Well I already have jellyfin running in a container, just have to figure out how to get mum’s TV to work with it I guess

<edit> log in on a local IP and not the network name and it’s working again. but I’ll be moving to jellyfin from now

  • Frypant@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 天前

    I agree, streaming on local network should be free, what is.

    I had other reasons too, so a while back I tried other self hosted solutions and I got back to Plex, it is more polished and a cleaner user experience. I’m happy to pay for a well written software as long as it is reasonable and not too greedy.

  • octobob@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 天前

    Something that’s getting glossed over in these comments is the ability to easily watch or listen to friends’ media.

    I have my own library with about 1k movies, a bunch of anime and TV, and 10k albums. But I have like 6 or 7 friends with libraries even larger. My one friend has 37k albums, they all have thousands of movies I never even heard of, etc. It really makes it like my own mini streaming service, and I love throwing on a huge music library on shuffle via plexamp while driving to/from work.

    I paid like $70 for a lifetime pass years ago, so I’m along for the ride I guess. I really rely on the music aspect of it, I haven’t had a spotify subscription in like 7 years.

    I know they changed a lot lately, and particularly what pisses me off is how vague and how they intentionally obfuscate how their model works now. I have friends that for years used my library, and recently have been like “I saw Plex started charging now so I stopped using it” and I have to be like “no it’s still free because I have a lifetime pass”. It’s definitely just to trick people into getting monthly subscriptions.

    • Bazoogle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 天前

      the ability to easily watch or listen to friends’ media

      Why do you think this can’t be done with Jellyfin?

        • Bazoogle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 天前

          You do not have to port forward. In fact, I would suggest against port forwarding. There are other options to access remotely

          • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlEnglish
            0·
            2 天前

            Are these options going to require installation of specialist software and then entering of special configuration parameters on the client computer as rather than just using any standard browser on any internet connected computer and typing yourjellyfindomainname.com ?

      • octobob@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 天前

        My friends don’t have it set up. Some of them are friends of friends, and people I don’t talk to regularly. I’m not going to try and convert them. It’s also a bit more complicated via tailscale or VPN reverse proxies and Plex “just werks”. If there’s anything beyond just installing an app and clicking an invite, a bunch of people who use my library are going to have a hard time. Like my dad, he’s pushing 70. My friends would also have to do the goofy networking setup for it to work for me.

        I’m also not even sure if people I share with have means of installing. My one friend who uses my library a lot does it through a Samsung TV. That involves sideloading the app to install jellyfin.

        Lastly, like I said, music. Plexamp is one of my #1 used apps. There’s a lot that goes into that beyond just being able to play media. It curates playlists depending on what you just listened to or gives you similar artists, similar to how Spotify makes a “radio” after playing something.

        • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
          0·
          2 天前

          the thing that everyone always glosses over is that jellyfin should not be run on a public network. it has known security vulnerabilities… that includes VPN remote proxy, so now you have to have external users on your actual VPN, and if that’s the case then plex will work fine because it’s “local”, and has a lot more features

          (and my main issue: media segments don’t work on swiftfin)

            • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
              0·
              2 天前

              i’m not likely to wrangle installing and maintaining wireguard on my mums cheap smart tv

              and if that’s the solution, as i said you get plex local playback so that’s free still anyway

              • BCsven@lemmy.caEnglish
                0·
                2 天前

                Yeah, Plex makes it easy…other than dealing with their cloud data breach.

                • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
                  0·
                  2 天前

                  which they handled about as well as you can: prompt and clear notification without trying to pass the buck

                  the potential of a data breach is just a fact of life with any SAAS product - bugs happen… and it’s exactly the SAAS part of the product that makes the invites/login/aggregation of servers so smooth

  • mintiefresh@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    3 天前

    I got the Plex lifetime pass over 10 years ago for pretty cheap and Plex has served me well over the years. But it’s just so damn bloated now and the biggest recent change to their android app is atrocious. The app is so laggy and slow now. And downloading movies to watch locally on a tablet is just painful.

    So I decided to start experimenting with Jellyfin this month and I am blown away at how fast and snappy everything is. It still isn’t as refined as Plex but there’s something to be said about privacy and using FOSS apps.

    I’ll be using Jellyfin going forward now.

    • onslaught545@lemmy.zipBannedEnglish
      0·
      3 天前

      I’m glad I really only use it for music, but the fire TV app works decently well. Better than the fucking Netflix app, at least.

  • tfw_no_toiletpaper@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 天前

    I jumped ship early on. They didn’t include skipping intros (or removed the plugin or the capability to use plugins, I don’t remember).

    Went to Jellyfin, took like 2 hours to figure out what’s different. I don’t even remember, are there any features worth it staying on Plex? At least I’m not missing anything.

    Also for watch together you start a watch group and can watch a show episode for episode. Instead of having to open each episode separately and having everyone join again (but maybe Plex fixed this already, I wouldn’t know).

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
      0·
      2 天前

      my main issues

      • jellyfin has known security vulnerabilities and shouldn’t be run on a public network. that means everyone using your server remotely needs to be on a VPN… and then you may as well use plex because it’s “local” so the remote streaming thing doesn’t apply
      • swiftfin (which i need for apple tv) doesn’t support media segments
  • candyman337@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 天前

    Genuinely Plex has become so obtrusive about NEW FEATURES, NOW WE HAVE THIS, USE THIS THUS WAY!!! and then also my libraries have somehow become even slower to load. I’ve been using jellyfin way more often

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 天前

    I used Plex about 12 years ago. The first time my internet went down, and I couldn’t use it, I stopped using it. Garbage. Not what I wanted.

    I used Windows Media Center as long as I could, I loved it. But, eventually, I had to leave Windows 8 behind. Now I use Jellyfin and SABnzbd, it works okay most of the time, but I don’t serve media to the outside, so I don’t know if it works for that.

    • quid_pro_joe@infosec.pubEnglish
      0·
      3 天前

      I think the GUI is more refined and the initial setup a bit easier for casual users. I’m a Jellyfin user, because my online entertainment budget is exactly $0.

      • candyman337@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 天前

        Yeah it took me a few hours of research and plugin setup to get feature parity with Plex, and then even so I don’t have anything to replace plexamp yet

        • kadotux@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          3 天前

          Not sure how features compare, but finamp exists for jellyfin if you’re looking for a jellyfin-music-player-thingy

    • MrNobody@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      3 天前

      Oh, this is so true. I set it up and now can watch things anywhere. Even my kids who live 6 hours away can just jump on and watch that stuff. Jellyfin is what plex wanted to be, like 10+ years ago. I remember how stupid it was when they first started charging people to watch their own local media, it was funny at first because it was only on iphones that you had to pay. Then it was everywhere. They will continue to take features away until you pay.

      • ButtDrugs@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        3 天前

        Can you do it from someone’s roku TV easily? Im worried about having too much networking trouble getting my mom’s TV hooked up to my jellyfin but don’t really want to open a port to the raw internet.

  • Zink@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    3 天前

    Longtime lifetime Plex Pass holder here.

    FOSS is important. Having control over how you use your own hardware and files is important.

    But even if none of that mattered, once I actually used Jellyfin for a few days the snappy bloat-free feel of it won me over. Switching between Plex and Jellyfin felt like switching between windows and linux.

    • MangioneDontMiss@feddit.nlEnglish
      0·
      2 天前

      what is FOSS

      I’ve also got lifetime plex pass. I might take more of an interest in Jellyfin if there was an easy way to transfer all of my server settings, playlists, metadata, etc. over. But it just seems like such a hastle to make the switch and I really don’t have any big issues with plex aside from needing to change the settings so they don’t sell my data.

      • Zink@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        2 天前

        FOSS is free and open source software. And the word “free” does a lot of heavy lifting there because it refers to much more than it typically not costing anything. It means that you have the freedom to do what you want with your stuff, basically. You (or others on your behalf) can see the source code for what the software is doing, and you can even change and improve it.

        You’ll see the word “libre” thrown around in this context too, for that reason. For many people the liberty side of free matters a lot more than the no-cost side. But they do go hand in hand, because not needing to protect a revenue stream makes it a lot easier to not enshittify software. You’ll see names like LibreOffice and FLOSS instead of FOSS.

        So it’s basically the whole Linux world that is very well represented on Lemmy and the fediverse. :)

        Sent using FOSS Voyager web client …in FOSS browser LibreWolf (a fork of FireFox) …on FOSS operating system Linux.

        I use Mint btw.
        (This is an inside joke for the other Linux people – a play off of “I use Arch btw” where Arch Linux is a hardcore distro where you kind of build your operating system piece by piece, but with excellent documentation. Valve switched SteamOS to be based on Arch a while back)

    • fantacyde@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      3 天前

      Very new to using Jellyfin but I also feel the difference in loading and such. Feels so much cleaner! Already uninstalled Plex :)

      • Bazoogle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 天前

        I can’t imagine moving over would be difficult. Just point Jellyfin to the same folder containing your content. When I first setup my home lab, I was going to use Plex, but I could not get it to recognize media. The naming format wasn’t right or something. Jellyfin just worked immediately

        • MangioneDontMiss@feddit.nlEnglish
          0·
          2 天前

          man, I’ve manually setup tons of huge playlists, and entered in a hell of a lot of TV show information by hand so episodes play in an order I like. Getting that working in plex probably constitutes days of work. I don’t want to even think about re-doing that in jelly fin. If there were a way to automate the process though, I’d probably be more interested.

  • kratoz29@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    3 天前

    Imagine wanting to charge to stream your own media with your own hardware and resources… Hey wait, we don’t have to imagine it anymore, Plex already did it.

    I forgot as I am a Plex Pass Lifetime user, and oh boy I’ll be sure to milk that out (actually after all these years I think I have already done that) just to keep being an annoying stat for Plex and nothing else 🤣

    • onslaught545@lemmy.zipBannedEnglish
      0·
      3 天前

      Aren’t they charging because it passes through their servers so you don’t have to expose your server directly to the public Internet?

      Like, I pay $5 a month to access my Home Assistant setup remotely, although I could do it cheaper with my own AWS setup. But the money goes to development, so I’m happy to contribute.

      • kratoz29@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        3 天前

        Yeah… That only applies for non CGNATED networks, and as we are in 2025 I’d say most users worldwide are CGNATED or don’t have an IPv6 address… Or worse, both.

        If you are CGNATED Plex approach is useless, as their relay sucks as it only lets you play up to 2 (or 4 can’t remember) mbps 720p files lol (server will transcode to meet those requirements), if they wanted to charge for remote streaming they should at least increase the minimum Mbps allowed in their relay, that way I understand they fall into server costs by proxying our media… But until that happens, charging for remote streaming is a completely joke (much more if we have free alternatives to keep doing so in a plethora of devices thanks to Tailscale and Zerotier, the true GOATS with a CGNAT environment).