Building My Own TV Station: ErsatzTV in a FreeBSD Jail, With Intel Hardware Transcoding

I spent most of last week horizontal. Not dramatically ill, just the sort of illness where the day consists of tea, bed, and a laptop balanced on a duvet at an angle no ergonomics guide would endorse. This is exactly the situation a large media library is supposed to solve. Mine holds an embarrassing number of series and films, all neatly indexed by Jellyfin, all one click away. And every single time I opened it, I scrolled. Then I scrolled some more. Then I closed it again and stared at the ceiling, which at least did not require me to make a decision. That is the failure mode nobody warns you about when you build a media server. A library is not entertainment. A library is a catalogue, and a catalogue asks you a question every time you open it: what do you want? When you are ill, tired, or simply out of decision budget for the day, that question is surprisingly expensive. Old-fashioned television never asked. You turned it on, something was already happening, and you either watched…