.
- It works away from home too. I originally bought the domain for exactly this: so grandma, or we at the cottage, could put on a cartoon without anyone having to switch on a VPN.
What it runs on
It all runs on an Orange Pi 5, a small ARM computer the size of a credit card. It lives inside the case of an old DVD/Blu-ray player, so under the TV it looks like ordinary electronics, not a server. Inside: a 4 TB disk for the media, a powered USB hub (without it, the disk took the whole system down during power spikes), and cooling assembled from an old graphics card's fans plus the original DVD drive fan.
It runs 24/7 and most of the time nobody knows it's there, which is exactly the point.
What it costs (and it isn't just money)
Honestly: it isn't "install and forget".
Security. Jellyfin is the only service I deliberately expose to the internet, so it deserves proper care: an up-to-date version, account lockout after repeated failed logins, and only as many permissions as each person actually needs. During an audit I found that brute-force protection was switched off entirely by default. That's a detail a regular user would never notice.
Maintenance. Now and then something breaks in a way you wouldn't expect. Recently the TV suddenly refused to play, complaining about an invalid certificate, even though the app logged in just fine. The cause wasn't Jellyfin or the TV: while the server was briefly down, the router started handing the TV an address from public DNS, and the TV then connected to a completely different device. The fix was one line in the router config. Finding that line took longer.
Time. Someone has to fill, sort and check the library. For me it's a hobby that clears my head. For someone else it would be one more chore.
Where it still falls short
Jellyfin solved the main thing: nothing shows up on its own. It didn't solve one thing, though, and that surprised me. The youngest learned to work YouTube's thumbnail row within days, but can't find their way around Jellyfin without help. Menus, libraries, seasons and episodes are designed for adults. Safe content is only half the job. The other half is an interface a child can manage alone, without being pulled further in.
I'm still working on that.
Closing
This isn't a fight against technology. Kids will use screens either way, and it's fair that they learn how. It's about something simpler: that what they watch is decided by a person who loves them, not by a system rewarded for how long they keep watching.
And for that, a small computer in an old DVD player is enough.