Eh, I find Emby pretty close to on-par at this point.
Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing
PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoYou can selfhost for free however you want but software developers have the right to ask for money to use their software. I selfhost about 60tb of media and have paid for Plex monthly for about 10 years now. They are still so far above the competition for ease-of-use that I wouldn’t even consider switching at this point, even to save $7/month.
ripcord@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 weeks ago
They have the right to ask, but I don’t have to pay. I’ve been playing with Jellyfin for about a month now, and I have to say, it’s just as easy as Plex is. The only thing I had to do myself was make my own users. In fact, I tried Jellyfin a few years ago and was unimpressed - now all I see is Plex making stuff to make advertisers happy while Jellyfin is adding stuff to make it’s users happy, to the point where I think Jellyfin has surpassed Plex.
carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Jellyfin have native apps that are any good? I use plex heavily on ps5, appleTV, iOS, and people’s random star TVs, all of which have really good first class apps. I also support users that are not technically inclined, so they would need to be able to just install and app and log in.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 weeks ago
My experience with the apps has been good, I use the android TV one daily and I like it. The most I had to do was log in using the username/password and also the URL, but I plan on just giving that to my users so they know how to log in.
carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Is it called “jellyfin” like the server or is it another app?
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 3 weeks ago
No Jellyfin app on AppleTV or PS5.
Cyber@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
But would you / do you voluntarily donate to Jellyfin’s development?
I get it, it is (& a lot of things are) free… but at some point the developers need to recoup something…
Otherwise Jellyfin’s development will eventually dry up as raw enthusiasm runs out.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 weeks ago
Yup, like why I bought Plex pass at the time. I was happy to pay for the good work they were doing. They had nice uis, their code was stable, and new features rolled out regularly. I’ll happily be doing the same for jellyfin.
Plex wants people to pay now for the same functionality. Big difference in my book.
Cyber@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Ahh, I see what you mean. Being asked to pay twice isn’t nice…
Orygin@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Jellyfin refuses donations so even if I (not the one you’re responding to) wanted to, I would not be able to.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not quite. Jellyfin does take in donations, but they intentionally hide this feature on their website – first you need to go to their
Contributepage, then you need to read “Find a way to contribute” blurb and notice and clickOther, then you need to clickHelp Pay for Expenses, then they give you a speech practically asking you to reconsider:And then you have to click that link and intentionally donate money – any amount you want either one time or monthly. The level of integrity compared to Plex – who take in VC money hand over fist and are descending into nickel-and-diming their customers – isn’t night-and-day: it’s the surface of a star and the center of the Boötes Void.
PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
All fair points, just depends on where your motivation to self host comes from. $7 for a monthly sub to Plex is frankly nothing to me, I don’t even have the charge linked to my budget spreadsheet. Between Plex, VPN, my usenet provider, private tracker memberships, electricity, etc., I’m not even sure I’m saving much money versus having one or two streaming subscriptions. In other words, I don’t do it to save money.
PlexAmp alone justifies the cost even before some features got put behind a paywall but the fact that all my tech-illiterate friends can just download an app on their phones/consoles and watch whatever they want in a high bitrate off my computer makes it worth it for me. 9/10, I just watch films off VLC player anyway.
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Exactly. This is a bet that Plex is going to lose with the proliferation of Jellyfin.
pory@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I dunno about that. Plex has lots of market share and plenty of “well I bought the pass when it was $60/$90” people aren’t gonna be personally affected by them locking more and more functionality behind the pass. So they’ll keep using it and recommending it and talking about it, and the centralized account management stuff (which Jellyfin won’t copy, because not having that is the point of selfhosting) will always be more convenient than setting up VPNs or other tools like external auth for Jellyfin sharing over the internet.
Discourse about this everywhere always boils down to the same comment: “I bought the plex pass and honestly I’d do it again for $300 just to not deal with handling my own authentication system, plex remote play Just Works”. Or something like “I refuse to use a $20 HDMI android TV box instead of my ad-ridden smart TV or PlayStation 5, and those don’t have apps for JF”.