I started building my Jellyfin server with content from my own physical collection. I was using Channels, the tv watching software, but didn't like how limited it was for editing metadata sources and images and the overall experience. Though it was nice to keep all my watching in one app, Channels only does video and I wanted to add music, podcasts and audiobooks to my collection. We also canceled many streaming service subscriptions and decided to keep only a couple and go month to month on others as we found series to catch up on as needed.

Once everything appeared fine and working, I started thinking about adding retro media such as Saturday Morning Cartoons and Anime from the 70s & 80s. I first came up with idea after watching clips on YouTube and Archive.org. I was able to find older episodes of anime shows I used to watch as a kid before walking to school. These were Robotech and Star Blazers. I never realized how old the series Star Blazers was until I read 1974! Guess it was syndicated already in the 80s when I started watching.

Issues

I ran into trouble with scanning new media from Jellyfin. I thought I had the folder structure correct but it seems Jellyfin doesn't like too many sub-folders. After an hour of pulling my hair from reading forums and docs, I figured this out on my own. Pulled out the Anime into it's own folder for shows only since movies were ok. I recently added Akira (1988) and it detected easily within Jellyfin. I have a separate library for Anime Movies and Anime Shows now. Each scanning a separate folder making it easier for me to manage.

Plugins

Jellyfin has a nice library of plugins. I added the AnimDB for extra data in case TMDB didn't include all the information required for these older series. TMDB so far is very good which is built in to the default Jellyfin install.

Podcasts

Back in the early days of podcasts around 2005, there were vidcasts which were basically small shows. There was Diggnation, Ask A Ninja, Tikibar TV and Totally Rad Show to name a few. I have found some on Archive.org and that made me happy. Back then I had to watch on a computer but today we have various options to watch from our phones, tablets and TV using Jellyfin for example.

Next I will find Saturday Morning Cartoons and create a new section in Jellyfin. The clips I've seen include the original tv commercials we saw as kids too. I plan to have this playing in the background while I work on my remote days at home.