Eh, Chromecast has AV1 and so do some smart TVs already. If that is your primary watching platform, encode away in AV1 and get an Arc A380 for the rest. It will also massively decrease encoding times.
I’m switching to AV1. But I’ve also been following its progress for years and understand the benefits and drawbacks. I wouldn’t recommend blindly jumping in if you’re new.
In my experience the saving over h265 is still consistent and given that hardware h265 is less common that av1 on new devices, from h264 there is no need to go h265 but directly to av1 is better if you need to do the job.
A lot of newer Android-TV-Settop-Boxes are ready for AV1, for example products from Orbsmart.de like my Orbsmart S87L.
On that box is Kodi preinstalled and you can install everything from android-stores, also the Jellybin-client.
Don't forget: Jellybin is a very good open-source-software, but a client-server-system. So you need Hardware for the server-software.
My point is that H264 is well supported everywhere so I personally am in no hurry to switch. Non of my devices support AV1 so it is a waste of my time for the most part.
What's worse is when I first started a bunch of people recommended AV1 which lead to Jellyfin not working.
And you're the norm, not the exception. Too many people choose to evangelize instead of looking at real-world use cases for the majority. I used to use Nvidia boxes around the house with Kodi. It worked but my wife and kids sure thought it was a pain in the rear often enough that it made it a pain for me too.
@clemensg@possiblylinux127@PM_Your_Nudes_Please@Bluefalcon A lot of Android TV boxes also come with malware pre-installed. I am not familiar with any particular box by name, but it’s not a small percentage of them. I’d exercise caution with using anything pre-installed.
Worth noting that AV1 is less compatible with older devices. My old Samsung TV, for instance, refuses to play them. It can’t DirectPlay AV1, so the server tries to transcode. But even when transcoding, the stream still fails. If you have an older smart TV, you may want to stick with h264 for compatibility reasons.
When looking for media online, you pretty much just need a good adblocker and the sense not to run any random executables.
The media files themselves are very unlikely to have malware attached. They would need to exploit a bug in the specific video player you are using and then exploit another bug in your OS to get admin privileges before doing any real damage. It's pretty much just theoretical. Keep your stuff up to date and don't worry about it.
That doesn't really resolve the problem of is the media safe.
From a cybersecurity standpoint you should be validating the mime type of the media at a minimum (The actual magic number, not the extension). And running it through ClamAV as well, ideally, before it's released to your media library.