Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!
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Depends on how you're viewing Jellyfin. I use Chromecast and Chromecast doesn't support embedded subtitles well with Jellyfin. So I usually just use ffmpeg to extract the subtitles to an srt file, and then they run fine;
pushd "\\nas\Media\Movies\" fd -e mkv | each {|x| ffmpeg -i $x -map 0:s:0 $x.srt }Temporarily maps my UNC network location to a usable drive, then using
fdand anelvisheach loop, iterate over all the mkv files, and use ffmpeg to extract the subtitles.Ez-pz.
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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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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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I mean you very much still have the privacy issues.
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I installed Mint last week and haven't addressed media players yet... strokes chin. Thanks for the info!
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I use Jellyfin for music mostly and it struggles with metadata. For example, if a song has two artists on it and I edit to correct it, it won't update correctly and I'll edit up with the artist "Artist A; Artist B".
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Wait, isn't Jellyfin the same way? Pretty much every self-hosted app I run uses some web interface you log into so you can use it anywhere on the network. Sure, Plex also has some pre-set remote connection thing, but from the end user perspective it's the same set of steps. I also had to make a login for all the stuff I fully self-host.
Is there no account management on Jellyfin? I would probably want that as a feature.
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It’s not a transcoding power issue. It’s a UI consistency and usability issue. With every device having a slightly different UI, with some apps having issues if playing back natively and some needing transcoding, the experience is inconsistent and frankly doesn’t pass the “wife acceptance factor” test, or the “let your friends use it without needing to handhold them through regular troubleshooting for their particular device” test.
I still don’t use Plex and exclusively use Jellyfin, but it’s still a hard sell to non technical users. Plex has much more polish.
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Bullshit. Docker Plex is easy af. You calling yourself experienced is the real joke here
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Finamp keeps creeping towards Plex amp and functionality. I don't love how Plex treats music either but the client seems to bridge the gap.
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Absolutely run them together.
Especially in light of Plex trying to keep tabs on what everybody's doing and probably resell that data.
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Am I the only one here using emby? I’m pretty happy with it honestly.
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I have my media files in specific folders on a RAID5. It won't take that as a valid path, nor even anything in the ~/ directory. If I use the server root, it will. I don't like that - seems like a poor system design. No way I want it to scan my root directory. Christ it will take forever to scan my entire RAID of 200Tb.
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With every device having a slightly different UI, with some apps having issues if playing back natively and some needing transcoding, the experience is inconsistent and frankly doesn’t pass the “wife acceptance factor” test, or the “let your friends use it without needing to handhold them through regular troubleshooting for their particular device” test.
This is a configuration issue, then. Because I have no idea what you're talking about. The UI is exactly the same across devices, and profiles (which can be cloned) once setup, don't require any user intervention to do transcoding. You literally click a video and it works...
Not sure what you're doing over there, but you're making it harder than it has to be.
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Wait, isn’t Jellyfin the same way?
Jellyfin has a native web-ui, yes. But not a proprietary one, like Plex uses. When I installed a Plex server I had to go to plex.tv and setup a user account there to be able to log into my own damn server... Then they strongly encourage you to use https://app.plex.tv/ to manage your local server.
It's all unnecessarily confusing and difficult.
Is there no account management on Jellyfin?
Yes. Local accounts. Not some cloud based PAMd system.
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Okay, but... how is it confusing from the front end if what you're doing is going through the same steps of creating an account? You punch in a login and password in both.
Sure, Plex is doing this extra thing where it's also bringing in centralized content along with your library and it will default to its remote access system if you log in from outside your network. But again, from the front-end that is transparent. You log in and you have your library. If anything they're being a bit too transparent, I've had times where networking stuff got in the way and it took me a minute to notice that Plex was routing my library through their remote access system instead.
I can see objections to it working that way, you trade a (frankly super convenient) way to share content remotely and access content from outside your network without too much hassle for... well, going through someone else's server and having their content sitting alongside yours. But "confusing and difficult" isn't how I'd describe it. It seems to work like any other service, self-hosted or not, as far as the user-facing portions are concerned. I guess I just don't see the confusing part there.
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Okay, but… how is it confusing from the front end if what you’re doing is going through the same steps of creating an account? You punch in a login and password in both.
Because there's zero difference between the app.plex.tv interface spawned from plex server, and one without. There's zero indication that it's actually your server and your content because it fucking displays everything by default.
It's such an incredibly bad proprietary system...
But again, from the front-end that is transparent.
It's not. There's no server configuration options at all. There's nothing to indicate it's local content...
I can see objections to it working that way, you trade a (frankly super convenient) way to share content remotely and access content from outside your network
For 90% of the content people use Plex for, this is an illegal act. So I don't see the advantage to providing this option let alone making it easier to commit a felony... I've never needed to "share" my media library with anyone and even if this was something I wanted to do, it's a simple DNS record away from doing the same thing in Jellyfin. There's no reason to lock people into your login system because 10% of people would "find it easier." It's just such a bad argument.
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any reason to use this over real debrid + stremio?
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I am very confused here. You seem to have slipped from arguing that it was difficult and complicated to arguing that it's bad to be able to share content remotely because it's a felony, which seems like a pretty big leap.
For one thing, it's not illegal and I do rip my own media. I will access it from my phone or my laptop remotely whenever I want, thank you very much.
For another, and this has been my question all along, how is it possibly more difficult and complicated to have remote access ready to go than being "a DNS record away"? Most end users don't even know what a DNS is.
And yes, not having (obvious) server configurations up front is transparent. That's what I'm saying. It does mix at least two sources (their unavoidable, rather intrusive free streaming TV stuff and your library), but it doesn't demand that you set it up. The entire idea is to not have to worry about whether it's local content. Like I said, there are edge cases where that can lead to a subpar experience (mainly when it's downsampling your stuff to route it the long way around without telling you), but from a UX perspective I do get prioritizing serving you the content over warning you of networking issues.
I don't know, man, I'm not saying you shouldn't prefer Jellyfin. I wouldn't know, I never used it long enough to have a particularly strong opinion. I just don't get this approach where having the thing NOT surface a bunch of technical stuff up front reads as "complicated and difficult". I just get hung up on that.
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You seem to have slipped from arguing that it was difficult and complicated to arguing that it’s bad
These are the same thing...
For one thing, it’s not illegal and I do rip my own media.
Soon as you share it over the Internet it is. You need a license from the IP holder to do that.
how is it possibly more difficult and complicated to have remote access ready to go than being “a DNS record away”?
- They're effectively the same.
- Plex forces you to use their way. It's more difficult because it's not the way most people would want to do it in a selfhost environment.
It does mix at least two sources (their unavoidable, rather intrusive free streaming TV stuff and your library), but it doesn’t demand that you set it up.
I mean yeah, it doesn't demand anything because it doesn't give you an option. lol
I don’t know, man, I’m not saying you shouldn’t prefer Jellyfin.
And I'm not saying that you should prefer Jellyfin. But to call Plex "easier" than jellyfin is verifiably an incorrect statement--which is what I've been saying since the beginning here. The way Plex forces you to do things isn't easier at all.
