Your NAS can handle it. So can a Raspberry Pi.
Other media servers are resource hogs. Plex wants gigabytes of RAM. Jellyfin spawns dozens of processes. PixelBrite's server runs lean—under 512MB RAM even during 4K HDR streaming—because it's built to do one thing well.
When transcoding is necessary, we use your hardware. Comprehensive support for all major GPU vendors—NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple—plus CPU fallbacks. Zero configuration required: automatic hardware detection picks the best encoder for your system. Self-contained binaries mean no driver installations or user dependencies.
The fastest transcode is the one that doesn't happen. We always attempt direct play first, letting your device's hardware decoder do the work. Most modern content plays directly on Apple devices—no server processing required.
Install on whatever hardware you have. A Synology NAS, a Raspberry Pi 4, an old laptop, a proper server, or a Mac mini in your closet. Native binaries for every platform with architecture-specific optimizations. No runtime dependencies—download and run.
Multiple family members watching different things? No problem. Direct play streams have virtually no server overhead. Even transcoded streams stay efficient with hardware acceleration.
The server starts in seconds, not minutes. No lengthy initialization, no database migrations on every update, no waiting for plugins to load. Start it and it's ready.
Library scans that take hours on other media servers finish in seconds. PixelBrite pre-caches over 1.1 million movies and 200,000+ TV shows locally—no API calls needed for matching. Sub-millisecond matching per file means a 1,000-movie library scans in under a second.
No database dumps. No export scripts. No backup plugins. Just zip the installation folder—that's your entire backup. Everything is self-contained: config, database, cache, thumbnails. Restore by unzipping. Move to a new machine by copying the folder and swapping the executable for your new platform.