RetroStream: Stream or transcode Media to your favourite vintage hardware

[kahunalx]

Hi everyone, I’m happy to announce a massive update to the project. v2.0 is out!

Before diving into the details, check out the new video in the README. It demonstrates the setup process, from configuring the server on a modern Mac to running the client on a PowerMac G4, finally showcasing transcoded modern media playing on Tiger: 👉 https://codeberg.org/jjmarcos/retrostream-py

What’s new in v2.0?

• Jellyfin Support: You can now connect to Jellyfin servers as well as Plex.
• New Server GUI: For the server side (the modern machine), there is now a proper GUI to manage settings, view logs, and start/stop the service without touching the command line.
• Extended HW Acceleration: Transcoding now supports VAAPI (Linux), D3D11VA (Windows), and VideoToolbox (macOS), in addition to CUDA/QSV.
• Smarter Transcoding: Better and more complex automatic fallback chains (if hardware encoding fails, it gracefully falls back to the next available engine) and hardware-accelerated scaling.
• New Players: Added support for mpv and ffplay alongside MPlayer.

Compatibility
As always, the focus is on getting modern media onto vintage screens.

• Clients: Mac OS X, Windows 98 SE, Windows XP, Linux.
• Server: macOS (Intel/Silicon), Linux, Windows 10/11.

Downloads
Standalone binaries are available for several platforms (no Python installation required).
You can grab the v2.0 zip files here: https://codeberg.org/jjmarcos/retrostream-py/releases

Please have a look at the extensive documentation

Let me know if you run into any issues!