The biggest problem with Plex (I’m a user) is that you need a network connection just to use it with your local media unless you do a little research to figure out how to bypass this. Why is this a problem? You don’t notice it until there’s a network outage and you want to watch something. Or if the Plex servers are glitching. It’s needlessly complicating the process of watching your media.

the idea of signing up at plex is somewhat antithetical to a lot of selfhosters… theres nothing plex is doing that cant be done for free with better software.

Jellyfin was forked from emby (emby is similar to Plex, jellyfin is open source) in 2018 when emby went closed source, and they implemented sync and remote streaming if I recall correctly.

It’s a principle thing mostly. Plex just keeps ignoring features users want and trying to push some monetization model.

They regularly implement what I’d say most would consider anti features.

For example, I remember the push back on the mandatory “recommended” tab. It’s the first thing you see when navigating to a library. Wow. Neat. Some bean counter at Plex is “recommending” what I should watch on my own library. No thanks.

There was also the fiasco with emailing your friends things you’ve been watching. Just what you want where you store all your legally owned DVDs with your legal streaming rights to your friends.

Then there was also a thing where they began collecting data on your media libraries to their servers.

There’s also mandatory Internet connection if you want to have local users :). Lots of people barked at this and they ignored it and tried to spin it as an ok thing. You cannot have other people in your family have different watched status and stats without connecting to the internet. Oh did your Internet go down? So did Plex. At that point how’s it different than Netflix. Not to mention we’re the ones doing the hosting. It’s in our network. This should not be reliant on an Internet connection.

The list goes on.

It works pretty well and I’ve thus far been too lazy to change, but jellyfin is open source, and doesn’t have evil people behind it.

I never messed with Plex but Jellyfin is pretty easy to muss with so it’s definitely worth giving it go.

Jellyfin is FOSS as well, I assume Plex isn’t since it’s doing…all this. lol

Jellyfin is great and open source. I’ve never tried Plex, but I’ve heard that Plex has apps on more platforms.

Also, I’d recommend checking out Findroid if your on Android. Its UI is native instead of the usual web interface in the official apps. Iirc iOS has a similar project.

Its not better, but its worth it for not being dependent on internet

Depending on your server, and how you install you might have a bad experience. I’ve had issues where it wasn’t finding the film/series metadata, having plugin issues, and being incredibly slow (slow UI when anything is being done, slow scanning folders, slow loading saved metadata, etc). Jellyfin, like a lot of open source software, feels like jank. The devs know about a lot of issues, but they’re swamped with so much, with this big of a project.

People criticise Plex, rightfully so with some of their bad decisions, but it still works better. For me, Plex runs so much better, and without issues. I won’t be moving away to Jellyfin in the foreseeable future, but I’ll be glad when I am able to.

It’s the app availability, LG TVs don’t have jellyfin which is awkward for me.

Then again, with Jellyfin you don’t have to pay for hardware transcoding. That is the one that really bothered me. It seems insane you’d have to pay to properly utilize your own hardware.

Yes, finamp. I have it installed. I haven’t tried it.

Exactly, there’s no way the studios are going to let them sell actual ownership.

Not much really. Plex hasn’t presented this as a normal subscription based streaming service and more of a digital storefront akin to Google Play Movies & TV. The way I’ve always seen it is that Plex Pass was more like a software license since it granted all the features of the Plex software library. Maybe Pass users will get a discount or something.

Our plex share had to move over to emby. And then they were kind of going through in systematically banning people. So a lot of people just got banned for pirated content.

Oh hey! Actually I did find a news article. I was curious if I could https://medium.com/@divitia/what-are-plex-shares-why-they-were-banned-f5a43735ffbb

Edit. Just finished reading it… Eh… “News” might be a bit of a stretch for the article.

I mean the source I have is not really particularly great, Just my first hand account and what I was told about why we were moving to a different system. It was just that I was part of a plex share where all of us were getting banned for it being associated with the the Plex share. So the plex share moved over to using emby.

You can get a cheap domain (~8 digit .xyz is 0.80$/y) and use cloudflare tunnels. You won’t have to expose your home network and the setup is really easy. You will be dependent on Cloudflare but I feel they’re fairly reliable.

1. Create a cloudflare account
2. Buy a .xyz domain (on for example Namecheap) consisting of only digits, it should cost less than a dollar a year of you have the right amount of digits.
3. Set your domain to the Cloudflare DNS server. (You can find instructions on Cloudflare for this).
4. Go to zero trust and create a tunnel. This allows you to share traffic from your local device on your domain in the next step. (It shows instructions on how to install it on your server)
5. Add public hostname and create a subdomain for jellyfish and point it to localhost:JELLYFIN_PORT.

Note: You can also do this for other services you host but I recommend using a VPN to connect to your device / home network instead because it does not require exposing it to the internet.

DuckDNS and Caddy are what I use and those were piss easy. But yeah, inertia. If it works and you’re happy with it, why change

Hey friend,
the domain is: https://jellyfin.domain.com

Your credentials are:
Username: Friend
Pw: ***********

To watch search “Jellyfin” on the playstore or visit this link:
Link to playstore
Link to Windows JMP

Have fun.

Sorry but those are at best comfortable excuses of moving dependencies to another platform.

At most you’d need to train them on how to the same as before.

The only issue I’d seen so far were playback issues with non-standard encodings (audio codecs for example) and playback devices unable to work with whats reported…
But this is one of the rare uglies I have seen so far.

The problem I have with Plex is that default UI is bloated with recommendations, alternative sources and what might as well be ads. Meaning I need to help less technically literate (and sometimes technically literate) friends set up the UI anyway. Just so that they can actually cut through the piles of bullshit to see my server content.

Plex’s default UI is ruined by it trying to shovel its extra shit onto you constantly, making it a terrible new user experience.

At least with Jellyfin you connect to the server and you’re done. It’s a lot more manual, but the UI is just better and easier to navigate.

I say this as an avid Plex user, mostly due to Jellyfin having somewhat dodgy support for more advanced audio and video codecs

Plex is definitely trying to monetize and I am wary of how they will reconcile all of the discount lifetime passes that were sold over the years

But I still think it is “good”. Yes, they are adding in hooks for different services and are technically a service of their own (every month there is a “free” movie they offer that I tell myself I will watch and then I never do). But all of that can pretty easily be hidden if I just want access to my library and the libraries of my friends. Its very much a case where the extra features are not getting in the way of the core functionality.

I have “see if jellyfin is viable” on my todo list and have been checking in for years now. Basically every time I do it is “This looks better than it used to be but X or Y is still a headache”. Hopefully that will change if/when Plex shits the bed. But they haven’t so it isn’t really a concern for me.

Regarding free dev time: Donations can be made as a means to thabk and compensate the project.

It would be great if the Jellyfin Devs could have some sort of paid service that just does all the DNS/reverse proxy stuff required for remote access, and charge like £5 a month for it.

They would just have to make it clear that the money is going towards further development, not just for the actual service. And obviously continue to allow others to set things up themselves if desired.

I’d pay for that so quick, it would just be so convenient

How was implementing the A380 as a transcoder?

Am certainly interested it (the series, not this card specifically) in buying it as an accelerator.

This would be awesome, but I just don’t see it happening this way. They have to work with the copyright holders who set those kinds of terms and who have the majority of the leverage in negotiating those terms. Unfortunately, I don’t see any reason this kind of deal would be made.

The business model is to force consumers to purchase and repurchase the same content over and over. Changing only the format, or distribution method, or platform of consumption. This kind of deal would undercut that business model.

We can only hope that this is what they do.