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From Plex to Jellyfin Media Server

• princevegeta89 4y ago
  I agree with the author here - I've used Plex for 5 years now and have recently felt the heat of their drastic UI changes, and the way they are now forcing everyone to "signup" for their service. My servers have gotten incredibly difficult to find since they are now in a weird submenu, and whenever I see the homepage it confuses the hell out of me when I try to pick up my content where I left it off last time since now there is a lot of Plex's own promoted content carelessly interspersed everywhere. Whenever I try to ask my wife or friends to use my Plex server, they end up getting confused while navigating to find our locally hosted content. All of this only proves that Plex as a company is trying real hard to push their own content and services and lost the touch of what they originally intended to make as a product in the first place. I am glad I never bought their lifetime pass. Goodbye Plex and hello Jellyfin.
• hatware 4y ago
  Plex lost their best users by missing the point of self hosting entirely. Nobody wants to deal with third party downtime, even if it is rare and intermittent. I think most products go through phases like this. Plex has some diehards that have stuck around (I think it's just buyers remorse for the Plex pass) but I think they are at a 5th or 6th tier of "customer" at this point, seeing the continuous churn spiral they are fighting.
  • imran-iq 4y ago
    > Nobody wants to deal with third party downtime Not only that, I don't want my adblocker to have to block services running on my local network (they have some analytics + sentry).
    • srcreigh 4y ago
      Does this require any special set up? I’m asking out of laziness.. my local server has pi hole set up, and the other devices use that for DNS thru Tailscale, but I’m not sure what gets blocked for stuff running on the server. I recall some Tailscale setup involved a flag to disable some DNS thing. Hmmm
      • imran-iq 4y ago
        In my case not really. There is server side scanning in which plex shares data about your media with their backend. Not sure if there is any setting to disable that. As far as the web client goes ublock origin handles it for me.
        • srcreigh 4y ago
          Ok. As per my above comment, it should be possible to filter out the analytics/sentry via DNS using pi hole. In theory, you'd just have to set up your Plex machine to use pi hole DNS ad blocking, and ensure that the pi hole domain list includes analytics domains. And Tailscale MagicDNS with the primary DNS server being your Plex/pi hole server, with your other devices configured with Tailscale, should block everything. The only potential blocker I can see is whether the HDMI streaming device makes HTTP requests, in which case it would need to use the Tailscale proxy, and I'm not sure if that's supported.
  • daemoens 4y ago
    I haven't really encountered any issues besides the downtime that has occured maybe twice since I bought the yearly two years ago. Everything just works and I never really notice those three submenus except when I'm logging into a new device and it takes like ~10 seconds to unpin them. Everything has been basically perfect for me.
    • hatware 4y ago
      > I haven't really encountered any issues besides the downtime that has occured maybe twice since I bought the yearly two years ago. > I never really notice those three submenus except when I'm logging into a new device and it takes like ~10 seconds to unpin them. Maybe it's just me, but the way you've written these sentences makes it sound like you have buyers remorse. Doesn't sound like things are "basically perfect." FWIW, I left Plex two years ago for Jellyfin, and haven't looked back. Never even bought the garbage Plex Pass.
      • daemoens 4y ago
        How does that sound like buyers remorse? Twice over two years is essentially nothing, and I do the ~10 seconds unpinning like twice a year. It's so close to basically no issues I consider Plex to be perfect for me.
        • hatware 4y ago
          Because if it was actually perfect that's the only feedback you'd give...? > It's so close to basically no issues There are issues. You can keep contradicting yourself by explaining how perfect means there are still problems. I'm enjoying it.
          • daemoens 4y ago
            > It's so close to basically no issues I don't think you understand what I mean. Plex has worked perfectly for two years straight. These 2 issues have taken up less than ~2 minutes of my life. That is equivalent to perfect from my point of view. Stop being unreasonably pedantic about my own words.
  • katbyte 4y ago
    Don’t forget about 3rd party security, they were recently hacked exposing customer accounts details. thier push for online accounts is what ruled it out for me.
  • indigodaddy 4y ago
    You can’t auth directly to your server from a Plex app with a local account anymore? I thought you could still at some point in the past but haven’t tried it in awhile. I know you can still do that from a web browser (I believe)..
    • fragmede 4y ago
      it's not officially supported so there's a workaround but that has its own limitations.
  • d4rti 4y ago
    I started using plex when my synology nas stopped supporting smb1 and Sonos doesn’t support anything newer. Do any of the competing solutions work with Sonos and have iOS and webOS (LG TV) apps?
    • hatware 4y ago
      Any Subsonic music server works well with this: https://github.com/simojenki/bonob https://github.com/simojenki/bonob
  • mrlatinos 4y ago
    I guess I'm not one of Plex's best users. Huh.
• dmitrygr 4y ago
  I used to love plex. Now I simply dread the quickly-approaching day when they move all my actual media under three submenus (from its current position of being two submenus away) and I am forced to migrate away. At this point in time, i am prepared to pay them to NEVER EVER change the ui, never shove another streaming shit in my face, and just update for new codecs and security fixes. Screw them for ruining such a useful tool!
• RockRobotRock 4y ago
  Emby has a native Samsung Tizen app and Jellyfin doesn't. That's a bit of a dealbreaker for me.
  • jchw 4y ago
    I almost went the direction you did, but I got frustrated enough with Tizen and garbage ads in Samsung's UI that I went the Android TV stick direction. It's an extra $40-50 per TV, but I feel a bit more in control; now I just don't allow any of the smart TV functionality to be enabled, and keep the devices disconnected from the network. Thanks to HDMI CEC, the integration with the Samsung remote is fine, though I typically use the Google TV remote instead. Edit: also, last I checked, Tizen still has no Twitch app, which is a bigger problem since Twitch had Samsung remove the unofficial one. I don't really like Twitch much, but still. YouTube's Android app is also better than it's Tizen app, even on low-end Android TV sticks.
    • RockRobotRock 4y ago
      Totally agree. It's an issue of getting it to work for family.
    • M_bara 4y ago
      I have an old Samsung (2015). I stream jellyfin via DLNA. Works for me
  • codewench 4y ago
    Jellyfin doesn't have an official native app, but there's a quasi-official version [1] you can run. That said, it does require putting the TV into dev mode so you can sideload the app. I've been running it for a while now and it's actually pretty good, I haven't had any major issues except one freeze when searching, but I'm pretty sure that was the fault of the raspberry pi running jellyfin [1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen
    • RockRobotRock 4y ago
      Yeah this is rough. Not the kind of thing you can easily do on a relative's TV. I would rather buy them a Roku/Chromecast at that point.
• jchw 4y ago
  > The Jellyfin Android TV app is slightly worse than Plex’s, but they’re both dreadful to navigate with a remote control. I don't really agree. I've been using Jellyfin for a while now (basically as soon as Emby went commercial) and I find it definitively nicer to browse than Plex. I just prefer the way the UI is structured, and my collections are still manageable enough that navigating with arrows is usable. I admit it probably could be improved, for larger collections, but it doesn't seem unusually bad to me personally.
  • colordrops 4y ago
    Agreed, I'll take limited but straightforward over full featured but obfuscated any day.
• dualboot 4y ago
  Plex lost me when they became obsessed with trying to put advertisements in front of my grandparents when all they want to do is watch Mash on my plex server.
  • kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    I've only seen ads in Plex when watching the streaming services they have integrated, which is expected. Those services need to pay for their content somehow. My media is completely ad-free.
    • mattl 4y ago
      Yeah is MASH also on their streaming services?
    • xavdid 4y ago
      Yes, but they now show their catalogue by default on every new client you log into. So you (or whoever has access to your server) have to know to hide their rows in favor of local media collections. They don't differentiate them in any way, so I hope your media libraries are named something more descriptive than "Movies & TV". Really disappointing.
• matsimitsu 4y ago
  The only reason I still use Plex is that they have (native) apps on nearly every device me and my friends have (tv's, playstation etc.). I remember starting with XBMC, which had the most beautiful theme's/skins that were really well optimised for the console experience, and there were many of them, all for free. And now I'm paying for a Plex pass and everything is becoming more clunky and less usable each year, such a shame.
  • runnerup 4y ago
    Jellyfin has it for my devices, which are cheap Roku TV's. but yes this is pretty critical that it be compatible with your devices for QOL.
    • jszymborski 4y ago
      This was the main factor that I checked when switching from Plex to Jellyfin. Was really happy they supported my cheapo Rokus. The apps are perfectly OK. They are less good for music, but the show/movie experience is better than it was for plex after they made it super annoying to get to your collection.
• rektide 4y ago
  This all feels like it should be 800x less of an issue because phones & tablets should just be able to connect over SMB & you should use whatever media player you want on your device. Telling your home router to forward 445 is not that hard. Usinf minupnpc or just building in auto-port forwarding would be better. Alas I've seen some isp's block users from connecting to 445, which seems insane (my ispets me host there, but my parents isp blocks me from dialing home?!). So I often forward on another port (ex: 4445) and then everything works fine. The main problem why the obvious "just use computers" problems doesnt work is... Android. Phones. These incressingly user-hostile anti-general-purpose-computing systems. Some of my media players still work with the 2017 code drom of the Android Samba Provider, but it uses old Android APIs so many media players wont work with it. I have no idea if Android still makes filesystem providers possible at all, but we havent seen any, and this one old one-time-drop artifact remains the only example I know of it ever having beem done ever on Android. But then again I really have had no interest in Box/Azure Drives/whatever... it'd be interesting/great to know if anyone does remote drives on android today. It feels wild that we have so much bespoke special software for remote media serving... when we have seemingly so little that does the general job. https://github.com/google/samba-documents-provider https://github.com/google/samba-documents-provider Ideally upnp/dlna should also somehow be an option too, but it assumes secure private networks I think? I'd love if it could be exposed publicly but locked down but it does all use mdns. And Tailscale's the only company on the planet who seemingly has the sense to extend our homenet's reach quickly/easily.
  • GranPC 4y ago
    > phones & tablets should just be able to connect over SMB & you should use whatever media player you want on your device. This does not provide the same feature set as Jellyfin and others like it provide. An important omission is server-side transcoding; if I upload 4K content to my instance I might want to be able to watch it from an Airbnb with a subpar connection. Keeping track of things I've watched (regardless of which device), auto playing the next episode, automatically fetching metadata and subtitles, being able to share collections with friends are some other features I enjoy from Jellyfin that most players don't do out of the box. Sure, you could rig up a bunch of different programs to do something more or less comparable, but that would be a bunch of extra work for the server operator and would ultimately provide a worse experience.
• thejman5200 4y ago
  I have actually been happy with Plex's direction over time. The free ad-supported section of Plex is easy enough to ignore but adds legitimacy to the service and gives revenue to the devs. The last thing I want is for Plex to become Kodi and then get removed from app stores and tvs because it is synonymous with easy and accessible piracy. Especially since it seems like everybody who wants plex pass already has it and just buy it once from their secret sale emails and then never give them a cent again. I'm still waiting for the Plex Original Series to start being produced. (ok not that)
  • kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    Don't need secret sale emails, the lifetime Plex Pass is right there on their page: https://www.plex.tv/plex-pass/ https://www.plex.tv/plex-pass/
    • thejman5200 4y ago
      Lifetime Plex for goes on sale a few times a year instead of $120 it goes down to like $75. Everybody (including me tbf) just waits a year until a sale and buys lifetime. I don't know why they keep offering deep discounts on their lifetime pass because their userbase has an upper limit - there's only so many people interested in running their own illegal piracy server
      • shepherdjerred 4y ago
        > there's only so many people interested in running their own illegal piracy server The upper bound is roughly anyone who enjoys watching TV/movies, and owns a computer.
        • thejman5200 4y ago
          Yeah, that's the theoretical limit but you also need to understand VPNs, torrenting, local networks, etc. Plex/Jellyfin/Emby make it super easy on the network/port forwarding/GUI side but it doesn't help with the media itself. Or you could go with ripping dvds you legally purchase at Goodwill.
• digitalnomad91 4y ago
  I actually run Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin. I would like to only run Jellyfin, but unfortunately some devices will not have jellyfin, but will have plex and/or emby. The main reason I personally still use Plex (or sometimes Emby) even though I am running Jellyfin with all the exact same stuff -- is because Jellyfin sucks at live TV / iptv. It's interface is complete trash and I can't seem to get a good "guide" going like I can with Plex or Emby. If that can be resolved then I'd definitely only ever use Jellyfin.
  • thejman5200 4y ago
    How do you manage the metadata between all the services? Seems like a huge headache to keep them all correct and updated
    • katbyte 4y ago
      Emby at the least has the option to write it to the media folder alongside the video files
    • digitalnomad91 4y ago
      It's all automated for each one, and yeah they write the metadata into the folder. I have Radarr/Sonarr/Prowlarr + Ombi + rtorrent, which pretty much automates everything. I just type in what I want and it shows up in all 3 a minute or two later. Sonarr also keeps track of TV schedules, so if it's a new show that is still airing it automatically shows up when a torrent of it becomes available.
• crims0n 4y ago
  I am interested in migrating to Jellyfin for most of the same reasons, but the apparent lack of an Apple TV app is a bit of a deal breaker.
  • cvwright 4y ago
    They link to a commercial app for the AppleTV. It’s totally worth the $0.99/month until they get the official Swiftfin version working.
  • colordrops 4y ago
    Someone else in this thread mentioned "Infuse" as a useable frontend.
    • katbyte 4y ago
      I have used infuse with emby, it works pretty well however I still prefer the Emby app to it for ease of navigation.
    • skydhash 4y ago
      Infuse is great, but they have a subscription if you want to play some media format. Quite cheap IMO and they have great apps for all Apple devices.
  • peddling-brink 4y ago
    Swiftfin works fine. It was a little clunky to set up because you need to go through the apple beta software app, but I’ve been using it months with no major issues.
  • katbyte 4y ago
    Pay for Emby, it’s a more polished jellyfin.
• hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  Is it just me or has plex slowly become less stable? Everything from random crashes which can be solved by exiting and reentering the stream through to subtitles just not working at all?
  • monkpit 4y ago
    On the fire tv client, every time I load up the client and watch the 1st video, none of the ui/buttons respond. If I back out and go back in then it all works fine. Started a few months ago after working perfectly for years.
    • hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
      I have that also, using a chrome cast, as well as the inbuilt chrome cast on another tv.
• kayson 4y ago
  Biggest selling point of Jellyfin for me is that it has a Roku app. It still needs some work and some polish but it's very usable. Also the dev community is huge.
• probotect0r 4y ago
  I bought a 4k projector recently to use for a home theatre which came with AndroidTV. I have a small collection of 4k movies and shows that I wanted to enjoy, but my PC was on a different floor from my projector. I had used Plex a long time ago, and looked for an open source alternative and found JellyFin. It took like 20 minutes to get set up and start watching my content on my projector. The JellyFin AndroidTV app auto-discovered the server running on my PC, and it also supports streaming HEVC encoded content natively, which the web browser client on Firefox and Chrome doesn't seem to yet [1]. When I streamed HEVC content in the web browser client, the server was transcoding it on the fly, which was nice but it was sending my PC to 100% CPU. The library organization features are probably not as good as Plex's, but they are good enough for me. [1] https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/codec-support/ https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/codec-support/
  • drexlspivey 4y ago
    Chrome actually added HEVC support a couple of weeks ago.
    • unixhero 4y ago
      As did the latest version of Plex in its web player.
  • newZWhoDis 4y ago
    FYI transcoding often borks HDR. Always try to direct play if possible.
• perryizgr8 4y ago
  I tried to switch to jellyfin from plex, but the TV app is not yet good enough. The subtitles looked ugly, there was no way to customize it. They are huge, almost covering up a quarter of my 55 inch screen. Apart from this one issue, I didn't feel anything missing. It's quite good. I don't see a reason to use plex over jellyfin unless you want some of their paid features.
  • d2wa 4y ago
    I use Jellyfin’s web interface on the TV. It’s way better than the Android TV app.
    • perryizgr8 4y ago
      I'll try it!
• rufusroflpunch 4y ago
  I have Apple devices and I use Infuse as my Jellyfin front end. It is excellent!
  • Cyph0n 4y ago
    +1 for Infuse, well worth the price!
    • throwaway675309 4y ago
      Don't you have to pay monthly for it unless you splurge for the hundred dollar lifetime? that's a lot of money for an iOS app.
      • joney_baloney 4y ago
        99¢/mo or $10/yr iirc. Can't remember how much the lifetime is but I don't mind the annual sub as long as it keeps it maintained.
      • rufusroflpunch 4y ago
        It’s pretty usable without a subscription.
• synergy20 4y ago
  My time in front of a TV screen is 10 minutes per year, basically the count down of new year at Times square that is. I use my computer(streaming services, e.g. prime video, netflix,etc) and youtube for entertainment needs. For big movies I went to theaters. From the comment here I realize there are still lots of TV watchers, even though TV is probably just acting as a big screen.
  • bibabaloo 4y ago
    I'm guessing you're mostly watching alone? If you want to watch with others then watching on a TV is really the only possibility.
  • mattl 4y ago
    Watching Netflix, etc is watching TV. You should buy a TV. They’re cheap and great.
    • synergy20 4y ago
      I had two TVs(47", not that large) for like 10 years, but rarely anyone in the house ever used them, everyone stares at their smaller screen these days somehow.
      • mattl 4y ago
        Where do people watch TV shows and movies? On their phones? https://youtu.be/wKiIroiCvZ0 https://youtu.be/wKiIroiCvZ0
        • synergy20 4y ago
          or your 27"/32"/42" computer monitors
          • mattl 4y ago
            So people are watching stuff on monitors?
• colordrops 4y ago
  Plex is one of the reasons I now always choose open source over closed source but free as in beer. They start out great but as financial constraints creep in the compromises are made that create a very unpleasant experience. For example, I'd love to use Obsidian, which is an amazing app, but who knows what will happen to it in the future.
  • jghn 4y ago
    With Obsidian the thing that made me ok with this was it's all just markdown. I have all my data stored locally in an ubiquitous file format
    • qudat 4y ago
      This is the primary motivating factor for why I like https://prose.sh https://prose.sh You store your markdown files locally and then copy them to your hosted blog.
      • Vrondi 4y ago
        Just like Obsidian, right?
        • qudat 4y ago
          Yep except instead of it being a note-taking app, it's a blog platform.
    • colordrops 4y ago
      But there's an entire workflow embedded in the use of Obsidian. It's not "just markdown". That's like saying you could move from vscode to notepad because it's "just text".
      • ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
        Yup and that is my problem with startups like supabase too. I have just started using pocketbase for that reason.
• AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
  Plex seems to regularly add new features which I really have no use for but makes it relatively easy to turn them off if you want. Every month or three when I login to the web interface there's Some New Thing which I need to disable. Recently I needed a 100% offline-capable media player (and while Plex would probably work, it's not 100% reliable) and tried with Kodi. It's a very unfluid experience, requiring multiple plugins and a setup process which was complicated even for me. It wasn't terrible, and it did work and I'm glad it exists but it's not something I would ever use on a daily basis, Plex just works better. I'll admit I haven't tried Emby or Jellyfin (yet), and, I'm sure I will some day. Plex will probably add something which is truly objectionable or otherwise not disableable and I'll be compelled to switch but for now I'll stick with the fluid experience, even if it requires me to occasionally disable their new "features".
  • colechristensen 4y ago
    I really liked the original homebrew xbmc on a modded original xbox (both plex and kodi are forks) I would appreciate a simpler batteries included media center software in that theme.
    • gh02t 4y ago
      Kodi isn't a fork of the old school XBMC on Xbox, it's the direct continuation of the project. After they migrated their focus onto PC and other platforms the Xbox version was actually forked off into a separate codebase and dropped from the main project, but Kodi is the direct descendent/inheritor of the original XBMC. I've been using it since it was still called XBMP, it really hasn't changed that much UI wise.
      • xen2xen1 4y ago
        I tried Kodi for the PC. I turned on UPNP broadcast. It locked up. I had to kill it with task manager. I turned UPNP on on the Xbox XBMC a few weeks later. I had to reboot the OG Xbox. Both of these were about three months ago, they still have the same bugs.
    • 4y ago
• endisneigh 4y ago
  I paid for Plex and have never seen any ads. I tried Jellyfin and required too much tinkering. If you spend more than an hour tinkering with Jellyfin it's worth it to pay for Plex lifetime and be done with it. A good example of this is using it say on an Apple TV or more niche devices. That being said, I do like Jellyfin and it's fine for tinkerers. Things like sharing, watching together, etc are a huge pain with Jellyfin.
• Semaphor 4y ago
  I recently got my own server, and I installed Jellyfin. The payment part of plex would not have been an issue, but all the remote parts are. I’m not selfhosting because I want to login through a remote website. Let me buy the software and give me a license key, like with desktop software. The Jellyfin Android TV app is pretty much okay for me. The browsing interface seems to default to a phone UI, but that was easily fixed.
• dav43 4y ago
  I fell like infuse on iOS and Apple TV is way ahead in simplicity. Share network folder, and done.
  • cortesoft 4y ago
    Does it have subtitle support?
    • joney_baloney 4y ago
      Yep.
• jghn 4y ago
  I have used Plex for about 12-13 years but am very very far from a power user. I find it mildly annoying I need to login but other than that I've not noticed anything that annoys me. I admit this is most likely due to how little I use it and how non-advanced that usage is. Given this, is there any value add to Jellyfin for someone like myself? My read on this article is that it gets back to an earlier, more raw state of Plex. For my use case my interpretation is that would mean extra work for potentially lower quality, and unlikely any value add given that nothing annoys me about current Plex. Does that sound right?
  • qudat 4y ago
    > For my use case my interpretation is that would mean extra work for potentially lower quality, and unlikely any value add given that nothing annoys me about current Plex. Here's a positive example from my experience from switching to plex to jellyfin. When I drop files into my movie/tv folder jellyfin automatically syncs the files whereas in plex I always had to go to the page and click a menu icon and then click sync folder. Maybe there's a way to do it in plex that I don't know about but jellyfin did it by default. I also find the web version of the media player better on jellyfin. I hated the google auth login to plex, and so far jellyfin feels lighter weight. Like you, I don't need advanced sharing options and or anything beyond a private website that I can play my movies/tv shows so plex always felt overkill.
    • endisneigh 4y ago
      Both Jellyfin and Plex sync by default automatically but Plex’s default was a few hours or so.
      • qudat 4y ago
        Thanks for the info, didn't know that about Plex. A couple of a hours does not work with my workflow. I get a movie, add it to my media folder, and then I want to watch it, so I'm not surprised I missed it.
        • 4y ago
• mattl 4y ago
  My question is how easily can you share a library or folder with someone else by just getting their email address? That’s a great feature of Plex
  • d2wa 4y ago
    There’s no cloud services in Jellyfin. You have to set up a VPN on your server, and an account for them on the VPN, plus create a user account for them on Jellyfin. It’s not impossible, but it’s more work.
• dbg31415 4y ago
  I think it's funny everyone is complaining about Plex forcing you to sign in... and the first thing Jellyfin does when you click "see it in action" is force you to sign in. Just saying...
  • stormbeard 4y ago
    Sign in to what? Jellyfin doesn’t have an org behind it to even make an account with. It’s all hosted on your server.
  • GranPC 4y ago
    There is a piece of text just below that reads: TO LOG IN: User "demo", empty password
    • dbg31415 4y ago
      Thanks, honestly I missed this. Kinda funky UX. https://i.imgur.com/GwNED5K.png https://i.imgur.com/GwNED5K.png
  • kennend3 4y ago
    This is some sort of joke right? you are comparing jellyfin's online demo and its requirement to "login" to show you how it works and how it supports multiple accounts vs plex's inability to use the app if you dont login to servers hosted by Plex? Once i install jellyfin, the only "login" is to my own server, and this is because by default jellyfin supports multiple users unlike Plex which requires a membership to enable this feature. nonsense.
• p1mrx 4y ago
  When I looked into Jellyfin last year, the main problems were: - Can't connect to people's existing Plex servers. - Can't just invite someone without storing their password on my server. No support for (e.g.) OAuth2.
  • chimineycricket 4y ago
    >Can't connect to people's existing Plex servers. Right, Jellyfin has nothing to do with Plex other than competing with it. It's not a Plex client.
  • kennend3 4y ago
    > - Can't connect to people's existing Plex servers. This is such a weird thing to write. I was shocked to learn that very nice seat from my ex-wife's Lexus wont fit in my Hyundai? Is the opposite true, can the plex client connect to jellyfin? Plex and Jellyfin are competitive, why is there some implied compatibility?
    • p1mrx 4y ago
      I'm not shocked, I was highlighting that Plex has network effects that make switching more difficult.
      • kennend3 4y ago
        > p1mrx 10 hours ago | undown | prev | next [–] >When I looked into Jellyfin last year, the main problems were: >- Can't connect to people's existing Plex servers. that isnt what you wrote is it? you looked at jellyfin last year and listed that it did not support connecting to plex as a "problem". Why would you think that jellyfin not connecting to plex is a problem?
        • p1mrx 4y ago
          > Why would you think that jellyfin not connecting to plex is a problem? A problem can have no obvious solution, yet still be a problem. If you want to use existing Plex servers, then that makes migrating to Jellyfin problematic.
• shepherdjerred 4y ago
  I've considered moving from Plex to Jellyfin (or some other offering in the space), but I don't think anything can really compete with Plex. Plex, for me, required quite a bit of fiddling, but once you get it working it works _very_ well. There are decent-quality apps on every platform you want to use. There's a whole lot of software that integrates with Plex from things like requesting/adding new media to monitoring/analyzing Plex server usage. Some of the things I appreciate about Plex: - It does a very good job at matching media - It's very easy to share access with others - It supports many types of media -- TV, movies, music, live TV, and just plain ol' video. I store class lectures on Plex! - I'm able to stream very high bitrate movies (upwards 40mbps) without issue Plex doesn't have the smoothest UX. You have to understand some technical concepts to use it effectively, e.g. sometimes I have to force a transcode when streaming an incompatible format. I have been very frustrated with Plex because of this. I do wish that Plex would stop working on features that few use. I suppose this is a hard thing to do when they're working on a product that is so heavily associated with piracy.
  • drunkpotato 4y ago
    I dunno, the things you say about Plex I would also say about jellyfin: requires a bit of fiddling, works very well, not always perfect. Jellyfin has bugs, but it's free and works for my use cases, and improves quickly. I like that I can, and have, compiled jellyfin from source when there was a bugfix for one of the features I use that hadn't made it into a point release yet. I think all software comes with trade-offs and frustrations. It sounds like, for my uses, Plex would trade in a different set of frustrations plus cost money and be closed source. So I guess it depends what you mean by "compete with" Plex, because for me, it's more like I haven't found anything that competes with jellyfin.
  • kennend3 4y ago
    I moved from Plex to Jellyfin >Some of the things I appreciate about Plex: - It does a very good job at matching media - It's very easy to share access with others - It supports many types of media -- TV, movies, music, live TV, and just plain ol' video. I store class lectures on Plex! - I'm able to stream very high bitrate movies (upwards 40mbps) without issue Jellyfin does this for free. I wanted to be able to create multiple accounts in Plex - but this needs a subscription or lifetime pass. Jellyfin also does Movies, Music, and i have loaded a few training video's on it as well. At the end of the day you can see where Plex is heading - Sell lifetime subs and then try to further monetize the customers to pay for monthly expenses Plex faces running the service... So i went to Jellyfin.
• vachina 4y ago
  Tried Jellyfin, but it doesn’t seem to have the capability to stream directly to my TV, it always wants to transcode it which strips away all the 4K and HDR niceties. While Plex would try its best to preserve the original stream and only transcode what the TV can’t support. Also Plex’s clients are more polished, it actually feels like I’m browsing my own Netflix. You can always turn off third party content in Plex (by unpinning them). I only use Plex locally so maybe that’s why I’ve been missing all the cloudy bloat lol.
  • ekianjo 4y ago
    Use a fire TV stick that costs virtually nothing and install the Jellyfin app. You are done.
    • afavour 4y ago
      “Buy an entirely new streaming device to use this service” is never ever a good answer. “Buy an ad-infested, Amazon tracking streaming device” also feels entirely antithetical to Jellyfin’s open source mission so there needs to be a better answer than that.
      • ekianjo 4y ago
        > “Buy an ad-infested, Amazon tracking streaming device” You don't even need to use the amazon services. Just run the Jellyfin app and that's all you need to keep alive as a service, the rest you can blacklist. There are also ways to root those devices if you want to remove ads and more.
    • vachina 4y ago
      Yeah these sticks tend to use low powered SoC that chokes on anything higher than 1080p, not to mention missing codecs (Dolby Vision, ATMOS, DTS etc.) and lack of compliance. If you don’t care about any of those or have a TV that don’t do 4K then yeah an Android box and lower fidelity source will do.
      • 4y ago
• dotnet00 4y ago
  I check on Jellyfin every few months. So far I still prefer the Plex UI, apps and feature set (especially all the AI based music playlist stuff in plexamp) but I'll switch over as soon as I think the alternatives are competitive.
• LeoPanthera 4y ago
  As soon as there is an Apple TV app I will switch. Infuse is... "fine", but I want an official app.
  • cydmax 4y ago
    Here is the beta app for Apple TV: https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin It‘s a bit unstable for me, so I switched to the web app on my iPad and beam it with AirPlay to my Apple TV.
• akdor1154 4y ago
  Wow, I did exactly this yesterday. Went super smoothly, and Android, Google TV clients work fine, as does Chromecast. Android Auto support not great but at least did play the music I told it to which is the main thing I guess. Not any good desktop clients that aren't Electron garbage, but Plex is no better here. First party docs for setting up Nginx in front of Jellyfin were Really Freaking Good. Like Arch Wiki levels of good. Put the lot on a Tailscale IP and now I have access to my Jellyfin from anywhere - including, surprisingly, from my chromecast where the the Tailscale app installed without a hitch. There's an interesting comparison actually between Plex and Tailscale.. both are sorta-in-the-universe-of-open-source-but-not-actually... but I know which one I trust and which one can go and get bent.
  • mgiampapa 4y ago
    Plex has a rather good Desktop app with real HD codec support in both a desktop and HTPC interface flavors. https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/#plex-app https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/#plex-app
• yboris 4y ago
  An open-source (and charityware) software I wrote: Video Hub App - shows screenshots from inside each video as you scroll across the thumbnail (scrub). I didn't like the interface of various video browsers / launchers - perhaps others will find what I created to their taste: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/
• cortesoft 4y ago
  Plex sometimes annoys me, but it looks like Jellyfin doesn’t have the clients I need. I use Plex on my XBOX, iPad, chrome cast, and computer. Plex has apps for all of those, but it looks like Jellyfin doesn’t have an XBOX player.
  • Macha 4y ago
    For what it's worth, the jellyfin web player worked fine for me on my ps4 web browser - never tried on my Xbox but would expect the same there.
• ulkesh 4y ago
  I suppose I understand the reasons people prefer Jellyfin. But on the small chance of liking a commercial product, Plex is truly dead simple for my parents. They have an AppleTV. They signed up. I share it with them via their registered email address. And they’re in. It was as simple a process as I could hope for. That being said, do I like everything they’re pushing for? No. But they at least allow users to opt out. I understand the sentiments here, truly. I just don’t have a compelling reason to change since it does what I want, is simple to set up and use, simple to share, and gets refined all the time. This is heresy, but not all commercial software is the devil. I suspect RMS would hate me for this.
  • Liquix 4y ago
    Not all commercial software is the devil, but money is the root of all evil. Rember Big G's old slogan before they were beholden to shareholders? Given Plex already employs multiple dark patterns in an attempt to obtain your email address, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't slide down the same slippery slope if they got bigger.
    • thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > Not all commercial software is the devil, but money is the root of all evil. I have a book of Chinese fairy tales which touches on interesting topics like the creation of the world and the beginning of civilization. On that second topic, it says that shortly after human societies came into being, the men started fighting with each other over the women. I imagine the mythology is correct that fighting over women predates concern with money.
      • effingwewt 4y ago
        Makes sense. Was it Nick Fury who said something about as soon as the third human was born a plot formed against one? Definitely feels like we are the root of all evil, we always find a reason to kill one another. Hopefully we are a young species and will grow out of it eventually.
      • stefanwlb 4y ago
• franciscop 4y ago
  > "My media content had been pushed aside into a submenu while the app promotes its own streaming media and premium services instead." This is my biggest pet-peeve coming from Linux world. In Linux the music players you find bundled with different distros are simple, but they just work. However since moving to MacOS, I have to either use iTunes or Music, and in Android the default music player and the latest updates of the alt music player I installed the author problem is true; they expect me to use their services and that's front and clear, while my local music is hidden away in a menu button. This is a fairly ridiculous situation IMHO (well, solitaire in Windows getting ads/online is slightly more, but I'll never go there) since a music player that fulfills my needs is pretty easy: show a list of artists, play either the whole artist or a single album in shuffle mode. Attempt 1: https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1364892370509127681 https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1364892370509127681 Attempt 2: https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1578720636645826560 https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1578720636645826560
  • nortonham 4y ago
    on mac what about iina? also, with brew or macports you can install pretty much any audio player you want
    • MikePlacid 4y ago
      The biggest problem with IINA is that it regularly hangs on the legacy part of my vid collection (you know, mpg files and such), so I had to use it with mpv on standby. Mpv is absolutely stable, so the problem I guess is in some components that IINA added (GUI?). Besides I am not sure if IINA video collection capabilities cover author’s demands (can’t say, I use it strictly as a player).
    • aembleton 4y ago
      I've not managed to install Lollypop using mac ports. It's written in python but I think it's ui library doesn't work on mac.
  • least 4y ago
    There are a lot of music players for the Mac, here are a few of them: https://swinsian.com/ https://swinsian.com/ https://colibri-lossless.com/ https://colibri-lossless.com/ https://cog.losno.co/ https://cog.losno.co/ https://vox.rocks/ https://vox.rocks/
• zeagle 4y ago
  I wish the jellyfin android tv APK supported dolby vision. I use Kodi with the jellyfin plugin and this is great as it allows for 4k DV with Atmos on an Nvidia shield with jellyfin quarterbacking the whole thing. It also seems to work better than my previous shared library via MySQL as it will force an automatic library update on all devices with new content and sync watched state. My server is headless only has an embedded graphics card so I wish I could disable transcoding outright as I can never get it to play high def content via a browser despite trying different settings (debian).
• nickstinemates 4y ago
  Also recently made the switch. I don't like that there isn't a Jellyfin app for my Samsung TV. Everything else about Jellyfin is 100% superior. Hands down.
  • kidwellj 4y ago
    It is actually possible, if complicated to get Jellyfin running in Tizen (Samsung TV OS): https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen
  • d2wa 4y ago
    The Jellyfin web interface is much better than the Android TV app. You’re not missing out.
• jjcon 4y ago
  I’d love to use Jellyfin someday. Right now it doesn’t have broad enough support or the app ecosystem that I need. I use every OS and tvOS under the sun in my family. I need music apps for my music and audiobook apps for my audiobooks, so far I have only found this in plex (in addition to the video/tv/movies app).
  • katbyte 4y ago
    Emby is commercial/what jellyfin forked from before they went closed source and has all the apps for every device and none of the streaming/ads/pushed online account nonsense
    • jjcon 4y ago
      But it has lackluster options for music and audiobooks last I checked - something that I need just as much as tv shows and movies
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  My NAS came with Twonky media server and with Plex ... Twonky was easier to setup so thats what I use. Anyways I doubt a NAS can transcode 4k movies)
• marcrosoft 4y ago
  Yup, I switched to Jellyfin from Plex for the same reasons. It’s great.
• hnarn 4y ago
  Unfortunately Jellyfin is nowhere close to feature parity with Plex. It may be a perfect replacement or it may be borderline useless, it depends completely on your use case. In general, my experience is that Jellyfin works fine as long as you’re willing to use a browser to stream the video.
• causality0 4y ago
  I need to make this jump at some point. I can cope with the money-grubbing UI changes but the Plex App for smart TVs and consoles is by far the worst piece of trash software I've ever used and certainly the worst I still use. It crashes constantly, it displays my progress in a video yet still restarts it from the beginning when I hit Resume, and it has absolutely no idea how to regulate its own performance. It will happily get so bogged down trying to apparently use a bitrate that's too high it takes over thirty seconds for the Back button to stop the video and return to the menu. It's not 2002 anymore, your video player should be able to tell when it's locking up every five seconds.
  • TheSecondMouse 4y ago
    Is that an Android smart TV, Tizen, WebOS? I have mine setup through an Nvidia Shield (Android), and it's worked flawlessly for years.
    • causality0 4y ago
      I've used it on a Roku TV, a Roku stick, a Fire stick, a Samsung smart TV, a Hisense android smart TV, and a Sony smart TV. All miserable experiences. Perhaps the Shield has enough raw horsepower to make up for the app being garbage.
• SeriousM 4y ago
  I love open source and free stuff, but I also understand that there is nothing for free. This thread is packed with people wanting a free service, better open source for their (hopefully legal acquired) media. The code of the services is written by programmers in (mostly) their free time, the movies are produced by professionals and all you want is it even more cheaper! I wonder if you see that most of this "free stuff" you and I use every day was not accidentally "here" but financed by ads via Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, etc. Accept that sometimes ads are ok because it enables this freedom. I myself use a pihole in my network to reduce the ads which works quite well to block annoying stuff.
  • kennend3 4y ago
    Normally I dont explain my downvotes but i will do this here. > Accept that sometimes ads are ok because it enables this freedom. > I wonder if you see that most of this "free stuff" you and I use every day I've used Linux for decades but never saw a single ad yet this is "free"? I also use a lot of opensource software (Libreoffice, Opera, you get the idea) none of these have ads. As you said the code is written by people in their free time, if they want to support it via ads they are free to do so, but very few do. If I pay for something I'd rather not have ads on top of this. They should have charged more instead of getting me as a customer and then putting ads into things. Jellyfin is free and lacks ads. Plex charges a fee and has ads?
    • SeriousM 4y ago
      Open software is important as it enables developer to learn and to value the community around the ecosystem. But please think about not just the software part. You use open software, but where was it stored? Who paid for the infrastructure to reach you home so that you can download it? Where was it built, was it a free service like github actions? Who pays the hundred of people to build the service and who pays the guys who maintains the servers and avoid the DDoS? Look, I don't want to fight nor was it my intention. I wanted to raise the awareness that the free software is not free and the people shouldn't take it granted just because they have the access to the stuff.
• aix1 4y ago
  For me, the main thing that's lacking in Plex is good support for audiobooks. The storage and metadata backend are good, but I'm on Android and just couldn't find a good app that would: 1. work with Plex 2. play books both online and offline (by pre-downloading) 3. not require the Plex server to be exposed to the internet 4. (nice to have) sync reading position across devices I played with the Plex app (doesn't remember where I left off), Chronicle (buggy to the point of unusable), Bookcamp (very fiddly to set up, requires the Plex server to be remotely accessible even when on the same LAN). How's the Jellyfin ecosystem in this regard?
  • RealStickman_ 4y ago
    Jellyfin is just a dumb server, as in you can do the routing to it in any way you like. (Wireguard VPN, Tailscale, etc) Offline playback is rather rare still. I know of Finamp and S2 [1] for music that support offline playback. You can download media in the official app, but you'll need a different player for playback. If you do offline playback, I don't think the reading position is synced to the server when you go online later.
  • Jochim 4y ago
    Jellyfin's support for Audiobooks is still fairly rudimentary. Most of the features mentioned depend on the client app's level of support. There's a feature request that details some of the support already in place: https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/243/audiobook-support https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/243/audiobook-support Support for resuming Audiobooks appears to have been added: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/2084 https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/2084 Sadly offline playback isn't really supported. The app can download files to your phone's Downloads folder but you'd have to play them elsewhere. There's no way of so through Jellyfin at the moment.
• bullen 4y ago
  I don't understand why I'm the only one connecting a real low power NUC linux computer to the TV instead? Wireless keyboard and mouse and you solve ALL media problems! You can even play Minecraft on the TV, can Jellyfin do that? That said linux has vsync issues still, but it's mostly unnoticable.
• Wintereise 4y ago
  Plex' Android TV app (ATV) is a travesty in regards to pretty much every feature that matters. From broken playback state tracking, "currently watching" that just won't go away (obvious local state management issues), subtitles that randomly won't show up (no matter what you do), un-configurable +30s/-10s skip options, outright crashes (that toss the local state of whatever you were doing), fun with HDR playback (good luck, 0 handholding. You just have to make all the stars align yourself) and many, many more problems are routine. Despite all this though, it is (or at least was 9~ months ago, when I made the switch) so much better than Emby (and sorta, by extension, Jellyfin -- which was much worse) on the same platform that it's astounding. I remember being super impressed that metadata matching was mostly working for a predominantly ASPAC focused library. Library management in general is much better, now that I think about it.
  • traspler 4y ago
    The subtitle timing is also broken. Strangely when I cast the same video to my ATV I get better results than using the native app. In general, on all Plex apps I've had a lot of issues with 4K content and Surround downmixing. You can configure an audio boost option for downmixing in the options but even then it's still barely usable.
  • LASR 4y ago
    Subtitles timing has been broken for a decade. I gave up trying to have that fixed. For unrelated reasons, I switched my home devices to AppleTVs recently. The Infuse app works very well as a Plex client.
• steeve 4y ago
  I just switched to InFuse on my Apple TV, it provides a better experience than Plex, with just a SMB share. Everything is done locally and synced over iCloud. Not going back.
  • LASR 4y ago
    I also tried this. But I could never figure out why my windows 10 box couldn’t do a proper samba share. Still use infuse, but through Plex server only.
    • steeve 4y ago
      I think it may have to do with the fact that Win10 disabled Guest access for SMB. Got bitten by this.
• aix1 4y ago
  Is there DVR support and, if there is, how does it compare to Plex? For Plex, I built a thing that exposes my ISP's multicast TV as an HDHomeRun-compatible tuner, with EPG. This works fairly well. The main thing that's missing in this setup is support for DVB teletext subtitles in Plex. I end up having to post-process TV recordings to extract subtitles and convert them to SRT. This is all a bit messy, since we get TV from multiple neighbouring countries and there are often multiple languages and different teletext page numbers. Also, the timing tends of be out of whack. This means that the text needs to be re-synchronised with the audio; the thing I have generally works OK, but tends to fall apart when the audio in one language and subtitles, in another. It would be all much simpler if Plex had the ability to show teletext subtitles when playing MPEG transport streams. Unfortunately, it doesn't. I wonder if Jellyfin would be an improvement in this regard?
• hankidotdev 4y ago
  Moved from Plex to Jellyfin about a month ago. While it obviously isn't as polished as Plex (yet), it has come a long way in the last few years. I remember trying it about 2 years ago and the experience wasn't nearly as good. Biggest problem for me was recognizing anime, Plex usually does a good job with it but Jellyfin doesn't. My solution is just to rename (or rather, create hardlinks with proper file names and structure) with Sonarr. Second biggest problem has been the Android TV client. I find it clunky and the built-in video player doesn't support HDR. You can use external player (like VLC) or set up Kodi with Jellyfin add-on which I've done, but it's still not as smooth experience as with Plex. Overall I find it better than Plex, with active community pushing new updates constantly.
  • katbyte 4y ago
    If jellyfin is still like Emby which I use I would pick a different metadata server for you anime, tvdb is rubbish, themoviedb is great all around, and for anime you can point it at animelist which will figure out near anything
• irusensei 4y ago
  I’ve stopped using Plex-like stuff. I don’t really need it because transcoding isn’t as relevant as it was before. Pretty much every device I own can play h265 without CPU overhead. What I’m doing is basically a Samba file share + Infuse/Kodi. Thats it. You pretty much get the same results. Infuse can sync between devices using cloud sync and trackt, which can be used through a hide-my-mail account. Kodi can sync watched shows through said Trakt account. Infuse costs me a dollar a month and Kodi is free. I don’t need a NAS with a powerful CPU that can transcode. Anything that has disks and saturates the gigabit connection is enough.
  • WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    I just use Jellyfin with transcoding disabled. It’s still nice having a web client and being able to watch anywhere. Plus it doesn’t cost me a dollar a month which is nice.
    • Vrondi 4y ago
      But Jellyfin web client can't play a lot of common media file formats, because the browsers cannot play them.
  • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > I don’t need a NAS with a powerful CPU I have a home server with i3 8100 desktop, I wanget to get Intel Quicksync transcoding to work The amount of trial and error that took - linux situation is trully dire
    • tlamponi 4y ago
      > The amount of trial and error that took - linux situation is trully dire out of interest, did you try it on another OS and did it work OOTB there?
      • katbyte 4y ago
        Fwiw if your Linux install has the right drivers for the igpu it does just work (at least on debian) Have a 10th? (Frost) gen nuc and debian buster was a pain while bullseye just worked.
• jxdxbx 4y ago
  Weirdly Plex has gotten good at music. Which it used to suck at. But Plexamp and sonic analysis is cool.
• BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  I use Jellyfin because I like to have everything in docker containers and be able to always access the service via a browser. It works great on a PC and on my Android (where I have an app as well). This makes it also easier to secure the service via a proxy. Where Jellyfin is abysmally bad is Amazon Firestick. I tried to use it but it would always crash after some time, I gave up and am using VLC + SMB on the TV. This is not sexy at all but at least I can watch a movie.
  • apexalpha 4y ago
    I use Plex server in Docker, it works fine.
    • katbyte 4y ago
      Unless you don’t want to use their online accounts and want to bridge. If your client ip is not on the same subnet as the server it doesn’t allow you to use local accounts (at least when I last tried years ago)
• andybak 4y ago
  > Recently, I opened up Plex and couldn’t find my own content. My media content had been pushed aside into a submenu while the app promotes its own streaming media and premium services instead. It's an annoying (but understandable from a business persepctive) default - but a few minutes digging in the settings and I figured out how to configure Plex back to how it was. My issues with Plex run deeper - the music metadata handling has some serious issues and that's 50% of my usage. And if that's ever fixed I won't be able to use it because I'm stuck on an older Pleax version. This is so I can it on an older Mac Mini. Surely Plex should be embracing running on older hardware? (I would need to update MacOS which makes the box unusuable because of limited soldered-on RAM)
  • josteink 4y ago
    From a practical point of view, if you’re already “just” using it as a media-server, wouldn’t a more realistic approach be to just install Linux on it? That way you can dedicate almost 100% of the limited RAM to Plex and it should keep running fine?
    • andybak 4y ago
      I can't stream to a HomePod speaker with Linux that I'm aware of. There's other MacOS conveniences I use as well.
      • rodric 4y ago
        Is your Mac mini serving and playing your music, or serving only? The server wouldn’t stream directly to a HomePod speaker, and your player (perhaps on an iPhone or iPad?) would stream to your speaker equally whether the server runs on macOS or Linux.
• apexalpha 4y ago
  These kind of threads always bring mostly negative comments out. So let me just add that I've been using Plex for years to play 4k HDR files for myself and transcoded versions for family and friends. And it works beautifully! No complaints really. There's clients for all devices family has, I have all my files, I can share to friends, etc... Yes, they've also added a new streaming service. I really don't see the issue, just disable it if you don't want it. For me Plex has always worked fine. Good product.
  • cogman10 4y ago
    My pet peeve with plex is they aren't really focusing on the fundamentals. Checkout this issue [1]. A 2 year old request to support a newer codec, AV1, with seemingly no support in sight. Or you've got the fact that plex's transcoding STILL only targets h264 (and gives limited options for bitrate/resolution targets). Most hardware support H.265 (and some newer hardware supports H.266 and AV1). It's a product that was originally built on serving a media library and it's pushed most of us to working around it while the business is clearly focusing on other priorities. [1] https://forums.plex.tv/t/add-support-for-av1-coding-standard/556253/329 https://forums.plex.tv/t/add-support-for-av1-coding-standard...
    • Deukhoofd 4y ago
      > Most hardware support H.265 But software support is lacking, especially in browsers. It's licensing scheme requires developers to pay for a licence to support it in their application, which means that no open source developer is going to get themselves burned on it. It's the singular reason that AV1 was developed.
      • cogman10 4y ago
        Funnily, plex supports H.265 (just not transcoding to it).
  • drexlspivey 4y ago
    How easily can your family/friends find your stuff when you first give them access? For me it’s always a session where I have to guide them: 1) go to settings -> online media sources and disable everything. 2) click the ‘More’ button at the bottom left then go to these libraries I shared with you and click three dots —> pin for every one of them 3) go to settings —> Quality —> Video quality and select original so you don’t transcode everything to 720p, 2mbps for no reason 4) go to settings —> Subtitles and enable subtitles so you don’t have to enable manually every time you play a video
• mrlatinos 4y ago
  I've never had luck getting Jellyfin's metadata matching to work as well Plex. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. To me it's almost unusable.
• gowings97 4y ago
  I've given up on media server front ends - VLC or Infuse (iOS/MacOS/Apple TV) with an SMB endpoint is what I've migrated to.
• grzes 4y ago
  im pretty happy with jellyfin. shame it cannot load external subtitles when playing movies on my Samsung TV via DLNA :(
• aestetix 4y ago
  I have experienced similar issues with Plex (feature bloat), and I just tried out Jellyfin. It seems to do everything I want, with one big exception: I can't get subtitles to render. I did some searching, and it looks like this is a known problem and has not been fixed. Happy to be proven wrong, since everything else about this software looks great. But I need subtitles.
  • SamuelAdams 4y ago
    Agreed, this is also mentioned in the (1.5 year old) article. As a hard of hearing person I thought they would prioritize accessibility, but that hasn’t happened yet. My biggest complaint with Jellyfin and Emby is feature parity across platforms. Most everything works well in a web browser, but I almost never watch films on a laptop. My household uses Roku TV’s and there’s subtitles that just don’t work consistently, transcoding issues that cause entire films to be unplayable (despite working fine in plex). I really want to switch off plex but with these two issues / core functionality not working I cannot consider it. > The Jellyfin Android TV app is slightly worse than Plex’s, but they’re both dreadful to navigate with a remote control. Neither apps do a good job with subtitles and subtitle customization. Instead of the apps, I watch media via the Jellyfin web player instead of in a web browser on my home theater computer (HTPC).
• z9znz 4y ago
  I don't really understand storing lots of common media. Storing your own photos I get, since only you have them. But how many times do you watch the same movies/shows over again? Storing music makes a bit more sense, at least if you had the original media and it was ripped well. But that doesn't take much space at all; nowdays you can easily fit a huge music collection on a small storage device or even just in your phone+cloud drive+computer.
  • donatj 4y ago
    For me, it’s a nostalgia thing. I want to be able to watch obscure shows from my youth reliably. Having a funny moment from an old episode of Committed pop into my brain and not being able to show others is a major frustration. It’s about having reliable access to the media that has been important to me.
  • rolenthedeep 4y ago
    Some things aren't available for streaming, so you have to find a way to download it. Sometimes you have a bunch of DVDs you want to store and watch digitally without buying it again. And then sometimes there's shows that just aren't worth paying Amazon $25 each for 15 seasons so you pirate it. Now you have video on a disk somewhere and want to watch it on your TV and phone and tablet and grandma's computer. Systems like this are arguably the least painful way of doing that. Will you watch any of those videos multiple times? Probably not, but it will always be there if you want it. It won't randomly disappear on the whims of a third party just when you want to show a new friend this cool show they definitely need to watch.
  • pwinnski 4y ago
    You might not have noticed how many shows and movies have disappeared from streaming services over the last few years, but many people have. At the end of 2016, Netflix has 4335 movies, in May 2021 they had 3622. If what you wanted to watch was one of those 713 movies, you might have been inspired to think, hey, maybe I don't want to rely on byzantine licensing agreements. In addition, while several people are fixated on transcoding on this page, for reasons unclear to me, one hugely popular feature of Plex is sharing libraries with others, so you can grant your parents access to your library. It's not necessarily just "you" watching movies and show over again. True story: Friday night I was at happy hour with former coworkers, and I brought up the movie _Attack the Block_. Turns out it's not available on any streaming service. Not a single one! You know where it is available? My Plex sever. And that movie is worth watching again.
• sleepless 4y ago
  Jellyfin is awesome. I just wish the default client would allow music playback without stuttering when screen is off on android https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-android/issues/39 https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-android/issues/39
• ncrmro 4y ago
  I’ve had jellyfin deployed from a helm char allong with the servarrs for a few years. Just want it to randomly play stuff as getting through big library is problematic. My NAS did celebrate 365 days uptime and I posted on Twitter and now the TrueNAS team is sending me some swag
• dirtyid 4y ago
  Does Jellyfin do title skips / variable speed playback?
  • ATMLOTTOBEER 4y ago
    There is a plug-in for title skips. Not sure ab variable speed playback
• Vrondi 4y ago
  Is Jellyfin yet able to actually keep up with auto scanning for new files without taking an entire day? I don't want to have to manually tell it to update all the time, and I don't want to have to wait over night if I let it auto scan. I keep wanting to use Jellyfin, but there just keep being unacceptable flaws like the above (from earlier this year).
  • stryan 4y ago
    Jellyfin should update immediately for local changes by watching the filesystem. If you're talking about for network shares, that's just a scheduled task. You can set the timer yourself to whatever you want.
• onlycoffee 4y ago
  I use https://www.directorylister.com/ https://www.directorylister.com/ to share my media files.
• dbg31415 4y ago
  I like Kodi. I have a NAS with a bunch of movies, and Plex was fine but it had a lot of features around streaming to friends and I don't have any desire to share content outside of my living room. Kodi meets all my needs.