Jellyfin is not just good... but better than Plex now?!

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨aeharding@vger.social⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

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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Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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.

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- amorpheus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  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.
  
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  - Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    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.
    
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- TheBeesKnees@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I guess it depends on when you last used it. I opt for the CLI approach, but Jellyfin can install a plugin which allows (on library scan) to extract internal subtitles, which fixes 90% of issues with subtitle display for devices like Chromecasts.
    
    Jellyfin also integrates with OpenSubstiles: i.xno.dev/gVee6.png
    
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rouxdoo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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?

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- vividspecter@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Plex is closed source and gradually being enshittified. You might not leave today, but you should have an exit plan.
  
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  - aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    gradually
    
    Yeah nah. It’s going pretty fast tbh.
    
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  - TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I’ve been using Plex for over 10 years and I can’t say anything about it has changed for the worse honestly
    
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- catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.)
  
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  - Wxfisch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- async_amuro@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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!
  
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- pigeonholedpoetry@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - mosiacmango@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Plex was bought out by venture capital and has been enshittifing for years. “Free” media stream sources added riddled with adds that you have to opt put of, opt out “everyone can see what every 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 now don’t consider plex a viable platform long term. The issues are not baseless, but rather based on what plex has decided to do to make even more money.
    
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- fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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 ytdlp videos 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.
  
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EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Jellyfin is still not up to snuff with where Plex was pre-enshittification, but Plex is enshittified. For everyone in between, there’s Emby, which I have been very happy with.

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- heschlie@lemmy.schlunker.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I’d have to agree with this, there was a time where Plex was amazing. after like the 3rd time I was forced stop it from hiding my library and them pushing services in my face I made the switch to Jellyfin. It’s been long enough now that I don’t recall the features I miss, and overall Jellyfin is fine, and seems to get better pretty consistently.
  
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  - gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    after like the 3rd time I was forced stop it from hiding my library and them pushing services in my face
    
    Seeing shit like this makes me wonder what different Plex I’m using from everyone else. Pinned my local library at the top 4 years ago and now every device shows that tab first when logging in and hasn’t ever behaved differently except when the home server is down (it’ll still go to the tab but read OFFLINE)
    
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- JaddedFauceet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  what are the things i will miss from plex’s pre-enshittification?
  
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- Rexios@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  You people do realize that you can use the Plex server without using the Plex apps right? I pretty much exclusively use Infuse to interface with my Plex server and have none of the issues I see mentioned here.
  
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  - EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I mean you very much still have the privacy issues.
    
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WalnutLum@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
After having been shafted by sublime text I will never believe anything called a “lifetime subscription” is such.

A “lifetime subscription” is just a “until we decide otherwise” subscription

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- mbirth@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  After having been shafted by sublime text I will never believe anything called a “lifetime subscription” is such.
  
  Care to elaborate?
  
  AFAIR SublimeText licenses are always only for a specific major version. And they sometimes might work for the next major version. So, I guess you’ve just installed a newer version for which your lifetime license isn’t valid anymore.
  
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  - WalnutLum@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Before sublime text 3 all updates were included in the single license, not just major revision updates. This was back in 2012.
    
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- ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I mean, it naturally has to be something that they eventually find a way to charge you something for. If it’s a for-profit business, and if they only sold lifetime subscriptions, they would eventually go out of business.
  
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  - ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Then they shouldn’t be called lifetime subscriptions.
    
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- hera@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I’ve been using it for 8 years and haven’t paid, is there any benefit for paying?
  
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thundermoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
There’s a really strong bias on Lemmy for OSS projects. I’m glad they get so much love here, but everything people say here about Jellyfin has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. It works and you can use it. Depending on your needs, it may even work perfectly for you. There are tons of rough edges though.

Here’s a few:

A bunch of basic functionality most people are used to is missing by default. You can get things like intro detection and subtitle downloading to work with plugins, but you have to work at it.

Hardware acceleration still kind of sucks. You can get it to work, but the Jellyfin port of ffmpeg doesn’t work anywhere near as well as Plex’s.

The variety in app experience is bewildering sometimes. Apps look and feel very different between platforms.

Android TV app support sucks. The app is difficult to navigate and has a bunch of weird edges, like subtitle defaults not working. I have no idea what OP is talking about here, it sounds like they’re only judging the app on its animation speed.

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. I suspect this is due to the Plex Relay service making up for bad routes between my house and the network.

Jellyfin is improving all the time, and I hope the recent EFCore update improves performance and development velocity. I’m also holding out hope it will eventually lead to externally hosted databases and active-active servers.

Disclaimer: I run Plex and Jellyfin and regularly check in on the state of things in Jellyfin. I donate to Jellyfin. I want Jellyfin to be better than Plex. I don’t think any objective measure bears this out yet.
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- MorningThunder@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  One thing Jellyfin is way better at is offline viewing. I have frequent internet outages at my house and I’ve run into issues multiple times where Plex wouldn’t stream my own local media because it couldn’t connect to the internet. For this, Jellyfin has always just worked.
  
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  - KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    jellyfin is quite literally seamless in this regard, the only thing that wont work is metadata scraping (which if like me you run a yt archive, can be relatively frequent, but often isn’t even a huge problem) I only notice network outages when other shit breaks lmao.
    
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  - thundermoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Yeah, that part about Plex has always bugged me. You can disable logins for your server with allow-listed networks, but most of the non-desktop apps have to log into the Plex platform to run.
    
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- chetwisniewski@lemmy.securitycafe.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I have been looking at JellyFin as a replacement for my aging Emby install, but the over-the-air TV support is weak and mostly broken. I am a FOSS fanboy, but first and foremost TV has to work for my household, not just for me with glitches. I suppose the correct answer is to contribute to improving it, but like most folks, free time is not copious.
  
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- aeharding@vger.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  I have no idea what OP is talking about here, it sounds like they’re only judging the app on its animation speed.
  
  In the plex PLAYER, I constantly have to restart my tv, glitches, audio out of sync, black screen etc, stutters randomly. Incredibly annoying when I’m trying to watch something. I haven’t had a single playback issue yet with the jellyfin player. It just works
  
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  - thundermoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    The Plex app for some versions of Android TV is way too chunky for the resources available. I’ve noticed it performs really badly with smart TVs and it seems to do worse the more background apps you have open, so I’m guessing it’s memory related. It generally seems to work better on dedicated devices like Google TV, although it does still wig out sometimes and need to be restarted.
    
    My big beef with the Jellyfin app on Android TV is that they don’t include the fast scroll alphabetical bar the web UI has and the title layout is just posters. Everyone I’ve ever had use it complained that it’s just too hard to read. Plus if you have a big library, that leaves you with 2 navigation options: scroll a bunch or type something in with the on screen keyboard. Both of those kind of stink.
    
    I’ve also run into weird edges with plugins in Android TV. I could never get automatic subtitles to work consistently. The skip intro popup just doesn’t appear sometimes or doesn’t skip correctly when pressed. I suspect there’s some translation error between the Android interface and the plugin interface.
    
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- relic_@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I think it sounds like you want a paid product that just works out of the box. Jellyfin has some rough edges sure, but it’s also a volunteer project for the most part.
  
  I’ve got to disagree or clarify with some of these points. These points seem subjective and I feel the need to say something in case others are trying to compare plex/jellyfin.
  
  Hardware acceleration works just fine? Unless there’s some hardware specific issue?
  
  The difference in apps is because there’s two platforms. The web player (with CSS themeing) and the native (like on Android, which is a straight up android app, not a web page). There’s some capabilities that you can only get on Android if you build an app instead of a web player. There’s only like one guy building the android TV app.
  
  Unfortunately just one guy working in his spare time on the android TV app. I’ve never had subtitle issues either (might be a good time to open a bug in report?)
  
  Jellyfin “remote” is pretty rudimentary. You’d be better off just accessing it through a tunnel anyways – and then youd have access to your own just not your server.
  
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  - thundermoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    This isn’t about want, it’s a reality check. OP said jellyfin is better than Plex now, and by objective measure it is not better for most people yet. False expectations hurt Jellyfin adoption, you need to try it with the expectation of jankiness or you’ll just be annoyed by the edges.
    
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  - BradleyUffner@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Op’s criteria wasn’t “is it a good product?”, it was “is it better than Plex?”.
    
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- gajahmada@awful.systems ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Since you run both, I have a few questions if you don’t mind.
  
  I don’t have a plex pass but, so the only feature I want is intro skipping and from what you mention I understand it needs tinkering. Acceptable for me.
  
  My usage is pretty simple if I migrate to Jellyfin do I need to fuck around with my folder structures ? No special case just /movie/title | tv/title in my use-case with the usual arr stack for grabbing.
  
  The client used currently is a desktop client on arch/windows and I don’t need hardware transcoding. The server and libraries are on Truenas.
  
  Have no idea how to replace Plexamp but if you have suggestions, feel free to mention it.
  
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  - thundermoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Intro skipping works pretty well once you set it up and give it time to scan. Functionally, it identifies common audio to determine likely intros, so it can get confused with shows that have different intro music between episodes of the same season.
    
    Don’t have to change any folder structures unless you were storing optimized media alongside the original files in Plex. All the metadata for both Plex and Jellyfin lives in a SQLite database in your config dir.
    
    You may wind up transcoding even if you think you really shouldn’t have to. Browsers are weird about supporting some encodings, and both Plex and Jellyfin will automatically transcode to satisfy the client.
    
    Hardware transcoding is huge, don’t underestimate how impactful it can be. A single 4K CPU transcode could saturate my 72-core server, but one A380 can transcode 3-4 4K streams at the same time. This admittedly doesn’t matter much if you only have one user, but keep it in mind if you ever have to share. It’s so annoying to have a stream start hitching because 1-2 friends decided to start watching something at the same time as you…
    
    I still don’t have a good replacement for Plexamp either. I think Jellyfin can play music too, but I haven’t tried it myself. I spent a lot of time getting the metadata right in Plex and just haven’t felt like trying to find a way to migrate yet.
    
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  - dmention7@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Not OP, but I can answer part of your questions:
    
    if I migrate to Jellyfin do I need to fuck around with my folder structures ? No special case just /movie/title | tv/title in my use-case with the usual arr stack for grabbing.
    
    I have Plex and Jellyfin running off the exact same media library no problem at all. So there should be zero need to modify anything–if anything Jellyfin seems a little better at catching “extras” folders than Plex.
    
    I don’t need remote playback for movies/tvs but I have no idea how to replace Plexamp and if you have suggestions, feel free to mention it.
    
    The Jellyfin app plays music–but it’s definitely NOT a music app. I always hear Symfonium highly recommended, but have not yet given it a whirl myself.
    
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- Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I 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.
  
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  - 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.
    
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- KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  Hardware acceleration still kind of sucks. You can get it to work, but the Jellyfin port of ffmpeg doesn’t work anywhere near as well as Plex’s.
  
  pretty much just works for me on intel QSV. as long as you have drivers and hardware support it seems perfectly fine. Maybe plex has a cleaner implementation? Not sure, never used it.
  
  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. I suspect this is due to the Plex Relay service making up for bad routes between my house and the network.
  
  depending on your network configuration, and routing of the network, this is most likely to be plex relays, this wouldn’t be a jellyfin issue, it would be a plex feature. You could easily fix this with a relay VPN server or something like that. (you probably shouldn’t publicly expose services these days anyway.)
  
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towelie@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I tried Jellyfin two years ago and was so fed up troubleshooting the installation that I swore it off. Tried it again a few months ago and it worked flawlessly! Now I host movies, shows, music, ebooks, and audiobooks for a handful of friends and family. My jellyfin instance is probably siphoning $120/month from Netflix’s subscription revenue lol

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- amphy@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  How well do ebooks & audiobooks work on jellyfin? I’m an emby user, and while I love it a lot, it’s not great for audiobooks & there’s functionally no ebook support… you can see ebooks in their library but not even open them.
  
  I have audiobookshelf too which handles both, but I’m also always looking for ways to cut down on excess stuff to have to worry about or maintain
  
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  - freebee@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Audiobookshelf is absolutely awesome for audiobooks. Tho it’s possible, Jellyfin isn’t really very audiobook friendly imo. Just run both.
    
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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Jellyfin is so underrated

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Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s curious that I’m almost in the opposite boat, have been using Jellyfin without issues for around 5 years, but recently was considering trying Plex because Jellyfin is becoming too slow on certain screens (probably because I have too much stuff, but it shouldn’t be this slow).

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- lazynooblet@lazysoci.al ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  This is more about familiarity than difference in ease of use. I’ve used both, they are both super easy.
  
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  - Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Some of it yes, the claim for example, but the rest is still pretty bad UX (and even that is stupid, I shouldn’t need a claim to watch locally), I’m an experienced self hosing person and I’m getting frustrated every step of the way, imagine someone who doesn’t know their way around docker or is not familiar with stuff… Jellyfin might be less polished as some claim, but setting it up is a breeze, never had to look at documentation to do it.
    
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- lud@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  The quality was probably bad because you were routed through Plex Relay services which have a bandwidth limit. It is honestly quite a nice free service because it means it will work pretty much regardless how your network is setup but the quality will be bad. If you want to directly connect to your server you need a public IP so CGNAT won’t do you might also have to open some ports.
  
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  - Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Even though they’re both on the same LAN? That sounds stupid, why would I need my videos to travel half across the globe to go from one room to the next?
    
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  - MSids@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    You should not be using NAT to access your Plex externally, I will explain.
    
    App.plex.tv and the apps use Plex services to generate a point to point connection from remote clients through your router to the server. This is important because you never need to expose a private IP to the Internet, and the authentication can be protected with something robust like a Google account which support 2FA and even phishing-resistant 2FA.
    
    The combination of more advanced security and secure/convenient SSO authentication are one of the biggest benefits of Plex in my opinion.
    
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muhyb@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Jellyfin is awesome.

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rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’ve been using Kodi with Jellyfin for around 10 years now. I tried Plex now and then because everyone uses it but I could never get behind why everyone is using it. It has always been worse in every aspect for me.

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- cRazi_man@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Wife approval factor
  
  My wife won’t use it if she can’t see an app for it to click on to start using immediately. Going through browsers is not an option. Not having a dedicated app on the LG TV is not an option. Not being able to find something instantly means instant rejection. She refused Plex, but now sometimes uses it and has learnt to find subtitles, etc by herself.
  
  I don’t touch my self hosted apps. If something doesn’t behave properly on the first attempt then it gets rejected from our household. It’s only for us enthusiast nerds to put up with kanky UI and setup issues for the sake of superior functionality. Normie’s won’t tolerate it.
  
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  - AtariDump@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    Not having a dedicated app on the LG TV is not an option.
    
    There’s your first problem.
    
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  - rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    My wife uses the Kodi app on Android TV just fine.
    
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  - ryper@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    Not having a dedicated app on the LG TV is not an option.
    
    When was the last time you checked? Jellyfin has had an app on LG’s webOS store for a couple of years now, although older TVs didn’t get it until a few months later. I’d given up on it and bought a lifetime Emby Premiere licence by the time by TV was finally supported.
    
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- brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  A big one for me was user management. I don’t have to concern myself with that. So it helps. They also have apps for most things, I can just say go get Plex instead of what device are you using? Get x app. Here is the server information you’ll need to put in.
  
  I didn’t have to put a lot of effort into managing the people using it.
  
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  - rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    We have different requirements apparently. I don’t need user management and we only watch on our TV (plus myself using Jellyfin as backend for Symfonium).
    
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- const_void@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Jellyfin is only 6 years old
  
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  - rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I started with Kodi and added Jellyfin later
    
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- SupraMario@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Are you using kodi as the streaming app on your tv/device? And jellyfin as the backend?
  
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  - rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    yes
    
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Decipher0771@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It is……if you use a computer. Their AppleTV app still looks like some random coder’s pet project with random playback issues.

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- rezifon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I just sucked it up and paid for Infuse Pro and now my Apple TV experience with Jellyfin is great
  
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  - gashead76@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I’ve had Infuse Pro for about 6 years and it has been an absolutely perfect app for me. I’ve used it across many different iterations of home media servers (Emby, Jellyfin, NFS, SMB, etc…)
    
    If you use Apple devices it’s the best way to go.
    
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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  The app on my LG TV is acceptable, but does have random problems, like it can’t connect over TLS, and it’s kinda slow to navigate. But it works, and my kids know how to work it.
  
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  - drthunder@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I also use it on an LG TV and sometimes it can’t run at its normal framerate with subtitles on. I haven’t figured out why yet, but it might be embedded files like someone else says in this thread.
    
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- archomrade@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Huh, it works great on my android os Nvidia shield
  
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CaptainHowdy@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’ve found the opposite to be the case unfortunately. Plex “just works” while my jellyfin server had almost constant issues with subtitles (two of my frequent users need these because of hearing problems) and would frequently crash requiring docker restarts.

I adopted jellyfin very early, used it for many (maybe 6?) years and these problems only got worse over time.

I always prefer open source (often to a fault) but I am glad I switched to Plex a few months ago. I got the lifetime pass for cheap for black Friday. I still leave jellyfin running for a few users, but everyone else has already switched over.

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rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’ve been using both for ages.

For remote access to friends plex is easier and cleaner.

For offline viewing in Android plex is cleaner

I’m running tailscale with jellyfin for personal use and it’s wonderful, But I wouldn’t ask my relatives to do that and I don’t trust to surface the port. Plex has a dedicated security team and 2FA.

The Roku client for jellyfin is also a futureless husk of a client.

I have lifetime Plex so I’m in no hurry to do a full conversion. I would love to drop plex all together though

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QualifiedKitten@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I randomly tried using Jellyfin today instead of Plex, but Jellyfin kept crashing my browser and logging me out, so I wasn’t in the mood to troubleshoot, so I just gave up and went back to Plex.

In the past, I’ve been annoyed that Jellyfin didn’t seem to have an option to sort media by “Last Episode Date Added”, nor did it seem to have a way to build a queue of episodes from multiple different shows. I think I was also having trouble figuring out how to add multiple sources… I have my “long term” library on a local hard drive, plus anything “new” on a seedbox.

I theoretically want to fully switch over eventually, but so far, Plex is still good enough for my use case.

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PieMePlenty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The applications aren’t that good. That’s the only thing keeping me from switching completely. Subtitles, aspect ratio, audio track selection just don’t work as expected. In some cases I can only pick the aspect ratio and no subs and sometimes the other way around? Also if I have no subs for a movie, I can’t search for them on the fly - good feature of plex. As it stands, jellyfin video player is not up to my standards and I can’t switch yet. I use it for porn though. That works fine.

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accideath@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Not having to pay for hardware transcoding/tonemapping is the biggest „selling“point for Jellyfin. I used to have plex before. It worked well but I didn’t want to pay 100€ for transcoding. Never tried emby for the very same reason.

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ZeroCool@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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.

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normonator@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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.

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Anivia@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Maybe I need it give it another chance, but 3 months ago it was still hot garbage compared to plex

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cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Jellyfin is great but, to be fair, anything is better than Plex.

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Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Has been for a long while. Also there are tons of unofficial apps as well.

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Zink@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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.

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Swarfega@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I used Plex for a long time and was very tempted by their lifetime plan. I tried Jellyfin but at the time it just wasn’t a patch on Plex. I continued with Plex but always had that itch to get away from closed source. I eventually tried Jellyfin again and whilst it’s definitely not as feature rich as Plex, it does what I need from it which is a central store of media that any TV in my house can use. I’ve even given a few friends a login so they can watch content.

That said, I still have Plex running as I have one Samsung TV and there’s no official Jellyfin client for it. Yes there’s some long winded developer way to get one on but I just can’t be bothered.

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paequ2@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Yeah! It’s been great for me. No detection issues or weird bugs. The mobile and TV apps are also great!

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Bosht@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Honestly ever since Plex started going the enshittification route and hocking their fucking bullshit instead of just being a home server it’s been irritating the shit out of me. The only thing they aren’t doing at this point is adverts live vids.

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GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I don’t use it for myself but my experience with Jellyfin is the subtitles UX kind of sucks. It got a lot better on the Android TV app recently (ty to the maintainer!), particularly with improved subtitle support, but because of ExoPlayer it still can’t play bitmapped embedded subtitles easily, only .srt subtitles.

The experience on iOS/appletv with Jellyfin/Swiftfin was so bad that I ended up recommending Infuse. Infuse is a great app, but it’s not a libre app, which kind of clashes with the rest of Jellyfin in that regard. And, once again, it needs massaging: unless you want to be popped up with a buy Infuse Pro pop-up your video and audio has to be in certain codecs.

As I said, I don’t use these things, myself. I don’t even have a TV. But every now and again, I will put a file up for some relatives, and I want it to be totally directly playable, because my server is just an old laptop. So I have to spend a lot of manual time making sure the files are juuuuust right. If there comes a day where there’s direct playback with embedded PGS or SRT subtitles on all platforms that will be the day the Jellyfin suite of software becomes 10/10 software for me.

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RxBrad@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

Also the Android TV app is AWESOME!

I dunno…

There’s a transcoding bug in the Android TV version of the Jellyfin client where transcoding a video with 7.1 audio breaks playback. Even with a Pull Request out there that fixes it (by matching the behavior of other Jellyfin clients), the issue got closed as “not planned”. The continued suggestion continues to be “just force everything to play in stereo”.

I don’t have unlimited bandwidth, so plenty of my stuff gets transcoded in Plex. I can’t, in good, conscience, switch my friends & family (most of who use Android TV) over to Jellyfin.

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letsgo2themall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I love jellyfin! I’ve been using it for a few years and it has definitely gotten better. Every once in a while, it will incorrectly detect a show and I’ll have to manually add it. Usually on obscure or older shows and movies.

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interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s not proprietary, so it could be shit on a shingle and still beat plex. I’m not installing anything proprietrary on anything I own.

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Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The only problem I’m having with jellyfin is around subtitles, but it’s getting better all the time. I bought the plex lifetime license a few years ago, but we’ve moved our whole house to jellyfin now.

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Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!

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Jellyfin is not just good... but better than Plex now?!