I’ve feel like I’ve used Plex forever. I also feel like every couple years I try Jellyfin to see how it’s going. Recently I tried it again because of Plex restriction on more than one user.
Well, I just tried it again and it’s substantially improved! This time it actually properly detected most of my library!
Also the Android TV app is AWESOME! No more glitches, lagging, and freezing trying to play my stuff like Plex did. It is butter smooth.
Wow! I’m impressed and I just deleted Plex. Good riddance.
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Tired of the reports about this post. Locking.
I would probably be using Jellyfin if it were just me.
The handful of people in my family that use my Plex server though are all non-tech people. When I hear that random smart TV apps aren’t nearly as good, that is what gives me pause.
That, plus the fact that a lifetime Plex pass was a one-time purchase on sale several years ago. It may be a proprietary product instead of FOSS like it should be, but at least they aren’t trying switch me to $1.99/month or some BS like that. But they’re probably smart enough to know they’d really start the Plexodus!
Maybe I should run jellyfin alongside Plex to keep better tabs on it.
Absolutely run them together.
Especially in light of Plex trying to keep tabs on what everybody’s doing and probably resell that data.
Ugh, yeah. I guess I’ll definitely have to try it!
It’s less painful than it sounds. You install the server pointed at your media files set up the same shares as you have for Plex. There’s not a lot of finagling there
Oh yeah sorry for the tone. That wasn’t my intent. I am not dreading Jellyfin whatsoever. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and I’m pretty sure it installed the WebOS app on my TV several months ago assuming the switch was coming.
No worries just attempting to put you at ease.
Well for better or worse, I am off sick from work today so I just set up the server!
That was fast.
So uh, what’s your favorite way to enable secure remote access?
It needs to be something that people can use with smart TV apps.
I looked at some of the instructions out there, but my head is killing me so I’m not in a “figure out computer thing” mood. Otherwise I’d be at work, lol.
Tailscale has a generous free account and runs on windows, mac, IOS, android, apple TV, firestick, and shield. You just set it up on your media server and every client, and just use to 100. address for your server in each client.
If you need Roku,LG,Samsung, it’s no longer fun. The tailnet can be forwarded from a routed device on the network, but that’s deep in the weeds for random people.
You could install HAProxy and run let’s encrypt, forwarding your JF to an external port (ISPs usually block 443, but it’s not hard to tell the client what port you need. Then your users can just specify your home IP and a specific port.
Or you could forgo the SSL and just open JF up on a high port. Maybe fail2ban on logins. it’s REALLY not ‘good’ at remote access :)
If the apps don’t work for you then I’d stick to plex. But I had the opposite experience, especially with the Plex Android TV app, it is so shitty… And the Jellyfin Android TV app is rock solid
I guess it’s worth trying rather than relying on vague internet comments. I’ll set it up for myself, then I can try apps on the various platforms as I visit people, etc.
I’m a bit biased as I started with Jellyfin, but the Roku Jellyfin app works flawlessly on the family TV.
I’d advise at least becoming mildly familiar with how you’d go about it, since corpos suddenly rug-pulling existing users and forcing subscriptions is pretty common, basically expected, behavior of American business now.
That way you have an “out” and your service can have minimal downtime. :)
On the other hand, you might just find you like how sleek and functional Jellyfin is. I can only see wins for you here. :p
Yeah I suspect I’m going to like it.
I think I’m going to set it up to run in parallel, then I’ll be ready to try it on people’s various devices as I get access to them.
Yep
Welcome to the future
Has been for a long while. Also there are tons of unofficial apps as well.
Yeah! It’s been great for me. No detection issues or weird bugs. The mobile and TV apps are also great!
As a long time plex pass user, is there anything there that would make me want to switch? Plex has just plain worked for me for years. mobile apps, everything is just great. Why should I look around?
I have a lifetime Plex pass but am still annoyed at having to deal with “recommended” every time a device is setup or reset.
The recommended view is useless and there is no way to make library the default view. You have to reset every source. It makes it incredibly annoying helping my family remotely to get to family videos.
I was just thinking yesterday - when was the last time we server owners actually had a feature update? I think last one I noticed was credits skip, and that was… 3 years ago? About?
Meanwhile Jellyfin apparently has been developing full steam ahead, I noticed credit skips in my test instance yesterday.
Same boat! I paid monthly for ages, then got a lifetime pass and everyone was singing the praises of Jellyfin, at this point it works for me!
I just made the switch for a few reasons.
For background, I was a Lifetime Plex Pass user since it launched, created the POC exploit for token theft (a couple of months before they implemented SSL), and built a clustering/sync application (a few months before they released sync, patterns much?).
I did not think Jellyfin was up to task a few years ago. It is now. All the missing features like themed visuals and audio, chapters, thumbnails on seek, all exist now.
Why I switched:
- API: I have scripts that do different things with different media and they were super easy to recreate with the API. An example would be moving
ytdlpvideos from my Youtube Watch Later folder to a deletion folder if they’ve been watched. - LDAP: I now have user control via my Samba AD.
- Privacy: I never wanted my media list stored with a third party to begin with.
- Plugins: I have a library I tag with filenames, like
==Tag--Tag==filename.ext. It took me a half day to make a Jellyfin plugin that converts these to Genres. It was a nightmare of DB hacking to do it in Plex. Not to mention there are waaaay more existing plugins that are supported. Jellyfin is where this happens now, not Plex. - Fine grain control: Transcoding settings, bandwidth settings, etc are are open and transparent.
- API: I have scripts that do different things with different media and they were super easy to recreate with the API. An example would be moving
If Plex is just working for you, stick with it. I switched to Jellyfin when I got sick of having to reset my Plex library. (Even now, thinking of the “Plex dance” makes me shudder.)
Agree 100%. Most of the former Plex users turned Jellyfin users I have come across did so better Plex was broken in some way for them. For me it was the general lack of care in creating/maintaining a good Apple TV app. Over the past few years it’s just gotten buggier and buggier with a lot of complaints on the Plex forums where devs would essentially stop by to say they weren’t working on any fixes.
Jellyfin doesn’t fix 100% of the issues, but at least there is active development on Swiftfin that showed a desire to fully support all devices.
Well you’re on Lemmy and it’s not FOSS. Not a great place to get unbiased opinions on the matter. It’s actively shitted on in the fediverse. They even bum rush the plex community here.
Plex was bought out by venture capital and has been enshittifing for years. “Free” media stream sources added riddled with ads that you have to opt out of, opt out “everyone can see what everyone is watching” features, nebulous “we need to upload hashes of your media to skip credits” privacy issues, abandoning apps for various platforms like kodi, on and on.
I have a lifetime pass, but no longer consider plex a viable platform. The issues are not baseless, but rather based on what plex has decided to do to make money.
Meanwhile, jellyfin is FOSS with no profit motive, no privacy issues, skips intros and credits with no issue, pulls subtitles down and indexes media flawlessly, and has native kodi clients with Database sync support so a show paused in one room can be resumed at the same point in another room.
Hard to beat “slick, private and free.”
I agree mostly. I just see way more ignorant takes left and right on Lemmy. Yours is actually a better way of stating things. I’m also in the actively shitted on iOS side of things as well. Between plexamp and infuse… it’s highly polished for me.
My advice is always if you’re just now starting to definitely go to jellyfin. I bought lifetime plex pass maybe 16 or so years ago. One day I’ll probably give jellyfin a try.
Plex is closed source and gradually being enshittified. You might not leave today, but you should have an exit plan.
gradually
Yeah nah. It’s going pretty fast tbh.
I’ve been using Plex for over 10 years and I can’t say anything about it has changed for the worse honestly
They changed their logo gasp
Same. I think I had to go in once in the last few years to turn off a new setting. I didn’t recall what is was though. Probably data collection?
Maybe when Plex added the “Discover Together” feature that shares watch history with friends?
That’s the one!
Yeah, I don’t 100% love that’s on my default but I also don’t think it’s a huge deal
Plex has been terrible for a long time if it weren’t for Jellyfin I would’ve just not bothered with a media server for a few years until they got their shit together. That reminds I should throw some money at the Jellyfin team.
Yeah, I’m really glad I found out about Jellyfin. I switched to Jellyfin because Plex doesn’t let you disable Passout Protection (automatically stopping playback after something like 3hrs) without Plex Pass. I was just about to fork over $95 for a lifetime license when I looked into Jellyfin and discovered continuous playback was the default. I switched that very day and never looked back.
That’s so weird. I’ve been using Plex for years and had never heard of “Passout Protection” until looking it up just now, nor does it ever stop playback on its own for me unless it reaches the end of the queue. I’m using the free version via web browser on my computer. Maybe it’s a setting that only affects apps? Continuous playback on Plex is one of the reasons why I’ve always preferred it over Netflix, etc.
Yeah, I don’t think it effects browsers.
I tried to setup Plex and it was just about the most god-awful experience I’ve ever had. It was unnecessarily complex to accommodate their cloud infrastructure setup.
Installing Jellyfin took like… 2 minutes and I’ve had no issues since.
Only thing I don’t like about Jellyfin is the metadata engine, which I have disabled and just use TinyMediaManager and save everything to .nfo which is picked up by Jellyfin immediately. Works great.
It was unnecessarily complex to accommodate their cloud infrastructure setup.
Please elaborate how you needed to “accommodate their cloud infrastructure setup”.
When I set my server up years ago all I did was log in on the web interface. Literally as simple as any other service.
When I set my server up years ago all I did was log in on the web interface. Literally as simple as any other service.
They make you register with their own website to login to your local instance… That’s you jumping through hoops to accommodate their cloud bullshit;
It’s important to understand that Plex Media Server does not have its own graphical user interface. When you run the server on your computer, NAS, or other device, you won’t see a window open with a “server UI” or similar. Instead, you use our web app to manage your server.
It’s so fucking unnecessary.
Wait, isn’t Jellyfin the same way? Pretty much every self-hosted app I run uses some web interface you log into so you can use it anywhere on the network. Sure, Plex also has some pre-set remote connection thing, but from the end user perspective it’s the same set of steps. I also had to make a login for all the stuff I fully self-host.
Is there no account management on Jellyfin? I would probably want that as a feature.
Wait, isn’t Jellyfin the same way?
Jellyfin has a native web-ui, yes. But not a proprietary one, like Plex uses. When I installed a Plex server I had to go to plex.tv and setup a user account there to be able to log into my own damn server… Then they strongly encourage you to use https://app.plex.tv/ to manage your local server.
It’s all unnecessarily confusing and difficult.
Is there no account management on Jellyfin?
Yes. Local accounts. Not some cloud based PAMd system.
You made me feel like I was crazy, so I just downloaded Plex Media Server and installed it. Ran it, and was immediately presented with this: https://i.xno.dev/mqWFZ.png
I was then immediately routed to app.plex.tv and see this: https://i.xno.dev/cLPfw.png
There’s no option to not use a plex account. You must either use an existing account or sign up for one. You cannot use local users. Then it forces you to use the app.plex.tv so it can display content you don’t even have, or have access to…
How in any possible way is any of this easier than Jellyfin?
EDIT: Oh, don’t forget the sales pitch! https://i.xno.dev/79WBs.png
Okay, but… how is it confusing from the front end if what you’re doing is going through the same steps of creating an account? You punch in a login and password in both.
Sure, Plex is doing this extra thing where it’s also bringing in centralized content along with your library and it will default to its remote access system if you log in from outside your network. But again, from the front-end that is transparent. You log in and you have your library. If anything they’re being a bit too transparent, I’ve had times where networking stuff got in the way and it took me a minute to notice that Plex was routing my library through their remote access system instead.
I can see objections to it working that way, you trade a (frankly super convenient) way to share content remotely and access content from outside your network without too much hassle for… well, going through someone else’s server and having their content sitting alongside yours. But “confusing and difficult” isn’t how I’d describe it. It seems to work like any other service, self-hosted or not, as far as the user-facing portions are concerned. I guess I just don’t see the confusing part there.
Okay, but… how is it confusing from the front end if what you’re doing is going through the same steps of creating an account? You punch in a login and password in both.
Because there’s zero difference between the app.plex.tv interface spawned from plex server, and one without. There’s zero indication that it’s actually your server and your content because it fucking displays everything by default.
It’s such an incredibly bad proprietary system…
But again, from the front-end that is transparent.
It’s not. There’s no server configuration options at all. There’s nothing to indicate it’s local content…
I can see objections to it working that way, you trade a (frankly super convenient) way to share content remotely and access content from outside your network
For 90% of the content people use Plex for, this is an illegal act. So I don’t see the advantage to providing this option let alone making it easier to commit a felony… I’ve never needed to “share” my media library with anyone and even if this was something I wanted to do, it’s a simple DNS record away from doing the same thing in Jellyfin. There’s no reason to lock people into your login system because 10% of people would “find it easier.” It’s just such a bad argument.
I am very confused here. You seem to have slipped from arguing that it was difficult and complicated to arguing that it’s bad to be able to share content remotely because it’s a felony, which seems like a pretty big leap.
For one thing, it’s not illegal and I do rip my own media. I will access it from my phone or my laptop remotely whenever I want, thank you very much.
For another, and this has been my question all along, how is it possibly more difficult and complicated to have remote access ready to go than being “a DNS record away”? Most end users don’t even know what a DNS is.
And yes, not having (obvious) server configurations up front is transparent. That’s what I’m saying. It does mix at least two sources (their unavoidable, rather intrusive free streaming TV stuff and your library), but it doesn’t demand that you set it up. The entire idea is to not have to worry about whether it’s local content. Like I said, there are edge cases where that can lead to a subpar experience (mainly when it’s downsampling your stuff to route it the long way around without telling you), but from a UX perspective I do get prioritizing serving you the content over warning you of networking issues.
I don’t know, man, I’m not saying you shouldn’t prefer Jellyfin. I wouldn’t know, I never used it long enough to have a particularly strong opinion. I just don’t get this approach where having the thing NOT surface a bunch of technical stuff up front reads as “complicated and difficult”. I just get hung up on that.
Hm. I gave Jellyfin a try and the UX was a turnoff, so I ended up in Plex. The separate management of metadata does sound like a pain to me, too, but maybe there’s a bit of sunk cost fallacy to that.
Either way it seems people are mostly fine with their choices and there is a viable free alternative, so… all good there.
You can change the UI design to whatever you want with a custom CSS. Can make your own or there’s a plethora of themes on GitHub. I remember trying one that replicated the Netflix app, and don’t hold me to it but I think I saw a Plex one as well.
Also, regarding the metadata, there are options that auto populate it for you. Idk how it does it, but my haphazard library of torrents all had accurate metadata AND it downloaded the subtitle files as well.
Not the UI, the UX. The UI may be editable, but if I have to make my own UI to be happy with what it looks like or works like, then that’s bad UX.
I get that sometimes those terms are used interchangeably, but they’re not the same.
Sorry, I misread. What is bad about the UX exactly? You don’t need to customize anything if you don’t want to; “it just works”. And I dont follow you on how having the option to customize things makes it a bad user experience. You’re assuming the native UI is bad for some reason.
I’ve used Plex a lot too back in the day but there’s nothing it provides that Jellyfin doesn’t do out of the box + self-hosted + for free.
Sorry, I misread. What is bad about the UX exactly? You don’t need to customize anything if you don’t want to; “it just works”. And I dont follow you on how having the option to customize things makes it a bad user experience. You’re assuming the native UI is bad for some reason.
Being given the tools to customize something by hand is not the same as being offered enough option to simply choose what you want. Having a good UX means that there was a UI designer who alread did the customzing for you and you simply have click a button to apply it.
I barely even remember what the specific dealbreaker was, honestly. I was just dabbling, considering expanding my NAS and maybe getting the gear to dump my 4K BluRays. I gave Jellyfin a try first, I went through the setup process and I remember it being a) confusing to set up, and b) very ugly.
I gave Plex a try to cover my bases and that looked better and got me up and running faster, so I just stuck with it. Easier remote access was a feature for me there, too, but the choice was made purely on the onboarding process. It was going through the onboarding on each and just sticking with the one that got me there with less hassle. There was nothing activist to it, it’s maybe the most user-level, unresearched decision I’ve taken on software in a while, honestly. I was already trying to figuring out the ripping and encoding at the same time, so I didn’t want to put any additional attention on library management.
If anything I gave Jellyfin a bit more of a chance than I otherwise would have because I had heard a lot of angry chatter from people about Plex. I guess I came in after they made the changes that pissed people off and didn’t mind the state of the current product without a frame of reference. I would have bailed if there was a subscription, but they do have a one-and-done purchase, so now I’m set up, it’s working and I’ve paid them as much as I’m going to, so I’m fine with it. I do appreciate a free alternative existing, though.
I don’t know if it’s bad UX or UI, but I do agree there’s something really disturbing with jellyfin’s options and tweaks… More than once I lost my way and had to click on every option button again to find a specific thing to disable/enable something?
Now It’s easier after I have passed some time in the options/user menu, but some tweaks and options are not very intuitive.
Other than that, Jellyfin is awesome and I can’t believe something as good as Jellyfin is free and open source. Thanks to all devloppers behind this, I hope they will stay true to open source and jellyfin will last forever !! But I doubt it.
I tried Jellyfin out on my most recent build - don’t think it’s quite as good as Plex so far. Still using it though - I think either is perfectly fine for a simple home media server.
Has Jellyfin improved its subtitle fetching?It’s been awhile since using Jellyfin. I stayed with Plex because downloading subtitles on the fly wasn’t available in Jellyfin, and no extensions for it either.
So glad people are dipping out of plex.
anybody have a guide for an old laptop
Maybe I need it give it another chance, but 3 months ago it was still hot garbage compared to plex
Jellyfin is great but, to be fair, anything is better than Plex.
Is just not as good*
What problems are you having with it?
Wait - what restrictions on Plex?
