Ah assumed when you said VLC, you where just plugging the laptop into the TV via HDMI or something.

I also read you mentioned you where able to login but not see files, so wrong route to go down.

If you don’t wanna run a server all the time for movies then vlc might be the better option, though I don’t see why jellyfin shouldn’t technically work.

If your libraries aren’t populating after being setup, maybe check file permissions for the ‘jellyfin’ user?