poop
Jellyfin has come a hell of a long way since it first forked from Emby. sure its not as feature complete and polished as plex but it’s far from shit, and it’s free and open.
I run both side by side with several clients on each and have been a plexpass holder since 2013.
yes, that is generally how it works. There are some edge cases and possible misconfigurations that would slow things down, but in general data between the devices on the switch will be gigabit and to/from the router (and thus the internet) will be limited to 100mbit.
re. the resolution thing, there are settings in the app for setting the TV to match the resolution and or refresh rate of the video content, which is intended to give the best possible image, however an older TV or one with an unusual resolution (1366x768 for example was common on budget flatscreens for a while and scaled poorly) can have trouble with the auto switching settings.
The other thing that is possible here is trying to direct play a 1080p video, even if hardware decoding is working is forcing the system to then downscale to 720p to drive the display, so the scaling can be a bottleneck unless it can be done in hardware, which might not be working, or is too much for the system to handle. that could be why forcing a transcode to 720p is more stable as it gets that step out of the way before it is even decoded. of course the best solution would be to not have to do it at all.
you might be better with the scaling settings turned off so the app doesn’t try to change them from your system settings, but if you do that you can run into problems with 24p content not being paced properly on a 60hz TV for example, so play with them.
that GPU is likely causing issues, no NVDEC or NVENC in a plex box makes it useless, so it’s having to brute force decode and encode everything, which it probably isn’t powerful enough to do while also being the server. That GPU has only basic h264 decoding at up to 1080p, no H265 or 10bit or 4k or anything like that, and might not even be supported by Plex HTPC or you need to try different driver versions as it might just be an Nvidia+linux thing cause the drivers are a bit of a mess.
Look into something slightly more modern like a p600 or newer. Or redo the server with an intel desktop cpu (even just an i3) which will have an igpu capable of pretty much everything up to and including 4k HDR.
putting prototypes straight into production is the “tech startup” way!
perhaps whatever hardware you have (more info?) isn’t supported for hardware decoding in the Plex HTPC app on your particular flavour of linux and choice of kernel. The webclient is likely forcing a transcode to a supported format in the browser, while the HTPC app might not be and cant decode the video properly, even through it is telling the server app that it can.
you can pirate on a kindle it’s just more annoying to do
Kobo is the go-to for bang for buck readers that don’t care where your files are from and have good format support. got my dad a libra 2 and it’s great, especially with the physical page turn buttons. the default reader opens most files just fine, but you can also put KoReader on them for more functionality without too much hassle.
Personally I use an older Boox Note 3 which is easier since it runs android, but is massive overkill to be used as just a reader, i use it as my main tablet and a notepad/sketchpad.