LoL. That feature is literally the only reason I also have a Plex docker pointing to my library. But they’ve definitely not been supporting it for a while, because I don’t think it’s worked well in forever. Last few times I tried it with friends, we ended up having to just try to hit play at the same time.
Oh well. One less container now.
I’m seeing a lot of love for Jellyfin in the comments. Seems like Jellyfin is finally mature enough to give a real shot.
Does anyone know how Emby is doing in relation to Plex feature parity?
Emby I feel is more mature then jellyfin in the sense of every device my family or I have just works on emby but has some issues on jellyfin. Also emby has features closer to plex that jellyfin doesn’t have, like offline downloads and, at least in the emby beta, smart playlists. Jellyfin gives you more settings options for things like transcoding and per user settings than emby or plex. Both programs do some things better than plex too, like scheduling individual server tasks or outright disabling them. Overall from my experience a direct competitor to plex right now is emby while I would say a few more features are needed for jellyfin to be a direct competitor.
That’s interesting, I wonder why no one in these comments mentioned it if it’s a bit farther along than Jellyfin. Maybe just good word-of-mouth marketing?
My friends and I use syncplay + mpv for this. It works well, and even though it’s designed around local file playback, you can add https URLs to the playlist. So this with nginx serving the files has been a great solution.
You can even play YouTube videos by adding yt-dlp to mpv, but that doesn’t reliably work right now as far as I can tell.
First they removed downloads and now this? Feels shitty. I used this feature weekly to watch a show with a remote friend.
Downloads havent been removed
Although Plex is running on your server it isn’t there to do what you want… unless Plex’s real owner permits it.
That’s how proprietary software works.
What hell is wrong with these idiots?
They took private investment.
Lack of feature parity is the number one thing holding so many people back from switching to Jellyfin. Of Plex is going to start deleting beloved features, a lot of minds will be made up very quick.
I really try to move to Jellyfin, but there’s always some papercuts that block me. Tried it last weekend again, and:
- It just can’t find most of my movies in the NAS share. They never appear in the library.
- The music player cannot play all my files. DSF files are transcoded to AAC. Also finamp streams AAC and not Opus, and uses more data than Plexamp did.
I also tried Navidrome for music. Weirdly it had hiccups playing some files, and DSF was again a problem.
I really want to get out from Plex, but I use Plexamp so much and it handles my huge music library really well it’s hard to switch :(
All my media is shared from a Raspberry Pi 4 with a HDD attached to it via NFS. Jellyfin runs as a container on a cheap Chinese mini pc I got off AliExpress. I’ve not had any issues over the network. It even transcodes on a share of the Pi as my SSD that has Jellyfin on is too small for larger movies.
Plexamp right now is the biggest reason I have not even thought of moving to something else. I have yet to see a music player that comes close to the features Plexamp has.
This is a feature that Jellyfin natively has already. So now Jellyfin exceeds Plex in some areas.
Now if they could just tidy up remote access so that everyone is comfortable being able to use it.
They really need to partner with let’s encrypt. If they implemented automated SSL generation and regeneration in the app and a dynamic DNS/Port registry, they would get mountains of new users.
Just tidying up remote access would probably be enough to sync Plex.
They already have a guide on this, its not too difficult. How would a “partnership” work?
By it’s not too difficult, are you actually expecting average users to run certbot cli?
We need to get out of the mindset of jellyfin being self hosted and into the same mindset Plex has of you’re just running it.
Hosting is one of my professional duties so I don’t have problems doing all this. But any idiot can install PMS and have secure shared communication with their friends and family. And we need those idiots.
Jellyfin needs the ability to request certificates and install them without any serious user intervention beyond the initial setup, maybe just an email address. And none of this should require users to touch CLI. This probably needs to be dynamic DNS, maybe we also partner with duck DNS. Right in the GUI make an account, store off the URL in the configs.
I’m presuming this means a le API that will not change from the let’s encrypt side, or advanced clear notice when things are going to change, with opportunities to delay if possible and necessary. That’s where your actual partnership comes in.
We need that thing that Plex has that shows you that your server is remotely accessible from inside the admin. This will help the uninitiated set up a port forwarding and test it.
Once the server is set up and working we don’t need centralized login but we need something. Start with the main settings page, where you drop down in your account on the admin We need an invite users option. It just takes you to users add.
Users add needs to have email or slack or something so that when you add the user it can notify them that they’ve been added and send them a link back to your server. It could be a mailto:// or maybe just a page saying here’s the link to share with your family.
That link would contain the dynamic DNS previously set up and whatever port you’re able to use.
It’s just a handful of creature comforts that plex does particularly well that is barely touched on the jellyfin side. But there’s some of the most important comforts.
Honestly, the two reasons I’ve been sticking with Plex is the federated/shared libraries and watch together.
If they’re starting to axe those then I see no reason to continue using it.
Jellyfin has had sync play for a long time
Ada is a Jellyfin user? We’re in good hands.
Id love to have the federated libraries in jellyfin. That would be amazing.
Lame. I’ve used this feature a lot. It feels like such a basic thing to include.
SharePlay is a standard feature in Apple devices, and it handles it. But only in supported apps.
The pandemic showed how nice such a feature can be for a lot of people.
“We’ve spent two years requiring our apps from the ground up to boost our development speed, which should enable us to bring new features to you more efficiently, across more platforms,”
… “and that’s why we’re deleting a bunch of features never to bring them back. Because we’re just so efficient!” Crazy how many companies use this awful excuse.
Also is that a misquote by the author or did they really write “requiring”?
Removing old features so we can bring them back as paid features later on.
More often than not that is corporate speak for “we fired the old team and replaced them with cheaper workers. And we didn’t want to pay them to learn the old code/they tried but failed, so we are dumping features now”
Misquotes are unlikely thanks to copy-paste. The post from Plex has been edited, so I think it was to correct that typo.
Ah, that makes sense. I didn’t realize we had asked for a new UI, here I was thinking we just wanted basic quality of life updates
Jellyfin has much better Syncplay than plex
release announcement:
Is there some trick to get it to work properly? Everytime I tried to use it, it works fine for like 10 minutes and then everyone desyncs to hell.
It’s still better than Plex’s which didn’t work at all though.
Ah, strange.
I’ve never had any issues, but I also haven’t used it in a while.
Might be related to transcoding/sub-burning? https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/issues/6210
I personally had really huge problems in the beginning with this feature, it depends on the file format, if it needs to be transcoded, if the subs are external or in the video container and what your users are watching it on.
I can give you some advice on what to look for, but it will come down to just tinkering with the settings until you find something that works for you the best.
Hardware acceleration is quite important, especially when there are like 6 people watching at once and 4 of them just refuse to watch it using the jellyfin desktop client that actually supports direct play feature (video does not need to be transcoded).
Switching languages of subtitles sometimes mess things up, especially when the subtitles need to be extracted from the video container and then sent separately. Sometimes it just lags the video for up to two seconds. It usually just messes with one person that then is a few seconds behind so not a big deal. Although I recommend setting languages in the very beginning so it does not break sync mid-way.
I also limited the thread count of the single ffmpeg stream to just one. Then i also limited the stream buffer to like 5 minutes so it just won’t try to prepare a 4k movie for one person for the next several minutes. From my experience anyways, when we were watching some movie that is quite big, the jelly went bananas and a single user just maxed out the CPU and GPU. Ever since I set those limits, while also having the hardware acceleration enabled, the sync-play feature caused me little to no trouble. — One of my friends has a slow internet that sometimes likes to drop things on the way and when his net drops out totally, it usually causes some issues and he then has to restart the browser tab. Although rare, it still happens from time to time.
I have an Intel i5 8400 and a UHD Graphics 630. The performance is good enough for my uses and movies play without issues even when 6 people are watching while my dad sits on tv while also watching something else.
Oh yes, now there are also a few other things to worry about. Make sure to check the maximum per-user bitrate the jelly will enable the users to watch. It’s 40Mbps by default, I think. And you do not really need anything above it anyways, especially if streaming over the public internet.
The second thing is having a Nvidia GPU. From what I heard, the consumer graphics card can have up to 3 consecutive video streams running at once. But since I do not have anything Nvidia, I can’t really care, tho I would strongly recommend you checking the GPU limitations including both the encoder/decoder limits and the codec support. This will help you set the buffer limits and codec support.
So full wrap, you’ll just have to monitor your server’s vitals and see if there is a bottleneck. Check your users client compatibility, see if the GPU or CPU is maxed out or if your ISP just isn’t giving you a big enough pipe. It just comes down to tinkering.
Jellyfin is love, Jellyfin is life.
It’s bad. But it’s the best we’ve got.
Speak for yourself, Jellyfin has been awesome for me. Fantastic piece of software.
people still use plex after the last sneaky they pulled?
I paid for a lifetime pass like six years ago or more. It was definitely before Jellyfin was well known or well developed.
I’m probably gonna keep using it until they do the whole “lifetime is over” crap these kind of companies usually do.
I’ll at least have gotten my moneys worth.
I paid for the lifetime pass maybe, 10 years ago? I dunno, it’s been a very long time. It’s still my primary. I’ve been trialing Jellyfin, but there are still enough quirks that my wife (non-techie at all) won’t put up with, so yeah. That, and Plex makes it too easy to share outside my house, not sure where Jellyfin is at with it. I appreciate Jellyfin for what it is though, it has a lot of potential.
Just because you paid for it doesn’t mean you can’t switch to the better, free option.
Jellyfin is nowhere near the better option, it’s just a not-terrible dev.
Plex is refined and easy to get external users not familiar with tech up and running. Plex looks better. Plex transcodes better.
No hate for Jellyfin, just calling it how I see it.
Similarly, I feel the same way about Jellyfin but Plex is making it really hard to be a Lifetime Pass member as well.
I paid for it and literally never used it.
What sneaky?
Got a plex lifetime sub like 7 years ago… As soon as Jellyfin allows downloads for offline viewing, I’m jumping ship. I know I’ll have to figure out TV listing data for OTA recordings, but that seems like a small price to pay. I’ve already got Jellyfin setup and running in my Kubernetes cluster for my video backups, but plex thus far “just works”.
As soon as Jellyfin allows downloads for offline viewing
Time to jump ship then…
The android app has had downloads for years, they just download the entire file to your phone.
Streamyfin is a newer android app that also works very well with downloads.
Findroid has been around longer with downloads working well too. Just has an issue where it doesn’t download the images of the items, which is a bit silly.
I know Findroid allows easy downloading and offline watching. Fladder (another newer Android client) also has downloading, haven’t tried it myself yet.
Just an FYI that you can definitely download shows/movies to any device via Jellyfin - just did so on my tablet yesterday…jump ship!!
Did it download the original file or are there download options transcoded on the server?
default apps download original files, no transcode options.
Streamyfin claims download any file transcoded as long as your server can transcode it. Haven’t tested it myself.
I’ve had a Lifetime PlexPass since 2013, so I’ve definitely had my moneys worth and then some, but for the last 2 years I’ve been dual wielding Jellyfin and watching it slowly get to the point where I can move over entirely.
I’m 100% Jellyfin now for my personal playback at home, and will be transitioning users over to it as soon as it gets a few more user management features for remote users.
For music, offline play is already available via Finamp. For everything else I’m personally making due with the regular Download feature that just gives yout the raw files. But then again it doesn’t really come up often, since I don’t really consume anything but audiobooks when I’m on the go.
As soon as Jellyfin allows downloads for offline viewing, I’m jumping ship.
Gotta provide details. Don’t leave us hanging.
Good thing I chose jellyfin over plex. This is the main reason I got jellyfin.
It was a cool idea, but I could never get it to sync everyone’s playback properly without constant buffering for all involved. We just sync manually by counting down from 3.
For anyone in that spot of being savvy-ish but having fellow users that finally got used to plex:
A work around is Xteve and owncast. I was successfully able to make an owncast broadcast into a “DVR channel”.
Its cluegy but it does work. My tech level in this stuff is spotty. I’m used to stacks of tech but more for physical control systems (NOT consumer facing). But I was able to get that to work.
Edit: little bit of clarification: Xteve will let you add DVR to your plex server. It’s possible to tie owncast into Xteve. That allows users to cue into a “DVR” channel which is kind of “simulcasting” whatever you’re pointing owncast to. In my case it was a screen share of sportsball, but it could be whatever.
cluegy
I believe the word you’re looking for is “kludgey.”
