Honest question, because I know multiple people who are not looking to jump ship since they already have the Plex Pass.
I absolutely love jellyfin and frequently take advantage of its features. But the client absolutely suck butt. When I can hardly get my mom to remember which app on her TV lets her watch what, I can’t also have her fucking around with play buttons that don’t do what they say, a “continue watching” list that’s often haunted by episodes that have been marked as watched, or inscrutable menu icons mashed into the top-right corner of a media browser.
And don’t get me started on getting people logged in on the client.
I got started with jellyfin and never used Plex but there’s a bunch of rough edges:
- No apps on several smart tv/streaming stick stores, Vizio has an app for plex but not jellyfin so I would need to buy a new streaming device. Yes smart tvs spy on you but the alternatives people recommend either spy on you just as much or are expensive (Nvidia shield) and most of them still require side loading so it’s a major obstacle for sharing with anyone else.
- Casting from the mobile app won’t play at full resolution, you can get around this by using VLC as your player and casting from that but that causes it to frequently lose watch progress. Also stopping casting or playing the next episode doesn’t work properly with VLC and you need to rapidly mash “back” to get into the jellyfin app again and queue up a new episode.
- The current release of Jellyfin desktop won’t play audio for iptv streams, this is fixed in the dev branch but I have yet to find a build without other critical bugs so I’ll likely need to wait for the next release which currently has no target date.
- The browser version has spotty controller support that stops working constantly. When it does work it lacks any way to access context menus to mark shows as watched etc. If you’re using a flatpak browser to run it on steam deck or whatever, you’ll have codec and passthrough issues (Chrome is the only flatpak with decent codec support).
- Others have mentioned the security issues which you can bypass by putting authentik or something in front of it but then you can only share with people using browser.
What about exposing through Pangolin tunnel, Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale Funnel approach? Would that allow proper client access?
I only use my library with jellyfin and only locally. I left plex a few years ago. What I really want to set up next is a UI that uses a simple remote control and ditch the Roku interface so I can be seamlessly offline.
I don’t have time.
Lifetime subscriber when it was like $75 bux
Setup and runs on my NAS (unRAID) Uses a small GPU to transcode as needed Shared only with non technical family members
Has worked as is for YEARS.
So, the question is, am I looking for something to replace a working free (prepaid) solution I have? That answer is nope.
Having non-technical family on board is priceless tbh.
This is my POV. It already works perfectly, is prepaid, and is accessible to my nontechnical users. Switching would be a major pain for a worse experience.
Also, Plexamp.
Someday in the future no doubt Plex will enshittify for lifetime users such that it will justify a change, but that hasn’t happened.
Ease of use for my users across multiple platforms with minimal tech knowledge on their end. I’m sharing my library with ranges from 12yo to 70. I need it to “just work” and it does that perfectly.
Same here. Plex just works for my folks with 0 tech literacy. I may try Jellyfin in the future, but I have a few friends that primarily access Plex via Playstation 4/5, and I know there’s no support there yet.
Yeah, lacking the client is not good. https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/2751/playstation-5-support
Did you try Jellyfin? I’ve had success with Jellyfin once I’ve been the one setting up the TV app, etc. It did just work, because users found it very simple in comparison to Plex. If anything, they like how Plex shows more things beyond the collection.
I’ve been the one setting up the TV app, etc.
That is exactly the issue. I can’t personally set up the app for all my users. Most of them are not in my household.
Me either, but I don’t expect them to setup any sort of app themself (including Plex).
That’s his point though, he does expect them to be able to set up themselves, and apparently Plex is good for that.
Yes, in my case I personally had to setup both clients (Plex and Jellyfin) for the family members myself.
And right back to https://lemmy.cafe/comment/17371392
Ah, the answer to that… I configured the server beforehand and installed it at their house as a gift, so I have persistent SSH access over VPN and can administer it remotely at will within tmux. Has worked for several years.
I use both at home, mostly plex though and I have about a dozen people who watch remotely and keeping the remote access private and secure I’m not putting jellyfin behind a public reverse proxy. Not feasible to setup wire guard for a dozen people across 4 states and troubleshooting those tunnels when Plex does all that for me. Plus Plex allows them to manage and reset their password without my intervention
Had to find it, but there is a new tvOS app that looks very nice: Moonfin
Thanks do letting me know about this. I tried it and it does look good. Sadly for me at least it does perform well. Moves slow between options and libraries. And the Live TV Guide isn’t working at all. That could be a me issue, but the slowness is unacceptable. Once I have more time I will play it more and probably reach out to the Dev.
I’ve never understood this stance. You do you, but if I’m offering to host stuff for friends or family for free, they can at least learn to operate that thing on their end.
What do they need to even learn? How to login using the username you gave them?
It seems to depend on how you are granting access and have configured the server… if they have to setup VPN access in order to access Jellyfin, as opposed to logging into plex website.
No, that doesn’t change anything about what I said really.
To me, if I’m hosting something for my friends and family, they can put in the effort to learn how to use it. Period. Whether that’s as simple as logging in through a browser, installing an app, or using a VPN. They can learn, or they can pay for Netflix (as an example, since we’re discussing a media server originally).
I’m not using Plex, but I feel like I can answer my complaints about using jellyfin.
My biggest complaint is the lack of clients. It is such a pain in the butt to install jellyFin on all of my products.
My second complaint is the security design. They’ve had open issues about unauthenticated endpoints for three or four years now. And whenever the issue gets so old that it starts to look bad, they refactor the issue into a newer issue abd bury it in the sand.
For a while this was done under the guise of maintaining legacy client support, but just recently it looks like they’re starting to focus on more security, and I’ve noticed some of those security holes are being closed finally, but it’s a major concern for me that they’ve been open for as long as they have.
WhatI’ve noticed is that people who prioritize privacy and just want to watch their downloads on their tv usually use jellyfin and people who prioritize ux slickness and want to run an IPTV service for their friends and family usually use plex.
I’m not switching at this time because I already bought a lifetime pass about 7 years ago. If ANY of my functionality gets changed by Plex then I’ll be switching
They already changed the authentication system a few years ago. Everything goes through their server now. You can’t self-host it.
I tried Jellyfin probably 2 years ago and it was fine but Plex is just “plug n play” in regard to my family setting it up themselves with little help from me.
Plexamp is the only way I stream music too so that’s a big reason why I won’t move yet.
The lack of library sharing is what’s keeping me on Plex.
The ability to watch media across servers, and even transparently pull it for local transcode when necessary is just an amazing feature.
This multi-server front project, Jellyswarrm is really interesting, which allows the Jellyfin clients to access more than one Jellyfin server simultaneously. I think it may do what you want when combined with server sync.
Would definitely test extensively before putting in production, hehe.
It doesn’t really solve my use-case, since we do a combination of direct stream when possible, as well as local sync/cache but only for transcoding purposes. As well as local users only, with the federated sharing taking care of permissions, so that we don’t transfer user information between eachother.
Jellyswarrm is certainly a lot closer than other solutions people have suggested though.
The client apps on Apple TV are just not good. I have tried swiftfin which is slow and I find it not very visually appealing. There there is infuse which does look better, but is missing features and requires a subscription for full functionality. If there is a app I’m missing I would be happy to try it.
I keep Jellyfin up to date and check in or it from time to time. Even have watchstate so my watched history stays updated. Hoping one day there will be a good Apple TV app and I could fully switch.
Same boat on Swiftfin and Infuse.
There’s one I recently found called Moonfin that does many things well. It’s my current go-to until official apps catch up.
Infuse is fine. Subscription has a lifetime option, or it’s $1/month.
I’m in the same boat. Considering swapping out for a Linux based media box instead of the AppleTV.
Kodi works well as a frontend to Jellyfin and Plex
Absolutely, my other friends are doing the same. They keep their state synced between services and keep checking in on the AppleTV client improvements for Swiftfin.
I use Jellyfin on my phone and just do the screen share to my AppleTV.
I have tried it but having Plex handle the out-of-home routing for me securely is a great feature Jellyfin doesn’t have but doesn’t for obvious reasons and I justify that as why I pay Plex. I have thoughts and better knowledge now about how to properly implement it, but I’m not sure I want to rebuild my current setup that just works with very minimal upkeep.
That and I am on someone else’s Plex server who updates it much more than I do. Mine just supplements theirs with stuff they don’t have and one-offs I’ve wanted and found. I’d still be using Plex even if I did rebuild with Jellyfin today.
But if these price increases keep coming, I may make the switch. It’s tempting to shell out the money for the lifetime membership, but I don’t have faith in companies, including Plex, to keep up their end of the deal on these things.
I have both. Plex is better with music at this time, which is a huge use for me. Jellyfin has a quicker UI and i swear looks better streaming to my TV, but could just be bias.
Jellyfin needs to fix their bugs around having the same artist listed multiple times in your library.
Plex was good for music for me until it started acting weirdly a few months ago. It started scanning my library nonstop and running my hard drives on full speed for days before I eventually caught it.
I was told it was the agent from Plex but changing that out didn’t fix the issue so I moved my stuff off there and have been working with Navidrome instead.
Have you tried PlexAmp? And, are you doing music entirely through the base Jellyfin app? Interesting to know you prefer the music experience on Jellyfin.
I use Emby instead of Plex or Jellyfin; mostly because it has an Xbox client, and I’ve already got a lifetime licence. One of my most active users only watches via Xbox.
Really don’t like Plexs centralised user system or the overall direction they’ve been headed for years, so I moved away from that long ago (8+ years ago at least). Jellyfin wasn’t up to par at the time (though they’ve made leaps and bounds of progress in that time), and Emby has always supported more types of devices\clients. Their device limit (the client count limit with premeir) has never come into play for me, but I know there are larger user bases out there where that is a problem.
Embys development is extremely slow though, taking YEARS to implement simple features or even address major concerns. Plus their support sucks without the community stepping in and providing it on behalf of the staff. Luke (the main dev) is better at copy+pasting candid responses than he is at actually interacting with human beings.
