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Switched from Plex to Jellyfin a couple of years ago and very happy with it!

by Fervicus 5y ago

ryanmcbride 5y ago
I'm a really big plex fan but I've never heard of Jellyfin. What triggered your switch?
- hbcondo714 5y ago
  I heard of Jellyfin here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21986282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21986282 (2 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664802 (1 month ago)
- Ardon 5y ago
  I'm not that guy but I made the same switch. It's mostly that I despised the way that, fundamentally, plex was in control of what user saw when they first logged in. They kept adding bs and less technical users kept feeling like the rug was pulled out from under them when a bunch of stuff would change. Jellyfin doesn't give me the control I'd like to have, but it does give me what I consider essential. This may improve when the team transitions to a from-scratch web client[1] rather than the forked-from-emby client. [1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-vue https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-vue
- handrous 5y ago
  Not a Plex user but I switched from Kodi because I've always hated Kodi's UI, and just suffered it for lack of anything better (no, alternative skins don't help, both because most of them are half-broken, and because most of what I dislike seems to be baked into the essential structure of their UI). Gone back and forth between it and just running a simple desktop with VLC connected to a TV, for many years. Happy Jellyfin user for... oh, two or three years now. I use it with the Roku app, and sometimes in a browser. It's got some rough edges, but nothing like Kodi. One thing I really like is that I can just run it directly on my file server. An absolute breeze to get it running in Docker. I'm a very lazy sysadmin when I'm on my own time, so I've even been relying on Docker to handle restarts and such—didn't touch Systemd at all. This isn't exactly best practice but I get it "for free" and it's yet to fail. If it does, well, it's not like it's a big deal. Kodi samba shares to play remote media have always sucked to set up, but this instead provides an API for clients to browse and then stream one video remotely—the clients don't need any form of actual access to the files (I think there are ways to set Kodi up like that, too, so you've got it two places and one's just playing media from the other, but the last thing I wanted was even more complexity in my Kodi set-up and config process) Being able to hop on a browser anywhere and edit config and media metadata is so very much nicer than trying to do it on a TV. The in-browser UI's also pretty damn good for watching stuff. I haven't tried it, but I understand there's a plugin for Kodi that lets you play your Jellyfin library through it. If I ever set up Kodi again, for some reason, that's exactly what I'll do. No "native" file access in Kodi, just a thin frontend for Jellyfin. Somewhere on my long list of shit I'll never actually get around to doing is writing a Jellyfin browser & player "core" for Retroarch. Now that would be perfect. [EDIT] Oh, I like its account management way better than Kodi's, too. Very easy to configure (through the browser, like nearly everything else). My kids have access to one set of content, my wife and I each have an account with access to everything, so our "watched" statuses don't interfere for stuff we watch on our own time. It's great.
- jmondi 5y ago
  Jellyfin is a completely open source and community driven fork of Emby, which was a rebrand of "Media Browser" way back in the day. Plex is just creepy, doing things like requiring you to sign up and log in through their web portal instead of using the local plex server. Even before the [onslaught of money put into it recently](https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/14/plex-raises-50m-growth-round-to-fuel-ad-supported-streaming-expansions/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/14/plex-raises-50m-growth-rou...) Plex did weird things requiring you to ping their servers. I imagine this is going to increase tenfold over the next few years. Gotta hit those KPI's after all. Overall, Jellyfin does not have the shine that Plex has. As a user of Jellyfin since day 1, it is getting better and better every day. At this point, the only platform that doesnt have a Jellyfin app that I really wish it did was PlayStation.
- Fervicus 5y ago
  It's been a while, but I remember running into lots of weird playback and subtitle issues with Plex, like the media getting stuck when I would pause it etc. It felt very bloated. Jellyfin on the other hand has worked like a charm out of the box so far.
  - ryanmcbride 5y ago
    Now that you mention it I tend to get the occasional buffering issue too. My main usecase for plex is sharing my library with my friends, does jellyfin have an easy way of doing that?

Switched from Plex to Jellyfin a couple of years ago and very happy with it!

ryanmcbride 5y ago

I'm a really big plex fan but I've never heard of Jellyfin. What triggered your switch?

hbcondo714 5y ago
I heard of Jellyfin here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21986282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21986282 (2 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664802 (1 month ago)
Ardon 5y ago
I'm not that guy but I made the same switch. It's mostly that I despised the way that, fundamentally, plex was in control of what user saw when they first logged in. They kept adding bs and less technical users kept feeling like the rug was pulled out from under them when a bunch of stuff would change. Jellyfin doesn't give me the control I'd like to have, but it does give me what I consider essential. This may improve when the team transitions to a from-scratch web client[1] rather than the forked-from-emby client. [1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-vue https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-vue
handrous 5y ago
Not a Plex user but I switched from Kodi because I've always hated Kodi's UI, and just suffered it for lack of anything better (no, alternative skins don't help, both because most of them are half-broken, and because most of what I dislike seems to be baked into the essential structure of their UI). Gone back and forth between it and just running a simple desktop with VLC connected to a TV, for many years. Happy Jellyfin user for... oh, two or three years now. I use it with the Roku app, and sometimes in a browser. It's got some rough edges, but nothing like Kodi. One thing I really like is that I can just run it directly on my file server. An absolute breeze to get it running in Docker. I'm a very lazy sysadmin when I'm on my own time, so I've even been relying on Docker to handle restarts and such—didn't touch Systemd at all. This isn't exactly best practice but I get it "for free" and it's yet to fail. If it does, well, it's not like it's a big deal. Kodi samba shares to play remote media have always sucked to set up, but this instead provides an API for clients to browse and then stream one video remotely—the clients don't need any form of actual access to the files (I think there are ways to set Kodi up like that, too, so you've got it two places and one's just playing media from the other, but the last thing I wanted was even more complexity in my Kodi set-up and config process) Being able to hop on a browser anywhere and edit config and media metadata is so very much nicer than trying to do it on a TV. The in-browser UI's also pretty damn good for watching stuff. I haven't tried it, but I understand there's a plugin for Kodi that lets you play your Jellyfin library through it. If I ever set up Kodi again, for some reason, that's exactly what I'll do. No "native" file access in Kodi, just a thin frontend for Jellyfin. Somewhere on my long list of shit I'll never actually get around to doing is writing a Jellyfin browser & player "core" for Retroarch. Now that would be perfect. [EDIT] Oh, I like its account management way better than Kodi's, too. Very easy to configure (through the browser, like nearly everything else). My kids have access to one set of content, my wife and I each have an account with access to everything, so our "watched" statuses don't interfere for stuff we watch on our own time. It's great.
jmondi 5y ago
Jellyfin is a completely open source and community driven fork of Emby, which was a rebrand of "Media Browser" way back in the day. Plex is just creepy, doing things like requiring you to sign up and log in through their web portal instead of using the local plex server. Even before the [onslaught of money put into it recently](https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/14/plex-raises-50m-growth-round-to-fuel-ad-supported-streaming-expansions/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/14/plex-raises-50m-growth-rou...) Plex did weird things requiring you to ping their servers. I imagine this is going to increase tenfold over the next few years. Gotta hit those KPI's after all. Overall, Jellyfin does not have the shine that Plex has. As a user of Jellyfin since day 1, it is getting better and better every day. At this point, the only platform that doesnt have a Jellyfin app that I really wish it did was PlayStation.
Fervicus 5y ago
It's been a while, but I remember running into lots of weird playback and subtitle issues with Plex, like the media getting stuck when I would pause it etc. It felt very bloated. Jellyfin on the other hand has worked like a charm out of the box so far.
- ryanmcbride 5y ago
  Now that you mention it I tend to get the occasional buffering issue too. My main usecase for plex is sharing my library with my friends, does jellyfin have an easy way of doing that?