I’ve been on Jellyfin for years, and I was using Emby before they forked it to create Jellyfin. Prior to Emby I was on Plex.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing but I’ve been using it in a docker container for about a year now and it’s been great. The family love it, which is the main thing.

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.

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.

Maybe I need it give it another chance, but 3 months ago it was still hot garbage compared to plex

Also the Android TV app is AWESOME!

What do you run Android TV on? Raspberry Pi? My cheapo solution has been to use an old Android phone that supports DP alt mode (USB-C to HDMI adapter) combined with a USB hub + generic air mouse/remote + customized launcher.

It actually works surprisingly well. I installed FCast on it, so it even works like a Chromecast. If I’m watching a video on my phone using Grayjay, I can just cast it to the phone and it will start playing automatically. The only thing stopping it from being perfect is that it can’t turn the TV on automatically. As a plus, since the phone has a battery, it’s always powered on so I don’t have to wait for stuff to boot, and it uses relatively little power.

… but overall it’s janky and finicky, and the OEM bloatware is probably spying on me, so I’ve been looking for alternatives that can match the good parts of this setup.

I don’t like Raspberry Pis for this because they’re overpriced. I have a couple that I could use for this, but I’m hoping to find a cheaper solution, and one that I can recommend to friends/family when they ask. (the Android phone I’m using cost me a total of $15 on ebay)

Jellyfin is great but, to be fair, anything is better than Plex.

I don’t have that restriction on Plex? I have 30+ remote users and 4 in home users not counting myself and there is no restrictions what so ever. All can strea 4k without issue. Could you explain more?

The only thing about jellyfin is the damn subtitles. Subtitle sync is horrible. They added a subtitle offset feature last year which was a good workaround and then removed it a few months ago on androidtv and android. Now the subtitle offset on the web player doesn’t do anything anymore either

Even Subgen generated subtitles, which are pretty perfectly in sync in reality, are sometimes played back at an incorrect speed so it will progressively get more and more out of sync, but there is no way to tell what speed the subtitles are being played at.

Also it just ignores themes a lot of times or only displays themes on the admin console and nowhere else.

That said, jellyfin is still amazing!

Wait - what restrictions on Plex?

Recently I tried it again because of Plex restriction on more than one user.

What do you mean by this? I don’t recall seeing anything about a change like this.

Plex is unbelievably slow to start and navigate through my huge library on my TV. Jellyfin flies.

The search is also much better on Jellyfin on my TV, because I can use the system keyboard which supports voice to text via the remote. Plex on the other hand has no debouncing, so pressing each key just makes a new search and it’s slow as sh—.

I also had it outperform Plex when Plex couldn’t play an audio language track where Jellyfin could.

However, it doesn’t seem like Jellyfin is as good at figuring out duplicates/versions of the same media? It shows up as two identical posters of the same thing without any discernible info until you step into the media page of the thing (movie/episode).

All in all, a very good complement to, if not replacement for, Plex. 8/10. I’m proud of them!

I might have to check out Jellyfin. Can you run both at the same time?

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.

anybody have a guide for an old laptop

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.