Plex is discontinuing its “watch together” feature
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Thanks for sharing
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Thanks for sharing
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I run both Plex and Jellyfin. Jellyfin is ready for everyone who doesn’t have to deal with the Mother-in-Law Factor. Plex has an easy setup process, and I could walk my MIL through it on my phone. In 5 minutes, her TV was connected to my server.
Jellyfin isn’t to that point yet, and likely never will be. Since there’s no centralized server for an app to phone home to, there’s no way to create a unified account creation/login experience. Jellyfin is nice as a “just for me” server. But as soon as I have to help others use it, it becomes a nightmare. Walking my MIL through setting up Jellyfin on her TV was the reason I re-installed Plex in the first place.
I had finally converted my wife away from using paid streaming apps, and dealt with all of the “Why do I have to use three different apps to access it on my three different devices? They all look different and are harder to use” complaints. By the time it got around to my MIL, I was tired of dealing with it and just reinstalled Plex so people could have a consistent experience.
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Downloads definitely haven’t been removed. I use it virtually every day to watch stuff on my iPad at work.
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I'll sadly have to keep using Plex until jellyfish makes library sharing simple.
I have like 10 different family members using my server. If I have to do anything beyond just letting them log in to a plex account on the app to get access, they just won't.
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Jellyfin has this, but it's kinda busted: https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-syncplay. There was one guy working on it and he apparently vanished. It still does work for some use-cases but be prepared for some rough edges.
Maybe someone will pick up the torch now that Plex is axing it?
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I'm in the same boat, I use Jellyfin where I can but Plex is still so much better for sharing, especially with non-technical people so I run both. Really hoping the Jellyfin folks realize they can sell a relay service to make some money and fund their development to improve the app. Seems to be working well for Homeassistant!
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Is adding a URL too much? Jellyfin is also just login in addition to enter the server URL.
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Maybe I'm not understanding offline downloads, but I'm able to download media and watch it offline.
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Yes. Even with Plex I've had people just never log in.
Most of the problem isn't even Plex/Jellyfin/etc.'s fault, it's that the UI of smart tvs is a nightmare hellscape running on underpowered hardware and people just want to interact with it as little as possible. The absolute best thing would be to copy Netflix/Disney/etc and throw a QR code on the screen to sidestep that by throwing to the phone to authenticate.
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Yes. Anything harder than Netflix is too much
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Don't spend time maintaining niche features seems smart.
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I dunno, I found it easier to move my family to JF.
I made them a bunch of accounts and sent them via signal.
For my mum I logged in as her and configured everything how she would want.
I didnt have to explain to anybody that remote stream needs to be unlimited bandwidth for better performance.
If mum forgets her password I can reset it.
To log her TV in we used quick connect where I had her enter the 6 digit code on the tv.
We used SyncPlay to watch a movie together.
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Isn't it trivial to run both? You just point them at the same library right?
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It’s wild to me. I’ve been in software development for almost 8 years now. The number one thing that we’re told across both companies (one small company and one huge company) is to not remove existing features or APIs.
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Thank you for being a voice of reason. People here are completely out of touch from reality
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Lemmy has a lot of really outspoken FOSS enthusiasts. It sort of goes hand in hand with the whole “anyone can spin up their own instance” idea that Lemmy is built upon. Same reason there are so many Linux users here. But that also means you need to take any sort of “just switch to the FOSS version it’s basically the same thing” posts with a grain of salt.
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Obviously they got outside pressure to remove this because of muh ease of piracy sharing
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I can confirm jellyfin is great.... But I have moved onto burning onto physical Media (BD) to avoid HDD / SSD failure with data loss
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Honestly I really don't like how self hosted streaming services have been lumped into the same category as piracy. I have no issue buying media. If the law says I can't share it outside my household I will comply.
My concern is that media companies will go after Jellyfin. They don't really need to win all they need to due is bankrupt everyone involved.
