5 ms·

This was the wake-up call me and my friends needed to stop using this proprietary piece of garbage. I moved to Jellyfin this morning and I was pleasantly surpri

by hnarn 3y ago

This was the wake-up call me and my friends needed to stop using this proprietary piece of garbage. I moved to Jellyfin this morning and I was pleasantly surprised that unlike a few years ago, the Swiftfin app now works well on both iOS and tvOS. This kind of move by Plex only highlights that even though you’re running the server, they still feel they have the right to break your application at any time for reasons they decide. For me that’s completely unacceptable and I won’t spend a cent with them again.

thiht 3y ago
> piece of garbage That’s pushing it. You’re entitled to dislike that it’s proprietary, but Plex works great. You can like an alternative better without shitting on Plex for no reason
- shyn3 3y ago
  True it's a hot piece of garbage. Enshittification is probably a better word.
  - Larrikin 3y ago
    It's not though. You are both speaking in hyperbole. Plex is actually objectively better than Jellyfin. Skipping intros still doesn't work consistently in Jellyfin. But it is a company and I am glad that there is serious competition from Jellyfin. It isn't a publicly traded company, so pressure from an open source product can push it to be better and not necessarily turn it in to a money grab that makes the product shit. They've made some missteps the community hasn't liked, but they have also had improvements as well.
    - earthling8118 3y ago
      To me it seems "objectively better" and "capable of shutting down your server remotely due to your server host" don't belong in the same solar system.
      - joshstrange 3y ago
        That's a recipe for an unhappy life IMHO. If I stopped using every service/product/business that did things I didn't approve of I'd be compiling my own linux distro (kill me) and probably growing all my food (of course where are you going to morally get some of the seeds you need?). This kind of black/white thinking is harmful. Plex "just works" for the family I share it with, I have zero interest in being 24/7 tech support so I don't use things like Jellyfin. If this UI/UX improves enough then I might consider it but everyone I've shared my Plex with has been able to use it without peppering me with 100 questions. I seriously doubt the same would be true for Jellyfin.
        shyn3 3y ago
        You can just buy IPTV and and a Chromecast and disregard the headache of everything else. Megacubo for pCs. Plex was great but they have slowly just destroyed their brand loyalty.
        Larrikin 3y ago
        IPTV sounds like a poor replacement for paying for access to content you don't control on someone else's Plex server, not a replacement for running your own Plex server with only content you want.
        shyn3 3y ago
        You run your own IPTV and then you use the available clients to stream your catalog. It works impressively well. Xsteve, tvheadend and stream River are options
- kasabali 3y ago
  > shitting on Plex for no reason I thought the reason was obvious (it's the first word of first sentence of the parent comment)
- rewmie 3y ago
  > You can like an alternative better without shitting on Plex for no reason Have you not noticed the topic you are commenting on? It's pretty clear why Plex is now unusable for a significant number of users. Other commenters likened Plex to a honeypot. How did you fail to be aware of that fact?
  - tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  > no reason 1) The UI is trash, bloated and unreliable. 2) The UI regularly tries to convince me to look at their junk TV/movie sales pages. 3) The UI doesn't provide proper feedback during the media library tagging/discovery process. 4) Oh yeah even though it's hosted in my network only using resources in my network, it feels the need to call home regularly. Sorry, you seemed confused, and I'm not the person you're replying to, but I thought I'd help you out anyway. This list isn't comprehensive, but it should at least help you understand people might actually be shitting on Plex for actual reasons that exist :)
  - tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - thefurdrake 3y ago
      Snarky? Absolutely. Vitriolic? Please, spare me. You might be upset that I chose to convey my data in a tone you dislike, but don't pretend my reasons aren't valid. Also, practice what you preach-- community guidelines say to flag and move on if you find objectionable behavior. It's telling that you chose to avoid addressing the content of what I said in favor of shifting focus to tone.
    - rewmie 3y ago
      > This a similarly needlessly vitriolic and snarky comment. You're the same sock puppet account who posted the following message: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523888
      - thefurdrake 3y ago
        ... This really should have been obvious to me before replying to him, but I didn't check the post history first. Maybe I should start doing that for such blatantly-obvious poor-faith throwaways.
  - thiht 3y ago
    Doesn’t help. I disagree on 1, I actually like Plex UI and it mostly works fine for me. It’s especially useful in that I have official apps everywhere (tv, smartphone, laptop), I can chromecast, and I can download movies locally on my phone. All that reliably. For 2, it’s just a tab you can hide no? I think I had that the first time I used Plex, but I’ve not seen that in months… 3 is true, the discovery process is too opaque, especially when it doesn’t find one of your files. 4 is not a UI complaint but a technical complaint. None of that makes it garbage.
- BorisMelnik 3y ago
  agree, it may have shortcomings but "piece of garbage" is something that does not fit, its one of the longest running apps of its kind with the largest user base of superfans
unforeseen9991 3y ago
Is it possible to import "watched" and the placeholders and other user metadata? I'd switch, but i'm not willing to wipe out everyone's metadata to accomplish it, especially as I have a lifetime plex pass
richbell 3y ago
> I moved to Jellyfin this morning and I was pleasantly surprised Perhaps I'm an outlier but I've never had a good experience with Jellyfin. It seems that anything and everything that could go wrong does. The Jellyfin codebase also terrifies me. I would not feel comfortable hosting a publicly-accessible instance of Jellyfin.
- hnarn 3y ago
  > The Jellyfin codebase also terrifies me Ok, why?
  - richbell 3y ago
    It is a large codebase with a mix of new and legacy (Emby) modules. Errors or intermittent issues seem common, and nobody really seems to understand what's happening. Many of the dependencies, especially for the legacy modules, are old or deprecated with numerous CVEs. Some functionality involves dispatching commands to external binaries. Overall it seems like a product that works, but isn't necessarily well designed. A critical vulnerability was discovered earlier this year, and I feel that a security audit would more than likely result in a few more. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/security/advisories/GHSA-9p5f-5x8v-x65m https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/security/advisories/GHS...

by hnarn 3y ago

thiht 3y ago

> piece of garbage That’s pushing it. You’re entitled to dislike that it’s proprietary, but Plex works great. You can like an alternative better without shitting on Plex for no reason

shyn3 3y ago
True it's a hot piece of garbage. Enshittification is probably a better word.
- Larrikin 3y ago
  It's not though. You are both speaking in hyperbole. Plex is actually objectively better than Jellyfin. Skipping intros still doesn't work consistently in Jellyfin. But it is a company and I am glad that there is serious competition from Jellyfin. It isn't a publicly traded company, so pressure from an open source product can push it to be better and not necessarily turn it in to a money grab that makes the product shit. They've made some missteps the community hasn't liked, but they have also had improvements as well.
  - earthling8118 3y ago
    To me it seems "objectively better" and "capable of shutting down your server remotely due to your server host" don't belong in the same solar system.
    - joshstrange 3y ago
      That's a recipe for an unhappy life IMHO. If I stopped using every service/product/business that did things I didn't approve of I'd be compiling my own linux distro (kill me) and probably growing all my food (of course where are you going to morally get some of the seeds you need?). This kind of black/white thinking is harmful. Plex "just works" for the family I share it with, I have zero interest in being 24/7 tech support so I don't use things like Jellyfin. If this UI/UX improves enough then I might consider it but everyone I've shared my Plex with has been able to use it without peppering me with 100 questions. I seriously doubt the same would be true for Jellyfin.
      - shyn3 3y ago
        You can just buy IPTV and and a Chromecast and disregard the headache of everything else. Megacubo for pCs. Plex was great but they have slowly just destroyed their brand loyalty.
        Larrikin 3y ago
        IPTV sounds like a poor replacement for paying for access to content you don't control on someone else's Plex server, not a replacement for running your own Plex server with only content you want.
        shyn3 3y ago
        You run your own IPTV and then you use the available clients to stream your catalog. It works impressively well. Xsteve, tvheadend and stream River are options
kasabali 3y ago
> shitting on Plex for no reason I thought the reason was obvious (it's the first word of first sentence of the parent comment)
rewmie 3y ago
> You can like an alternative better without shitting on Plex for no reason Have you not noticed the topic you are commenting on? It's pretty clear why Plex is now unusable for a significant number of users. Other commenters likened Plex to a honeypot. How did you fail to be aware of that fact?
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
thefurdrake 3y ago
> no reason 1) The UI is trash, bloated and unreliable. 2) The UI regularly tries to convince me to look at their junk TV/movie sales pages. 3) The UI doesn't provide proper feedback during the media library tagging/discovery process. 4) Oh yeah even though it's hosted in my network only using resources in my network, it feels the need to call home regularly. Sorry, you seemed confused, and I'm not the person you're replying to, but I thought I'd help you out anyway. This list isn't comprehensive, but it should at least help you understand people might actually be shitting on Plex for actual reasons that exist :)
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    Snarky? Absolutely. Vitriolic? Please, spare me. You might be upset that I chose to convey my data in a tone you dislike, but don't pretend my reasons aren't valid. Also, practice what you preach-- community guidelines say to flag and move on if you find objectionable behavior. It's telling that you chose to avoid addressing the content of what I said in favor of shifting focus to tone.
  - rewmie 3y ago
    > This a similarly needlessly vitriolic and snarky comment. You're the same sock puppet account who posted the following message: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523888
    - thefurdrake 3y ago
      ... This really should have been obvious to me before replying to him, but I didn't check the post history first. Maybe I should start doing that for such blatantly-obvious poor-faith throwaways.
- thiht 3y ago
  Doesn’t help. I disagree on 1, I actually like Plex UI and it mostly works fine for me. It’s especially useful in that I have official apps everywhere (tv, smartphone, laptop), I can chromecast, and I can download movies locally on my phone. All that reliably. For 2, it’s just a tab you can hide no? I think I had that the first time I used Plex, but I’ve not seen that in months… 3 is true, the discovery process is too opaque, especially when it doesn’t find one of your files. 4 is not a UI complaint but a technical complaint. None of that makes it garbage.
BorisMelnik 3y ago
agree, it may have shortcomings but "piece of garbage" is something that does not fit, its one of the longest running apps of its kind with the largest user base of superfans

unforeseen9991 3y ago

Is it possible to import "watched" and the placeholders and other user metadata? I'd switch, but i'm not willing to wipe out everyone's metadata to accomplish it, especially as I have a lifetime plex pass

richbell 3y ago

> I moved to Jellyfin this morning and I was pleasantly surprised Perhaps I'm an outlier but I've never had a good experience with Jellyfin. It seems that anything and everything that could go wrong does. The Jellyfin codebase also terrifies me. I would not feel comfortable hosting a publicly-accessible instance of Jellyfin.

hnarn 3y ago
> The Jellyfin codebase also terrifies me Ok, why?
- richbell 3y ago
  It is a large codebase with a mix of new and legacy (Emby) modules. Errors or intermittent issues seem common, and nobody really seems to understand what's happening. Many of the dependencies, especially for the legacy modules, are old or deprecated with numerous CVEs. Some functionality involves dispatching commands to external binaries. Overall it seems like a product that works, but isn't necessarily well designed. A critical vulnerability was discovered earlier this year, and I feel that a security audit would more than likely result in a few more. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/security/advisories/GHSA-9p5f-5x8v-x65m https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/security/advisories/GHS...