Media Vault: Ambitious Open-Source Push to Merge Media Servers and Game Streaming

Self-hosting enthusiasts have long relied on a patchwork of tools to manage home entertainment: Jellyfin or Plex for movies, shows, and music; Sunshine paired with Moonlight for PC game streaming; and Playnite, RetroArch, or EmulationStation for game libraries. Enter Media Vault, an emerging open-source project aiming to consolidate these into a single, cohesive platform with shared UI, API, and server backend. Detailed in a Hacker News thread and hosted at GitHub, it positions itself as "Jellyfin + Playnite with streaming for both media and games."

Unified Vision for Media and Games

At its core, Media Vault envisions a Docker-first deployment that handles:
- Streaming of movies, TV shows, and music.
- PC and emulated game streaming to network devices.
- Games cataloged as "media entries" with metadata, artwork, and launch scripts.
- Controller input passthrough via WebRTC for low-latency play.
- Optional cloud synchronization for game saves.
- An extensible API welcoming third-party clients.

This approach promises a seamless experience across devices, eliminating the need to switch apps or manage multiple servers. For developers and homelab operators, the Docker emphasis and modular API lower barriers to entry and customization.

Developer Seeks Critical Feedback

Before committing to full game streaming integration, the creator poses pointed questions to the community:

• Is there a meaningful benefit to unifying media and game streaming under one server/API, or is separation fundamentally better?
• For game streaming, what’s the minimal viable core: WebRTC, controller passthrough, automatic emulator launch, or something else?
• Are video transcoding and real-time game streaming too divergent to live inside one backend, or is it feasible with good modularity?
• What are the biggest frustrations with running Jellyfin/Plex + Sunshine/Moonlight + Playnite/EmulationStation as separate tools?
• Are there security implications I should consider when exposing media libraries and executable launchers behind one unified API?
• What would a unified solution need to do significantly better than today’s separated-stack setups to justify switching?

These reflect a pragmatic mindset, recognizing the divergent demands of video transcoding—often GPU-accelerated and file-based—and interactive game streaming, which prioritizes real-time encoding and sub-20ms latency.

Technical Challenges and Opportunities

Merging these stacks technically is feasible but nontrivial. Video pipelines leverage tools like FFmpeg for on-demand transcoding, while game streaming builds on WebRTC for peer-to-peer transport and Sunshine's host encoding. A modular backend—perhaps with separate transcoding and streaming modules sharing a common media database—could reconcile this. Treating games uniformly with media enables powerful features like unified search and recommendations, but requires robust script execution for launches, potentially using containerized emulators like those in RetroArch.

Common pain points in current setups include metadata silos, inconsistent remote controls, and setup complexity across OSes. Media Vault could shine by offering a single pane of glass, especially for retro gaming collections where scraping metadata is tedious.

Security demands attention: a unified API granting access to media files and executables risks escalation if misconfigured. Best practices like JWT authentication, role-based access, path traversal guards, and Docker's seccomp/AppArmor profiles will be essential to prevent exploits.

Implications for Self-Hosted Entertainment

In an era of rising cloud gaming services, Media Vault taps into the appeal of sovereign, zero-subscription home servers. Success hinges on outperforming fragmented alternatives in usability—think one-click library scans and cross-device sync—while matching commercial latency. For engineers, its open API invites ecosystem growth, from mobile apps to smart TV integrations.

The project's early call for input exemplifies open-source collaboration at its best, potentially birthing a tool that redefines homelab media centers. As feedback shapes its path, Media Vault stands as a testament to how developer ingenuity can bridge silos in personal computing.