9 ms·

State of the Fin 2026-01-06

210 points by wise_blood 9mo ago

s_dev 9mo ago
It's very interesting to see Plex users slowly turn against the platform primarily due to costs being imposed. Plex has better client software than Jellyfin but the 'proprietary vs open source' debate for NAS/video streaming software seems to be reversing. Jellyfin is catching up to Plex and in a few years despite Plex having a first mover advantage here -- I expect it to surpass Plex in monthly active users.
- deleted 9mo ago
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- deleted 9mo ago
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- vachina 9mo ago
  Plex misjudged their market bigly. They’re turning into a streaming company, when what people paid for is a media server.
  - gadders 9mo ago
    They've done so badly you would think the Mozilla Corp had bought them.
    - benoau 9mo ago
      Microsoft Plex has a ring to it.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
  - ninju 9mo ago
    Plex Copilot 365 Office by Microsoft
- paxys 9mo ago
  It's about more than just costs. Plex started out as a home media server (a direct port of XBMC/Kodi in fact), but over time due to its success the creators decided they wanted to turn it into Netflix instead. So using Plex to stream your own media to your own local or remote devices is being made harder with every update.
  - bombcar 9mo ago
    XBMC is still somehow the best of them all, perhaps only in my memory. But damn if it wasn't magical having all those movies at your fingertips in the early 2000s.
  - gf000 9mo ago
    > own media to your own local or remote devices This was the point that made a bunch of people (me included) absolutely furious with Plex. Like I gladly pay for services and donate to open source projects. But it hits differently to pay for my very own hardware being used.
    - jaffa2 9mo ago
      What is the difference between paying for plex to stream your own video from yourown hardware and paying to use microsoft word to write your own letter which also runs on your own hardware?
      - horsawlarway 9mo ago
        You still use word? --- As a more serious response - The last time I purchased MS office (decade+ ago) I paid once for a product license I could use forever. That felt fair - I buy a tool, I use it. Plex had that payment model and got a lot less pushback from the community - but this whole "we're a SaaS now!" thing is just not going to fly. I just don't trust the company anymore, and Jellyfin is absolutely great.
      - ffsm8 9mo ago
        I don't think anyone would've had an issue with buy to use, that's not their business model however. As a matter of fact, I paid them 150€ for a "lifetime license" - because a long time ago, that was their business model. I too left for jellyfin because of their pivot to being "Netflix" as paxys phrased it. They just decided to throw away the market they established themselves into previously. Saltines should be expected at that.
- TacticalCoder 9mo ago
  Totally. I'm not into politics and basically all I want is a local streamer and I'm running Plex (on an old HP EliteDesk NUC) but... I already tried Jellyfin (and trial was successful with a few movies), so I'll very likely be switching my entire setup from Plex to Jellyfin soon.
- jdboyd 9mo ago
  I paid for Plex, but then they broke the the downloading features from the server to the Android client, and never repaired it to work reliably. Meanwhile most of their updates were about streaming support, and then they started cramming their streaming service into it, and pushing it, and I just got sick of all of that. Eventually I just switched to jellyfin. It is far from perfect. The music player isn't as good as plex's, there is no download feature. But at least it hasn't turned on me yet.
  - NegatioN 9mo ago
    I feel like they did a somewhat recent update to the downloader which fixed things. I had issues before as well but not anymore. The streaming issue is another matter though :/
    - BeetleB 9mo ago
      It's still poor after the new design. If I downloaded N episodes for M shows, it shows me N*M episodes all at once. No way to say "Hey, filter this list to just episodes of show M, Season K".
  - crtasm 9mo ago
    Jellyfin's Android app does let you download files but having to do music tracks one by one isn't very useful. Finamp is the app to use for proper offline playback/sync of music from your Jellyfin server. Go for the beta version, it's far ahead of stable and works well.
  - Krastan 9mo ago
    I have the old version of the app pinned so it doesn't update to the new app. I occasionally check the reviews but they continue to be really bad.
  - 1980phipsi 9mo ago
    Yeah, I don't mind paying for something, but they broke a bunch of stuff last year and it's still not fixed. That's what annoys me about plex.
- add-sub-mul-div 9mo ago
  I've never paid Plex a dime because I don't need any of the paid features. But its usability gets worse with every update, which is an underappreciated reason to want off the platform.
- observationist 9mo ago
  JellyFin is an open source project and is community driven and motivated by open source principles. Plex is a VC funded project, they've raised some $50m to date. Crazy what money can buy, isn't it?
  - DANmode 9mo ago
    Control over the user?, ability to turn them into a product (data)?
- gosub100 9mo ago
  I also want to shout out to Emby, which is almost identical to Jellyfin. It seems a bit more polished, and works very well. I've been using it for over 2 years. It does have a paid tier and nags me to upgrade for 10s on my TV, but that doesn't bother me. I have it running in a freebsd jail and it's been rock solid.
  - Macha 9mo ago
    Note that Jellyfin is a fork of Emby from when Emby closed their source.
- xienze 9mo ago
  For me it wasn't even about cost, it was the fact that logging into my self-hosted Plex server required an auth flow that went to Plex's servers for some reason.
  - zen928 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - xienze 9mo ago
      > 'For some reason'? You mean for the sharing library and streaming services and all the other features that require identification to even use ...? All I wanted to do was self host a Plex server and access it from devices on my intranet using Infuse. Why should I have to bounce to a third party server to do that? And to be clear, the devices using Infuse didn't have to do that, but accessing the dashboard (for admin) did require an external hop. There's no reason IMO for that to be necessary.
      - zen928 9mo ago
        > All I wanted to do was self host a Plex server and access it from devices on my intranet using Infuse. Why should I have to bounce to a third party server to do that? Cool, a real discussion. Plex has the weakness of requiring a first time online auth because they didnt implement a local ldap/oauth/sso pathway. After that point, Settings > Network > "List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth", use a generous netmask. Entirely local after that point if desired.
        xienze 9mo ago
        Well, I didn't know that at the time, and I was so annoyed by it I just moved to Jellyfin. And based on another comment in this thread: > https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-for-local-network-access/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-fo... They certainly try to scare people away from changing this setting, which is not a good look IMO.
- seniorThrowaway 9mo ago
  Agree with others it's not solely about cost. For me it was about the very clear monetization drive Plex started doing years ago, while remaining nominally free to use for your own media. At some point, and I've already switched off it so maybe it's already happened, they will monetize tracking/meta data about what is in your own collection.
- darknavi 9mo ago
  I have a Plex lifetime subscription but hold no strict allegiance to the company. If Jellyfin was a comparable product (in user experience and ease of use for my extended family's platforms) I'd switch tomorrow.
  - horsawlarway 9mo ago
    Yeah... worth looking again (or... with all due respect, maybe actually trying a first time). Spoken as the person hosting a jellyfin instance for my extended family. I switched years ago and it's only gotten easier. You can find things to complain about if you want to, but generally speaking - Jellyfin just works. The idea that it's not comparable is pretty silly.
- driverdan 9mo ago
  I have a lifetime subscription to Plex. I hate everything they've been doing over the past few years. They're completely ignoring their existing users in the quest for growth. * Social sharing stuff that shows what you watch to others by default. * Adding their streaming services and other paid services. * Changing the UI layout to hide self hosted content, promote paid services, with poor UX for changing it back. * Ignoring bugs that have been known and unfixed for years. * Ignoring user feedback, doubling down on their poor decisions.
  - TheCondor 9mo ago
    Are they that terrible, or is it the market and those of us with our own media are becoming more of the minority? I do question, at times, the amount of effort I put in to curating and backing up and maintaining our media. I too have a lifetime subscription, I don't mind a lot of what they do, but it feels like our media has become less centric, they want to stream pluto.tv channels and stuff like that. The biggest thing I dislike was how I had a single app to all my media and then they blew that up and I need multiple apps. It's not that big of a hassle; I just wish I had more heads up to when it was going to happen. And while I'm not aware of them having any music-streaming media, the music app ever only streams my own media and feels like it might be on life support. Maybe music streaming is "done" but it feels kind of neglected.
    - driverdan 9mo ago
      > Are they that terrible, or is it the market and those of us with our own media are becoming more of the minority? That's what I was implying with saying "existing users." It seems they're caring less about their self-hosted core userbase and trying to expand to other types of users.
- barbazoo 9mo ago
  We run a plex server and I hate it. Hiding "timer" functionality (turn off in x minutes) behind a paywall feels like a shit move to me as a parent for whom this is a pretty basic functionality.
  - jaffa2 9mo ago
    Ask for a refund.
    - barbazoo 9mo ago
      Didn’t buy, not gonna reward them for it.
      - jaffa2 9mo ago
        > Didn’t buy My point exactly. If you want the timer pay for it? Otherwise what are you complaining about ? Ferrari dont’ even let me use a car for free, and I dont post complaining about how if I wanted one I would have to pay.
        barbazoo 9mo ago
        Sure obviously you're right. I think it's shitty of them because I learned about it after already setting up everything because I thought this was basic functionality. My bad. So it would be more like Ferrari giving me the car for free, and then after a while when it starts raining I find out the windshield wipers are behind a paywall. Sure that would also be my fault, technically but it's also a shit company for doing that.
        jaffa2 9mo ago
        Can you not just set your TV to turn off after X hours ? In the EU this is actually a legal requirement that they can do this. (for 'energy saving') Many TV's also have an explicit sleep timer. Yes this doesn't resolve plex issue but could solve the issue in the meantime. Or go old school and plug an actual electric timer in the socket and cut power to the TV after X minutes/hours
- deleted 9mo ago
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- 0x457 9mo ago
  It's not just that. It was great for all of us with large media archives, but every "big" release is making things better for those who don't run their media libraries at expense of those who do. Syncing (a paid feature) was broken for years. It might download video, it might fail. You will find out on the plane. When internet goes down, Plex becomes weird...my home network still works just fine. Library navigation follows netflix pattern, but netflix pattern is to let me browse for hours without finding anything.
- BowBun 9mo ago
  Not to pile on, but the reason we're pissed at Plex is because they did a classic rug-pull: advertise to nerds like us who own our servers + media, then slowly make deals with publishers, requiring them to police _my_ content. Then start adding subscriptions and limiting how I can share (again) _my_ content - what are they offering me anymore? The irony is they won't have a customer base from my mom/dad. Why in god's green earth would a layperson pay for Plex when they can get streaming bundles? I just don't get it. And that's why I got rid of my ~10 year plex instance and replaced it with Jellyfin in maybe ~1 day. Happy to help others do the same!
- JuniperMesos 9mo ago
  I never even looked into Plex, I don't want to run proprietary software I have to pay for on my own computer to serve my own music. I've only ever used Jellyfin and it works more or less ok for my use cases.
epistasis 9mo ago
Jellyfin was super easy to get running on Arch a few months ago. With a Tailscale network, I have all my media devices connected to my very small but growing collection of DVD and Blu-ray media. I'm old, I ripped all my CDs in the 1990s and early 2000s, but abandoned all of it when Apple Music replaced iTunes in a disaster of product launch. After a decade of streaming, I'm trying to head back to curated media files, at least for video. Music is far harder to obtain in ways that compensate the musicians, at least for the stuff I'm looking for.
- hk1337 9mo ago
  That's pretty much exactly what happened to me. At the very least, I wish I had stored all the DVDs away somewhere. :( I cancelled all my subscriptions this year and working on getting JellyFin up and I was thinking of paying for GameFly or some other DVD service and start putting a library back together. Torrenting just seems icky to me and I am not convinced I could find good copies.
  - spikej 9mo ago
    What about your local public library as a source? (that's worked for me)
  - bombcar 9mo ago
    If you have a local library they can often get most anything eventually.
    - giancarlostoro 9mo ago
      Don't forget Hoopla https://www.hoopladigital.com/ https://www.hoopladigital.com/
cheschire 9mo ago
I have to thank Plex for changing their cost model. It motivated me to setup Jellyfin, something that took slightly more effort than Plex. And by getting that inertia going, I then followed up with Navidrome, a local OSM service with routing, and finally my own mediawiki copy that has a starting point from the pre-AI days as well as an annual content refresh so my "compare" history is short and simple on all articles. That inspired me to build a homelab finally, which then became a NAS, which then became an OCIS server to replace my commercial cloud storage. I finally got proxmox setup, OPNsense, with Caddy for reverse proxying the externally facing services and tailscale for access to those services I want to keep only for me and not others in my family. So yeah, all of this big massive avalanche of work started with the little tiny snowball of Plex deciding they wanted to charge me to use my own media while away from my house. Thanks Plex! And thanks Jellyfin for being a fantastic alternative for video.
- hart_russell 9mo ago
  Eh, I was happy to pay Plex a one time fee of ~$120 for a lifetime license. I'd rather just set up Plex in a docker container and expose that port than deal with a bunch of services constantly needing doctoring in my homelab.
  - toomuchtodo 9mo ago
    I too have the lifetime pass. A group of us collectively manages >1PB of content via Plex. But we need an offramp to derisk enshittification, and Jellyfin is that readiness capability. If you have no option to switch to when the time comes, you are SOL. Even if I did not use Jellyfin today (I do for a music catalog, but it is not primary), I am willing to provide them recurring donations to make sure they are ready when I need them. (ymmv, I work in risk management, a component of which is vendor risk management, so the professional mental model gets applied to home systems when applicable; rug pull? not on my watch, and the rug pull will happen eventually)
    - azinman2 9mo ago
      How in the world did you amass a petabyte of content?!
gadders 9mo ago
JFC just write a proper Samsung client. [I'm aware there is one I can muck around with and install via Samsung developer portal]
- osamagirl69 9mo ago
  The second to last bullet point on the post is about the Samsung client, which (as you are aware) has been written but is currently held up in review Samsung. The first round of review took about 3 months(?!), and they are working through reproducing the vaguely stated issues found in the review. It is thankless work, but they are actually quite close!
  - gadders 9mo ago
    Finally! I can't wait to uninstall Plex.
- hexbin010 9mo ago
  Ditch Samsung mate. Their consumer/appliance division products are trash
  - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
    Not the same person, but unfortunately one doesn't always have a choice. My wife is absolutely in love with the Samsung Frame TV, therefore we have one (much to my dismay).
    - DANmode 9mo ago
      Build that. Yuck.
  - gadders 9mo ago
    Long term, maybe. Definitely not buying a fridge with a screen.
- ZeroCool2u 9mo ago
mac-attack 9mo ago
> We have been moving quickly to address these issues, delivering four additional point releases with over 100 changes since the initial 10.11.0 release. To date, most point releases have focused on resolving general and migration-related issues. The remaining migration issues are largely isolated, one-off cases and are unlikely to be resolved. I guess that's my cue to finally try and upgrade. I dragged my feet given how widespread the friction of the upgrade, but if this is as good as it's going to get, I might as well pull the bandaid off now.
- pathartl 9mo ago
  I've been having massive performance issues, specifically with the database locking. Disabling the Playback Reporting plugin resolved the issue.
- Mydayyy 9mo ago
  I'm in the same boat, still on the older version and monitoring the new updates. There's an issue list on github for the .11 release, and while aaalot got resolved, theres still some big things open (#15045). But the jellyfin team is doing amazing work and I'm thankful. A few of my users already messaged me that with the next version, the android tv app will cease to work with the old jellyfin version, so I guess I have to upgrade soon
grepex 9mo ago
For anyone with a Radar/Sonarr/Jellyfin setup - do yourself a favor and set up Jellyseerr too. It's a request system for other to request library additions. Install moonfin on your firetv/androidtv and downloads can be initiated straight from your TV!
veilrap 9mo ago
The fact that Jellyfin lacks a AppleTV/tvOS app seems like it continues to make it a dealbreaker... at least for my setup. I hear people recommending clients like Infuse, but it feels odd to swap out Plex at this point if I can't go all in on the open source side of things. Am I missing something here wrt Jellyfin clients? I guess I could try running it side-by-side with Plex and see how it goes.
- wintermutestwin 9mo ago
  I use Infuse on an appletv and simply point it at a samba share. Easiest setup ever. What am I missing out on by not using jellyfin or plex?
  - bombcar 9mo ago
    Jellyfin offers tracking across devices and easy notification of "new" media - Infuse alone had to scan the share now and then which was cumbersome.
    - blowfish721 9mo ago
      I really like the infuse jellyfin setup. Only two things that bugs me are 1: Choosing a movie and then cast member wont show all shows/movies for that casr member, only the cached ones. No big deal but a bit of a petpeeve. 2: And I think this might not be solvable from Jellyfin but more than one version/quality of a tv show episode shows up as a seperate show episode and not version of the same episode. Might not be a Jellyfin issue since InFuse cant handle that in stand alone either. Havent tried the jellyfin clients to see the difference there.
- Crisco 9mo ago
  Swiftfin is the tvOS app: https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin
- pathartl 9mo ago
  My parents and brother use Infuse. I would use it even over the official Plex app.
glimshe 9mo ago
Jellyfin is love. A game changing project that solved my streaming scenarios. It just works.
keytarsolo 9mo ago
I like Jellyfin, and run it alongside Plex. But they have a very long way to before they reach feature parity with even just the stuff I use. Let alone everything Plex can do. I think this year I’m going to try and find an issue or feature I can contribute on. I’d like to end up moving to Jellyfin based on it being good and not Plex being bad.
austin-cheney 9mo ago
Jellyfin, and my current job doing enterprise API management, inspired me to build out a home lab around a custom built application that does server monitoring and launches servers and proxies for both HTTP and WebSockets in seconds.
farceSpherule 9mo ago
[dead]
ninju 9mo ago
> While nothing has been finalized yet, we are considering 'dropping' the major version 10, which would make the next release 12.0 You mean to say dropping version 11 (and moving straight to 12)
- gavinsyancey 9mo ago
  The previous release was 10.11 and the next would ordinarily be 10.12. They're considering dropping the leading "10" so the next is just 12 (from the minor version).
  - ronsor 9mo ago
    The macOS (formerly Mac OS X) route
wishJFWorked 9mo ago
Can Jellyfin finally passthrough audio like Atmos? When I checked mid-2025 on my Nvidia Shield it _still_ didn’t work properly.
- tylerflick 9mo ago
  If you’re referencing the Android TV client, yes I have both Atmos and DTS:X streaming as passthrough to my receiver. One thing of note is that DTS:X only seems to work with MKV containers on Android.
zenoprax 9mo ago
I've been running a Jellyfin server for nearly four years now. I never tried Plex or Emby but JF has been an impressive bit of software. The availability of clients (Roku, Apple TV, Android, Xbox) is good enough that I have no problem inviting friends and family to join mine. I've learned so much about the tech bubble I live in simply from getting them onto the server. I think the biggest obstacle to adoption beyond simple home servers is the reliance on SQLlite. If it were possible to set it up with Postgres you could run a monster server on AWS with RDS, S3, a Kubernetes. Not sure about the business case for that... but I would enjoy setting it up and pushing it to its limits.
cdrnsf 9mo ago
I'm glad Swiftfin is getting some attention. Their Roku app is solid and Infuse is an excellent option for Apple's ecosystem.
wackget 9mo ago
Does anyone else not really "get" these media managers? Personally I still find it much easier to grab media from a torrent and watch it on a computer using VLC. It requires zero setup. I do have the benefit of a PC connected to my living room TV, but even if I didn't, most TVs these days can natively play media from a network share.
- jaffa2 9mo ago
  The benefit of plex ( and jelly fin falls down here) is that anyone with any smart tv can access your media library just like Netflix . So family, friends etc can download the plex app, sign in and start watching your stuff. There’s wide compatibility with all sort of devices and you dont need to firewall tunnel vpn or do any setup. It’s totally grandma friendly. Your approach works great for a single user with a tv connected PC. Lets say with your current system you want your parents, right now, to be able to view your movies files. How easy is that to do, and how much technical knowledge or assistance is required?
- barnabee 9mo ago
  It's mostly about the UI. Browsing a network share is pretty ugly (generic icons, filenames, etc.) and can be unintuitive. Basic things like quickly finding the latest file you've added can be quite difficult. Ultimately if you just want to browse a filesystem, network shares are fine, but if you want a nice looking front end for that with logos/artwork, descriptions or reviews from the internet, or features that require the files and metadata to be indexed in a DB of some kind, then these UIs come in handy. Plus they look nice are generally easier for other less tech. savvy members of the househould to use.
- nvarsj 9mo ago
  I went down the rabbithole when I started getting into seasonal Anime watching. Doing that manually is a huge PITA for every show/episode. Now I just get a pop-up on my phone that Plex has the latest episode. I sit on my couch, hit play on my nvidia shield, and watch on my giant OLED. It's great - and I've been doing this for years now. Once you go through the initial set up, the UX is fantastic. Far better than anything Netflix, or any commercial provider has ever built. And for music - Plexamp is an ode to Winamp and is worth it alone. It completely brought me back to the pre-Spotify world of music enjoyment.
monocasa 9mo ago
Is anyone running a horizontally scaled instance jellyfin? I have a weird setup where power isn't really a concern, have a bunch of ancient blades, access to a fast uplink, and am looking to set this up for a smallish collective of about 100 people. A single node would definitely fall over, but a little cluster should be able to do a good job.
wise_blood 9mo ago
My current setup, maybe to inspire someone or to get suggestions: - server: my laptop. I manually download everything. - clients: everything in LAN with a browser, plus Jellyfin android client. - typical use: open android app, cast to big tv, watch on big tv. next planned steps: - move the server to a minicomputer. Still download everything manually from the laptop to the server - convince myself it's time to use the *arr programs - once Jellyfin has a Tizen client, ditch the android app + chromecast for good
cdurth 9mo ago
I don't understand the jellyfin hype tbh. Every year I spin it up to test and am always disappointed. If you only consume your media on a web browser, then 100% recommend jellyfin. If you consume on anything else the apps are bare bones and seriously lacking, potentially not even existing. I despise the frequent and ugly Plex UI changes they push out, but the app works on every device and TV brand I've had. The take away is the app ecosystem needs some serious bolstering. That's the holdup for most people I know who are still sticking with Plex.
anacrolix 9mo ago
I can't understand the love for Jellyfin. Kodi lets you pick multiple sources of data, but Jellyfin flips it on its head and requires you pick a single server, choose the sources there, then add Kodi or something else all over again. It's just more steps for no gain.

210 points by wise_blood 9mo ago

s_dev 9mo ago

It's very interesting to see Plex users slowly turn against the platform primarily due to costs being imposed. Plex has better client software than Jellyfin but the 'proprietary vs open source' debate for NAS/video streaming software seems to be reversing. Jellyfin is catching up to Plex and in a few years despite Plex having a first mover advantage here -- I expect it to surpass Plex in monthly active users.

deleted 9mo ago
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vachina 9mo ago
Plex misjudged their market bigly. They’re turning into a streaming company, when what people paid for is a media server.
- gadders 9mo ago
  They've done so badly you would think the Mozilla Corp had bought them.
  - benoau 9mo ago
    Microsoft Plex has a ring to it.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
- ninju 9mo ago
  Plex Copilot 365 Office by Microsoft
paxys 9mo ago
It's about more than just costs. Plex started out as a home media server (a direct port of XBMC/Kodi in fact), but over time due to its success the creators decided they wanted to turn it into Netflix instead. So using Plex to stream your own media to your own local or remote devices is being made harder with every update.
- bombcar 9mo ago
  XBMC is still somehow the best of them all, perhaps only in my memory. But damn if it wasn't magical having all those movies at your fingertips in the early 2000s.
- gf000 9mo ago
  > own media to your own local or remote devices This was the point that made a bunch of people (me included) absolutely furious with Plex. Like I gladly pay for services and donate to open source projects. But it hits differently to pay for my very own hardware being used.
  - jaffa2 9mo ago
    What is the difference between paying for plex to stream your own video from yourown hardware and paying to use microsoft word to write your own letter which also runs on your own hardware?
    - horsawlarway 9mo ago
      You still use word? --- As a more serious response - The last time I purchased MS office (decade+ ago) I paid once for a product license I could use forever. That felt fair - I buy a tool, I use it. Plex had that payment model and got a lot less pushback from the community - but this whole "we're a SaaS now!" thing is just not going to fly. I just don't trust the company anymore, and Jellyfin is absolutely great.
    - ffsm8 9mo ago
      I don't think anyone would've had an issue with buy to use, that's not their business model however. As a matter of fact, I paid them 150€ for a "lifetime license" - because a long time ago, that was their business model. I too left for jellyfin because of their pivot to being "Netflix" as paxys phrased it. They just decided to throw away the market they established themselves into previously. Saltines should be expected at that.
TacticalCoder 9mo ago
Totally. I'm not into politics and basically all I want is a local streamer and I'm running Plex (on an old HP EliteDesk NUC) but... I already tried Jellyfin (and trial was successful with a few movies), so I'll very likely be switching my entire setup from Plex to Jellyfin soon.
jdboyd 9mo ago
I paid for Plex, but then they broke the the downloading features from the server to the Android client, and never repaired it to work reliably. Meanwhile most of their updates were about streaming support, and then they started cramming their streaming service into it, and pushing it, and I just got sick of all of that. Eventually I just switched to jellyfin. It is far from perfect. The music player isn't as good as plex's, there is no download feature. But at least it hasn't turned on me yet.
- NegatioN 9mo ago
  I feel like they did a somewhat recent update to the downloader which fixed things. I had issues before as well but not anymore. The streaming issue is another matter though :/
  - BeetleB 9mo ago
    It's still poor after the new design. If I downloaded N episodes for M shows, it shows me N*M episodes all at once. No way to say "Hey, filter this list to just episodes of show M, Season K".
- crtasm 9mo ago
  Jellyfin's Android app does let you download files but having to do music tracks one by one isn't very useful. Finamp is the app to use for proper offline playback/sync of music from your Jellyfin server. Go for the beta version, it's far ahead of stable and works well.
- Krastan 9mo ago
  I have the old version of the app pinned so it doesn't update to the new app. I occasionally check the reviews but they continue to be really bad.
- 1980phipsi 9mo ago
  Yeah, I don't mind paying for something, but they broke a bunch of stuff last year and it's still not fixed. That's what annoys me about plex.
add-sub-mul-div 9mo ago
I've never paid Plex a dime because I don't need any of the paid features. But its usability gets worse with every update, which is an underappreciated reason to want off the platform.
observationist 9mo ago
JellyFin is an open source project and is community driven and motivated by open source principles. Plex is a VC funded project, they've raised some $50m to date. Crazy what money can buy, isn't it?
- DANmode 9mo ago
  Control over the user?, ability to turn them into a product (data)?
gosub100 9mo ago
I also want to shout out to Emby, which is almost identical to Jellyfin. It seems a bit more polished, and works very well. I've been using it for over 2 years. It does have a paid tier and nags me to upgrade for 10s on my TV, but that doesn't bother me. I have it running in a freebsd jail and it's been rock solid.
- Macha 9mo ago
  Note that Jellyfin is a fork of Emby from when Emby closed their source.
xienze 9mo ago
For me it wasn't even about cost, it was the fact that logging into my self-hosted Plex server required an auth flow that went to Plex's servers for some reason.
- zen928 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - xienze 9mo ago
    > 'For some reason'? You mean for the sharing library and streaming services and all the other features that require identification to even use ...? All I wanted to do was self host a Plex server and access it from devices on my intranet using Infuse. Why should I have to bounce to a third party server to do that? And to be clear, the devices using Infuse didn't have to do that, but accessing the dashboard (for admin) did require an external hop. There's no reason IMO for that to be necessary.
    - zen928 9mo ago
      > All I wanted to do was self host a Plex server and access it from devices on my intranet using Infuse. Why should I have to bounce to a third party server to do that? Cool, a real discussion. Plex has the weakness of requiring a first time online auth because they didnt implement a local ldap/oauth/sso pathway. After that point, Settings > Network > "List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth", use a generous netmask. Entirely local after that point if desired.
      - xienze 9mo ago
        Well, I didn't know that at the time, and I was so annoyed by it I just moved to Jellyfin. And based on another comment in this thread: > https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-for-local-network-access/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-fo... They certainly try to scare people away from changing this setting, which is not a good look IMO.
seniorThrowaway 9mo ago
Agree with others it's not solely about cost. For me it was about the very clear monetization drive Plex started doing years ago, while remaining nominally free to use for your own media. At some point, and I've already switched off it so maybe it's already happened, they will monetize tracking/meta data about what is in your own collection.
darknavi 9mo ago
I have a Plex lifetime subscription but hold no strict allegiance to the company. If Jellyfin was a comparable product (in user experience and ease of use for my extended family's platforms) I'd switch tomorrow.
- horsawlarway 9mo ago
  Yeah... worth looking again (or... with all due respect, maybe actually trying a first time). Spoken as the person hosting a jellyfin instance for my extended family. I switched years ago and it's only gotten easier. You can find things to complain about if you want to, but generally speaking - Jellyfin just works. The idea that it's not comparable is pretty silly.
driverdan 9mo ago
I have a lifetime subscription to Plex. I hate everything they've been doing over the past few years. They're completely ignoring their existing users in the quest for growth. * Social sharing stuff that shows what you watch to others by default. * Adding their streaming services and other paid services. * Changing the UI layout to hide self hosted content, promote paid services, with poor UX for changing it back. * Ignoring bugs that have been known and unfixed for years. * Ignoring user feedback, doubling down on their poor decisions.
- TheCondor 9mo ago
  Are they that terrible, or is it the market and those of us with our own media are becoming more of the minority? I do question, at times, the amount of effort I put in to curating and backing up and maintaining our media. I too have a lifetime subscription, I don't mind a lot of what they do, but it feels like our media has become less centric, they want to stream pluto.tv channels and stuff like that. The biggest thing I dislike was how I had a single app to all my media and then they blew that up and I need multiple apps. It's not that big of a hassle; I just wish I had more heads up to when it was going to happen. And while I'm not aware of them having any music-streaming media, the music app ever only streams my own media and feels like it might be on life support. Maybe music streaming is "done" but it feels kind of neglected.
  - driverdan 9mo ago
    > Are they that terrible, or is it the market and those of us with our own media are becoming more of the minority? That's what I was implying with saying "existing users." It seems they're caring less about their self-hosted core userbase and trying to expand to other types of users.
barbazoo 9mo ago
We run a plex server and I hate it. Hiding "timer" functionality (turn off in x minutes) behind a paywall feels like a shit move to me as a parent for whom this is a pretty basic functionality.
- jaffa2 9mo ago
  Ask for a refund.
  - barbazoo 9mo ago
    Didn’t buy, not gonna reward them for it.
    - jaffa2 9mo ago
      > Didn’t buy My point exactly. If you want the timer pay for it? Otherwise what are you complaining about ? Ferrari dont’ even let me use a car for free, and I dont post complaining about how if I wanted one I would have to pay.
      - barbazoo 9mo ago
        Sure obviously you're right. I think it's shitty of them because I learned about it after already setting up everything because I thought this was basic functionality. My bad. So it would be more like Ferrari giving me the car for free, and then after a while when it starts raining I find out the windshield wipers are behind a paywall. Sure that would also be my fault, technically but it's also a shit company for doing that.
        jaffa2 9mo ago
        Can you not just set your TV to turn off after X hours ? In the EU this is actually a legal requirement that they can do this. (for 'energy saving') Many TV's also have an explicit sleep timer. Yes this doesn't resolve plex issue but could solve the issue in the meantime. Or go old school and plug an actual electric timer in the socket and cut power to the TV after X minutes/hours
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
0x457 9mo ago
It's not just that. It was great for all of us with large media archives, but every "big" release is making things better for those who don't run their media libraries at expense of those who do. Syncing (a paid feature) was broken for years. It might download video, it might fail. You will find out on the plane. When internet goes down, Plex becomes weird...my home network still works just fine. Library navigation follows netflix pattern, but netflix pattern is to let me browse for hours without finding anything.
BowBun 9mo ago
Not to pile on, but the reason we're pissed at Plex is because they did a classic rug-pull: advertise to nerds like us who own our servers + media, then slowly make deals with publishers, requiring them to police _my_ content. Then start adding subscriptions and limiting how I can share (again) _my_ content - what are they offering me anymore? The irony is they won't have a customer base from my mom/dad. Why in god's green earth would a layperson pay for Plex when they can get streaming bundles? I just don't get it. And that's why I got rid of my ~10 year plex instance and replaced it with Jellyfin in maybe ~1 day. Happy to help others do the same!
JuniperMesos 9mo ago
I never even looked into Plex, I don't want to run proprietary software I have to pay for on my own computer to serve my own music. I've only ever used Jellyfin and it works more or less ok for my use cases.

epistasis 9mo ago

Jellyfin was super easy to get running on Arch a few months ago. With a Tailscale network, I have all my media devices connected to my very small but growing collection of DVD and Blu-ray media. I'm old, I ripped all my CDs in the 1990s and early 2000s, but abandoned all of it when Apple Music replaced iTunes in a disaster of product launch. After a decade of streaming, I'm trying to head back to curated media files, at least for video. Music is far harder to obtain in ways that compensate the musicians, at least for the stuff I'm looking for.

hk1337 9mo ago
That's pretty much exactly what happened to me. At the very least, I wish I had stored all the DVDs away somewhere. :( I cancelled all my subscriptions this year and working on getting JellyFin up and I was thinking of paying for GameFly or some other DVD service and start putting a library back together. Torrenting just seems icky to me and I am not convinced I could find good copies.
- spikej 9mo ago
  What about your local public library as a source? (that's worked for me)
- bombcar 9mo ago
  If you have a local library they can often get most anything eventually.
  - giancarlostoro 9mo ago
    Don't forget Hoopla https://www.hoopladigital.com/ https://www.hoopladigital.com/

cheschire 9mo ago

I have to thank Plex for changing their cost model. It motivated me to setup Jellyfin, something that took slightly more effort than Plex. And by getting that inertia going, I then followed up with Navidrome, a local OSM service with routing, and finally my own mediawiki copy that has a starting point from the pre-AI days as well as an annual content refresh so my "compare" history is short and simple on all articles. That inspired me to build a homelab finally, which then became a NAS, which then became an OCIS server to replace my commercial cloud storage. I finally got proxmox setup, OPNsense, with Caddy for reverse proxying the externally facing services and tailscale for access to those services I want to keep only for me and not others in my family. So yeah, all of this big massive avalanche of work started with the little tiny snowball of Plex deciding they wanted to charge me to use my own media while away from my house. Thanks Plex! And thanks Jellyfin for being a fantastic alternative for video.

hart_russell 9mo ago
Eh, I was happy to pay Plex a one time fee of ~$120 for a lifetime license. I'd rather just set up Plex in a docker container and expose that port than deal with a bunch of services constantly needing doctoring in my homelab.
- toomuchtodo 9mo ago
  I too have the lifetime pass. A group of us collectively manages >1PB of content via Plex. But we need an offramp to derisk enshittification, and Jellyfin is that readiness capability. If you have no option to switch to when the time comes, you are SOL. Even if I did not use Jellyfin today (I do for a music catalog, but it is not primary), I am willing to provide them recurring donations to make sure they are ready when I need them. (ymmv, I work in risk management, a component of which is vendor risk management, so the professional mental model gets applied to home systems when applicable; rug pull? not on my watch, and the rug pull will happen eventually)
  - azinman2 9mo ago
    How in the world did you amass a petabyte of content?!

gadders 9mo ago

JFC just write a proper Samsung client. [I'm aware there is one I can muck around with and install via Samsung developer portal]

osamagirl69 9mo ago
The second to last bullet point on the post is about the Samsung client, which (as you are aware) has been written but is currently held up in review Samsung. The first round of review took about 3 months(?!), and they are working through reproducing the vaguely stated issues found in the review. It is thankless work, but they are actually quite close!
- gadders 9mo ago
  Finally! I can't wait to uninstall Plex.
hexbin010 9mo ago
Ditch Samsung mate. Their consumer/appliance division products are trash
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago
  Not the same person, but unfortunately one doesn't always have a choice. My wife is absolutely in love with the Samsung Frame TV, therefore we have one (much to my dismay).
  - DANmode 9mo ago
    Build that. Yuck.
- gadders 9mo ago
  Long term, maybe. Definitely not buying a fridge with a screen.
ZeroCool2u 9mo ago

mac-attack 9mo ago

> We have been moving quickly to address these issues, delivering four additional point releases with over 100 changes since the initial 10.11.0 release. To date, most point releases have focused on resolving general and migration-related issues. The remaining migration issues are largely isolated, one-off cases and are unlikely to be resolved. I guess that's my cue to finally try and upgrade. I dragged my feet given how widespread the friction of the upgrade, but if this is as good as it's going to get, I might as well pull the bandaid off now.

pathartl 9mo ago
I've been having massive performance issues, specifically with the database locking. Disabling the Playback Reporting plugin resolved the issue.
Mydayyy 9mo ago
I'm in the same boat, still on the older version and monitoring the new updates. There's an issue list on github for the .11 release, and while aaalot got resolved, theres still some big things open (#15045). But the jellyfin team is doing amazing work and I'm thankful. A few of my users already messaged me that with the next version, the android tv app will cease to work with the old jellyfin version, so I guess I have to upgrade soon

grepex 9mo ago

For anyone with a Radar/Sonarr/Jellyfin setup - do yourself a favor and set up Jellyseerr too. It's a request system for other to request library additions. Install moonfin on your firetv/androidtv and downloads can be initiated straight from your TV!

veilrap 9mo ago

The fact that Jellyfin lacks a AppleTV/tvOS app seems like it continues to make it a dealbreaker... at least for my setup. I hear people recommending clients like Infuse, but it feels odd to swap out Plex at this point if I can't go all in on the open source side of things. Am I missing something here wrt Jellyfin clients? I guess I could try running it side-by-side with Plex and see how it goes.

wintermutestwin 9mo ago
I use Infuse on an appletv and simply point it at a samba share. Easiest setup ever. What am I missing out on by not using jellyfin or plex?
- bombcar 9mo ago
  Jellyfin offers tracking across devices and easy notification of "new" media - Infuse alone had to scan the share now and then which was cumbersome.
  - blowfish721 9mo ago
    I really like the infuse jellyfin setup. Only two things that bugs me are 1: Choosing a movie and then cast member wont show all shows/movies for that casr member, only the cached ones. No big deal but a bit of a petpeeve. 2: And I think this might not be solvable from Jellyfin but more than one version/quality of a tv show episode shows up as a seperate show episode and not version of the same episode. Might not be a Jellyfin issue since InFuse cant handle that in stand alone either. Havent tried the jellyfin clients to see the difference there.
Crisco 9mo ago
Swiftfin is the tvOS app: https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin
pathartl 9mo ago
My parents and brother use Infuse. I would use it even over the official Plex app.

glimshe 9mo ago

Jellyfin is love. A game changing project that solved my streaming scenarios. It just works.

keytarsolo 9mo ago

I like Jellyfin, and run it alongside Plex. But they have a very long way to before they reach feature parity with even just the stuff I use. Let alone everything Plex can do. I think this year I’m going to try and find an issue or feature I can contribute on. I’d like to end up moving to Jellyfin based on it being good and not Plex being bad.

austin-cheney 9mo ago

Jellyfin, and my current job doing enterprise API management, inspired me to build out a home lab around a custom built application that does server monitoring and launches servers and proxies for both HTTP and WebSockets in seconds.

farceSpherule 9mo ago

[dead]

ninju 9mo ago

> While nothing has been finalized yet, we are considering 'dropping' the major version 10, which would make the next release 12.0 You mean to say dropping version 11 (and moving straight to 12)

gavinsyancey 9mo ago
The previous release was 10.11 and the next would ordinarily be 10.12. They're considering dropping the leading "10" so the next is just 12 (from the minor version).
- ronsor 9mo ago
  The macOS (formerly Mac OS X) route

wishJFWorked 9mo ago

Can Jellyfin finally passthrough audio like Atmos? When I checked mid-2025 on my Nvidia Shield it _still_ didn’t work properly.

tylerflick 9mo ago
If you’re referencing the Android TV client, yes I have both Atmos and DTS:X streaming as passthrough to my receiver. One thing of note is that DTS:X only seems to work with MKV containers on Android.

zenoprax 9mo ago

I've been running a Jellyfin server for nearly four years now. I never tried Plex or Emby but JF has been an impressive bit of software. The availability of clients (Roku, Apple TV, Android, Xbox) is good enough that I have no problem inviting friends and family to join mine. I've learned so much about the tech bubble I live in simply from getting them onto the server. I think the biggest obstacle to adoption beyond simple home servers is the reliance on SQLlite. If it were possible to set it up with Postgres you could run a monster server on AWS with RDS, S3, a Kubernetes. Not sure about the business case for that... but I would enjoy setting it up and pushing it to its limits.

cdrnsf 9mo ago

I'm glad Swiftfin is getting some attention. Their Roku app is solid and Infuse is an excellent option for Apple's ecosystem.

wackget 9mo ago

Does anyone else not really "get" these media managers? Personally I still find it much easier to grab media from a torrent and watch it on a computer using VLC. It requires zero setup. I do have the benefit of a PC connected to my living room TV, but even if I didn't, most TVs these days can natively play media from a network share.

jaffa2 9mo ago
The benefit of plex ( and jelly fin falls down here) is that anyone with any smart tv can access your media library just like Netflix . So family, friends etc can download the plex app, sign in and start watching your stuff. There’s wide compatibility with all sort of devices and you dont need to firewall tunnel vpn or do any setup. It’s totally grandma friendly. Your approach works great for a single user with a tv connected PC. Lets say with your current system you want your parents, right now, to be able to view your movies files. How easy is that to do, and how much technical knowledge or assistance is required?
barnabee 9mo ago
It's mostly about the UI. Browsing a network share is pretty ugly (generic icons, filenames, etc.) and can be unintuitive. Basic things like quickly finding the latest file you've added can be quite difficult. Ultimately if you just want to browse a filesystem, network shares are fine, but if you want a nice looking front end for that with logos/artwork, descriptions or reviews from the internet, or features that require the files and metadata to be indexed in a DB of some kind, then these UIs come in handy. Plus they look nice are generally easier for other less tech. savvy members of the househould to use.
nvarsj 9mo ago
I went down the rabbithole when I started getting into seasonal Anime watching. Doing that manually is a huge PITA for every show/episode. Now I just get a pop-up on my phone that Plex has the latest episode. I sit on my couch, hit play on my nvidia shield, and watch on my giant OLED. It's great - and I've been doing this for years now. Once you go through the initial set up, the UX is fantastic. Far better than anything Netflix, or any commercial provider has ever built. And for music - Plexamp is an ode to Winamp and is worth it alone. It completely brought me back to the pre-Spotify world of music enjoyment.

monocasa 9mo ago

Is anyone running a horizontally scaled instance jellyfin? I have a weird setup where power isn't really a concern, have a bunch of ancient blades, access to a fast uplink, and am looking to set this up for a smallish collective of about 100 people. A single node would definitely fall over, but a little cluster should be able to do a good job.

wise_blood 9mo ago

My current setup, maybe to inspire someone or to get suggestions: - server: my laptop. I manually download everything. - clients: everything in LAN with a browser, plus Jellyfin android client. - typical use: open android app, cast to big tv, watch on big tv. next planned steps: - move the server to a minicomputer. Still download everything manually from the laptop to the server - convince myself it's time to use the *arr programs - once Jellyfin has a Tizen client, ditch the android app + chromecast for good

cdurth 9mo ago

I don't understand the jellyfin hype tbh. Every year I spin it up to test and am always disappointed. If you only consume your media on a web browser, then 100% recommend jellyfin. If you consume on anything else the apps are bare bones and seriously lacking, potentially not even existing. I despise the frequent and ugly Plex UI changes they push out, but the app works on every device and TV brand I've had. The take away is the app ecosystem needs some serious bolstering. That's the holdup for most people I know who are still sticking with Plex.

anacrolix 9mo ago

I can't understand the love for Jellyfin. Kodi lets you pick multiple sources of data, but Jellyfin flips it on its head and requires you pick a single server, choose the sources there, then add Kodi or something else all over again. It's just more steps for no gain.