Comment on Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!
Xanza@lemm.ee 1 month agoI have a huge issue with this post.
You can get things like intro detection and subtitle downloading to work with plugins, but you have to work at it.
You install the plugin and run the routine. There’s literally nothing to setup…
Hardware acceleration still kind of sucks.
What are you even talking about? Hardware acceleration has worked absolutely flawlessly in Jellyfin since I’ve set it up. HEVC encoding is particularly great, and required nothing but a single click to enable it. Jellyfin re-encodes my videos using my GPU into HEVC without issues.
The variety in app experience is bewildering sometimes. Apps look and feel very different between platforms.
This is the only real valid criticism, but it’s not even an issue. It’s by design. Plex designs a single app and stretches it so it’s the same on every platform which may sound great, but it’s not… It’s only to save them development time. Jellyfin has an android app for phones, and android app for tablets, and an android app for televisions each of which play to the strengths of the different platforms… That’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing.
Android TV app support sucks.
This is the fault of the television manufacturers, not the android app. This isn’t even valid criticism against Jellyfin.
The app is difficult to navigate and has a bunch of weird edges, like subtitle defaults not working.
- You can change the theme in any way you want. You can even download CSS directly from the web and change the TV app presentation in just about any way you want…
- The subtitle feature, again, is a limitation of the devices that display jellyfin, not a limitation of jellyfin. It’s also easy to get around by extracting the subtitles.
Public network support is finicky. This is hard to quantify, but I’ve been on several remote networks where my Jellyfin connection dropped in and out and Plex did not.
Yet another example of you blaming network devices on Jellyfin… My Synology NAS sleeps if it’s not used for 5 minutes–so if your buffer to jellyfin caches more than 5 minutes of media, then yeah, you’re going to have issues with buffering because you’ll run through your 5 minutes of media, and have to wake up the NAS to get more cache. This is again, not a jellyfin issue, it’s a configuration issue.
thundermoose@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You can look at some of my other comments for more specifics, but from your language alone I don’t think you’re being objective here. OP states that Plex is flatly better than Jellyfin, and a bunch of Lemmy users hype it up because of a clear bias for FOSS. A reality check is a good thing, IMO; you can prefer a solution and acknowledge its faults, but people talking on the Internet tend towards extremes instead and that will disillusion anyone who tries Jellyfin expecting all the good parts of Plex but better.
I prefer FOSS everywhere it’s reasonable, but I think a reality check is healthy here. Jellyfin is full of jank that you may run into because a bunch of independent devs are all doing their own thing to make it. Plex is a for-profit entity pulling in the same direction, so the experience is generally going to be more seamless and supported.
I run both Plex and Jellyfin simultaneously. I use Jellyfin on my devices, except on Android TV because the app is painful to navigate. Plex is way better for sharing, but I usually offer both. I’ve yet to have anyone prefer Jellyfin, Plex tends to just work on their platforms of choice so they go with it. Unless they’re a technical person, it’s unreasonable to expect them to muddle through the edges of Jellyfin.
Xanza@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I don’t feel that’s the case. I feel that you’re the one not being objective here. You’re holding things against Jellyfin which have nothing to do with it as a platform, but instead are either misconfigurations on your part, or involve your local setup…
I also run both. I don’t see what this has to do with anything. I’m not lambasting you for “choosing” Plex over Jellyfin. I’m saying you’re not being objective while pretending that you are, which is simply objectively untrue.
Again, this is you not being objective. You personally don’t like the way the Android TV application is laid out (which is totally fine) and count that as a negative against Jellyfin–which is my issue. Objectively the Android TV design follows the current design schema for TV applications and is the same layout as most media platform applications for Android TV…
Which is not what these applications are designed to do…so it’s not at all weird that this is the case. You’re inventing shit up as metrics to compare Jellyfin and Plex and it’s just so incredibly weird to do.
These are both media streaming platforms, which they both do relatively well. The main issue between the two is Jellyfin is FOSS and Plex is not. Plex incorporates a ton of proprietary bullshit that you have to wade through or disable to get a similar experience to Jellyfin. Like “shareability.” That’s not what these platforms are designed for. That’s what Plex was changed to provide. Comparing Jellyfin and Plex on the basis of “shareability” is like comparing a Ford Pinto to a Ford F-150 and comparing their towing capacity. It makes no goddamn sense because the Pinto was never designed to tow anything…