JellyTheatre

Your Jellyfin library on a giant screen, in VR.

JellyTheatre lets you watch your own films and shows on a Meta Quest 3 (or another WebXR headset). You pick a place to watch from: a movie theatre, a cinema with beds, a cosy home cinema, a space station, a cabin by a lake, a hammock in the jungle, or your own room. It runs in the headset's browser and installs like an app. There is nothing to sideload and nothing to add to your server.

Features

Places to watch

Movie theatre: rows of red seats, curtains, a projection booth and a giant screen.	Bed cinema: made for watching in bed. Double beds for two, popcorn on the side tables, and a giant screen leaning out high above you, facing the pillows.
Home cinema: recliners, a sofa, bookshelves and a starry ceiling.	Space station: float in a Cupola like the ISS's, windows all around onto the planet, the moon and the stars.
Lakeside cabin: a crackling fire, rain on the windows, a moonlit lake.	Jungle hammock: also made for watching in bed. Lie back in a hammock under the rainforest canopy, the screen stretched between two trees above you, fireflies all around.
Dark void: only the screen, in a quiet dark space.

You can also watch in My room, which uses passthrough to put the screen in your real room, where you can move it. Room lighting follows the colours of the picture, so the room glows blue during a night scene and warm during a sunset. You can turn this off or change the room's brightness.

Each place says what it is like: indoor or outdoor, sitting, lying down or floating, and whether you can change seats.

Your library, in sync

• Continue watching (what you started, and the next episode of each show) and New (the latest movies and shows), right on the big screen.
• A tab for each of your libraries, named as on your server: movies and shows sorted and filtered (by genre, or hiding what you've already watched), collections, and home videos browsed by folder. There are also favourites and a search with an on-screen keyboard.
• Series pages have season tabs, episodes with their watched status, and "play next".
• Always in sync with Jellyfin: playback resumes where you stopped (even if you started on another device), and your progress, watched status and favourites are saved back to your server.

Gentle on your server

JellyTheatre plays your files as they are whenever the headset can decode them (H.264, HEVC, VP9 and AV1 included). If the headset can't, the server only repackages the file or converts the audio, which is cheap. A full transcode happens only as a last resort. Each poster shows the quality (4K, HDR…) and whether the file will play directly. A film's page also shows the server's decision before you press Play.

Made for watching

• Subtitles: text subtitles (SRT, ASS, WebVTT…) and Blu-ray image subtitles (PGS) are drawn by the headset, so the server never burns them in. You can change their size, colour, outline or background box, and where they appear (on or below the picture). You can also shift their timing when they are out of sync, right from the subtitle menu.
• Skip intro / credits button, or automatic skipping (when your server detects intros and credits).
• Seek bar previews (thumbnails) and chapter marks.
• Up next: when the credits start, the next episode is offered with a countdown. You can cancel it in one click or turn autoplay off.
• Virtual surround: cinema sound in the headset. Voices come from the screen and effects surround you, even as you turn your head. The controls show what the film's sound carries (stereo, 5.1…). Turn it off in Settings, Sound for plain stereo.
• Audio and subtitle track menus, and volume up to 150 %.
• The time, and when the film ends, on the controls (there's no clock in VR).
• Crisp picture and menus: on the Quest, the video and menus are drawn directly by the headset at full resolution.

Comfortable in VR

• Change seats by pointing at one and teleporting there (no walking, no motion sickness), plus snap turn.
• Recenter with the Quest's own button. If you're reclined or lying down, the screen, upright, and the menus come in front of your eyes.
• Adjustable eye height, if your seat feels too low or too high, or if you watch lying down.
• The library, controls and settings panels can be grabbed and moved wherever you like.

Getting started

1. Your Jellyfin server must be reachable over HTTPS (browsers don't allow a secure page to load video from a plain HTTP server, and VR requires a secure page).
2. Install JellyTheatre from the Meta Horizon Store. It opens straight in VR. (Or open https://jellytheatre.vpelloin.eu/ in the Quest Browser, and press Enter VR.)
3. Enter your server address and sign in. Quick Connect is easiest: enter the code shown in JellyTheatre in another Jellyfin app (phone, web), with no typing in VR. Username and password also work.
4. Pick a film.

Controls

Trigger	Point and click
A / X	Play / pause
B / Y	Show / hide the controls
Grip (on a panel)	Grab and move it; push or pull the stick to move it farther or closer
Stick forward, point at a seat, release	Teleport to that seat
Right stick left / right	Snap turn
Left stick click	Back to your seat
Hold the Meta button	Recenter the view

Settings open from the library's header, or from the gear on the controls during a film. They are grouped in tabs: Playback, Subtitles, Display, View and Account (sign out, to sign in again as someone else or on another server, right from VR). To change places, the Environment button in the library's header (or the landscape icon on the controls) opens the picker directly.

Roadmap

Ideas for future versions:

• 3D films: play side-by-side and top-bottom 3D files in true stereo.
• Hand tracking: point and pinch instead of using controllers, including gestures for teleport and recenter.

Suggestions are welcome in the issues.

For developers

Architecture, how Jellyfin is used, the playback strategy, development setup, testing on the Quest and deployment are in docs/TECHNICAL.md.

Credits

The films in the screenshots are open movies by the Blender Foundation / Blender Studio, released under Creative Commons Attribution licences (CC BY 2.5, 3.0 or 4.0): Sintel, Tears of Steel, Big Buck Bunny, Spring, Sprite Fright, Charge, Cosmos Laundromat, Elephants Dream, Coffee Run, Wing It!, Hero, Glass Half and Caminandes. Posters and footage come from Wikimedia Commons. Some posters were made from a still of the film with its title added, and the clip that plays is silent.

Privacy

JellyTheatre has no account, analytics or tracking: your server address and sign-in stay on your headset and only go to your own Jellyfin server. See the privacy policy.

License

See LICENSE.