Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!
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It’s because they don’t have PlexPass. I tend to forget that the restriction even exists, because I bought my lifetime pass like a decade ago.
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You can look at some of my other comments for more specifics, but from your language alone I don't think you're being objective here. OP states that Plex is flatly better than Jellyfin, and a bunch of Lemmy users hype it up because of a clear bias for FOSS. A reality check is a good thing, IMO; you can prefer a solution and acknowledge its faults, but people talking on the Internet tend towards extremes instead and that will disillusion anyone who tries Jellyfin expecting all the good parts of Plex but better.
I prefer FOSS everywhere it's reasonable, but I think a reality check is healthy here. Jellyfin is full of jank that you may run into because a bunch of independent devs are all doing their own thing to make it. Plex is a for-profit entity pulling in the same direction, so the experience is generally going to be more seamless and supported.
I run both Plex and Jellyfin simultaneously. I use Jellyfin on my devices, except on Android TV because the app is painful to navigate. Plex is way better for sharing, but I usually offer both. I've yet to have anyone prefer Jellyfin, Plex tends to just work on their platforms of choice so they go with it. Unless they're a technical person, it's unreasonable to expect them to muddle through the edges of Jellyfin.
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Crazy how that doesn't at all even address the problem of subtitle sync! It just pastes subtitles as-is in there. What if the subtitle files are at a different framerste? What if the subtitles have the wrong starting offset for the media? What if the subtitles have 1-2 mistakes in them as far as timing?
Hence why there are a dozen subtitle syncing tool projects supplementing ffmpeg like ffsubsync, subsync, alass, autosubsync, srtsync, etc...
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Intro skipping works pretty well once you set it up and give it time to scan. Functionally, it identifies common audio to determine likely intros, so it can get confused with shows that have different intro music between episodes of the same season.
Don't have to change any folder structures unless you were storing optimized media alongside the original files in Plex. All the metadata for both Plex and Jellyfin lives in a SQLite database in your config dir.
You may wind up transcoding even if you think you really shouldn't have to. Browsers are weird about supporting some encodings, and both Plex and Jellyfin will automatically transcode to satisfy the client.
Hardware transcoding is huge, don't underestimate how impactful it can be. A single 4K CPU transcode could saturate my 72-core server, but one A380 can transcode 3-4 4K streams at the same time. This admittedly doesn't matter much if you only have one user, but keep it in mind if you ever have to share. It's so annoying to have a stream start hitching because 1-2 friends decided to start watching something at the same time as you...
I still don't have a good replacement for Plexamp either. I think Jellyfin can play music too, but I haven't tried it myself. I spent a lot of time getting the metadata right in Plex and just haven't felt like trying to find a way to migrate yet.
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I don’t think you’re being objective here
I don't feel that's the case. I feel that you're the one not being objective here. You're holding things against Jellyfin which have nothing to do with it as a platform, but instead are either misconfigurations on your part, or involve your local setup...
I also run both. I don't see what this has to do with anything. I'm not lambasting you for "choosing" Plex over Jellyfin. I'm saying you're not being objective while pretending that you are, which is simply objectively untrue.
I use Jellyfin on my devices, except on Android TV because the app is painful to navigate.
Again, this is you not being objective. You personally don't like the way the Android TV application is laid out (which is totally fine) and count that as a negative against Jellyfin--which is my issue. Objectively the Android TV design follows the current design schema for TV applications and is the same layout as most media platform applications for Android TV...
Plex is way better for sharing
Which is not what these applications are designed to do...so it's not at all weird that this is the case. You're inventing shit up as metrics to compare Jellyfin and Plex and it's just so incredibly weird to do.
These are both media streaming platforms, which they both do relatively well. The main issue between the two is Jellyfin is FOSS and Plex is not. Plex incorporates a ton of proprietary bullshit that you have to wade through or disable to get a similar experience to Jellyfin. Like "shareability." That's not what these platforms are designed for. That's what Plex was changed to provide. Comparing Jellyfin and Plex on the basis of "shareability" is like comparing a Ford Pinto to a Ford F-150 and comparing their towing capacity. It makes no goddamn sense because the Pinto was never designed to tow anything...
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Crazy how that doesn’t at all even address the problem of subtitle sync!
As I said, this isn't even an issue with Jellyfin. It's an issue with the device that's playing the media--your television (or chromecast). This workaround makes an exact copy of the internal subs, and dumps them to an SRT which allows your television (or chromecast) to play the internal subtitles as external subtitles...
It has nothing to do with subsync, it's not syncing subs. There are no "mistakes" because you're pulling the internal subs exactly as they are internally, externally...
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Has Jellyfin improved its subtitle fetching?It's been awhile since using Jellyfin. I stayed with Plex because downloading subtitles on the fly wasn't available in Jellyfin, and no extensions for it either.
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I guess it depends on when you last used it. I opt for the CLI approach, but Jellyfin can install a plugin which allows (on library scan) to extract internal subtitles, which fixes 90% of issues with subtitle display for devices like Chromecasts.
Jellyfin also integrates with OpenSubstiles: https://i.xno.dev/gVee6.png
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Not lying makes zero sense to you?
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I've been using it for 8 years and haven't paid, is there any benefit for paying?
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Tailscale has a generous free account and runs on windows, mac, IOS, android, apple TV, firestick, and shield. You just set it up on your media server and every client, and just use to 100. address for your server in each client.
If you need Roku,LG,Samsung, it's no longer fun. The tailnet can be forwarded from a routed device on the network, but that's deep in the weeds for random people.
You could install HAProxy and run let's encrypt, forwarding your JF to an external port (ISPs usually block 443, but it's not hard to tell the client what port you need. Then your users can just specify your home IP and a specific port.
Or you could forgo the SSL and just open JF up on a high port. Maybe fail2ban on logins. it's REALLY not 'good' at remote access
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I’ve been on Jellyfin for years, and I was using Emby before they forked it to create Jellyfin. Prior to Emby I was on Plex.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing but I’ve been using it in a docker container for about a year now and it’s been great. The family love it, which is the main thing.
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The Plex app for some versions of Android TV is way too chunky for the resources available. I've noticed it performs really badly with smart TVs and it seems to do worse the more background apps you have open, so I'm guessing it's memory related. It generally seems to work better on dedicated devices like Google TV, although it does still wig out sometimes and need to be restarted.
My big beef with the Jellyfin app on Android TV is that they don't include the fast scroll alphabetical bar the web UI has and the title layout is just posters. Everyone I've ever had use it complained that it's just too hard to read. Plus if you have a big library, that leaves you with 2 navigation options: scroll a bunch or type something in with the on screen keyboard. Both of those kind of stink.
I've also run into weird edges with plugins in Android TV. I could never get automatic subtitles to work consistently. The skip intro popup just doesn't appear sometimes or doesn't skip correctly when pressed. I suspect there's some translation error between the Android interface and the plugin interface.
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I was on emby some time ago and got sick of user issues, I tried jellyfin before that but it was worse. Very interested to know how both compare to Plex now (since maybe 4ish years ago) as I'd be very open to switching back.
I think I'd avoid emby though as I found the developer to be an annoying weirdo at times when trying to communicate.
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I think I'll give it a try then.
Is there any consensus which client is better for desktop and android ?
Thank you.
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The performance of hardware acceleration in Jellyfin is markedly worse in my experience. My A380 can handle 2-3x more streams in Plex than it can in Jellyfin.
i've never used plex or benchmarked it, so it's possible that it does, i wonder if anybody else has reproduced that behavior, i know a lot of people do plex/jellyfin benchmarks these days. Be surprised if that hadn't yet happened. It shouldn't be any faster or slower if you're using the exact same transcoding settings, it's all limited by the hardware physically, so it's possible it was that. Could theoretically be bad drivers, or bad support i guess, but that would be a separate issue.
Maybe one day Jellyfin can offer that as a paid option, a la Nabu Casa for Homeassistant.
definitely a possibility, but then again there are several ways of solving this problem, in homelab universal manners, so maybe they should offer a more generic service instead.
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Intro skipping works pretty well once you set it up and give it time to scan.
Iirc the feature used to be an add-on with module and I read here somewhere it now baked in out of the box, is that the case ?
You may wind up transcoding even if you think you really shouldn't have to
I thought there's an edge case somewhere but from your explanation I don't think I need transcoding for video. Not that I don't want it.
My NAS is old, like, i3 2100 old. So I just make sure the media can be played directly on my 2 client locally, so I don't know how much HW transcode improve the performance but if it's usable, that's a nice bonus. Maybe if I ever get a 4K display but that's a problem for future me.
I spent a lot of time getting the metadata right in Plex
Pretty much yeah, I really don't wanna mess with the music library
Thanks for the answer.
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It shouldn't be any faster or slower if you're using the exact same transcoding settings
That's sort of the point, both are based on ffmpeg but neither is using vanilla ffmpeg. Plex's seems to work a lot better on the same hardware for me, but more importantly it's not something you have to fiddle with. You just check the box and it figures out a decent setting. Jellyfin has some basic defaults for Intel/nVidia but there are a ton of tweakable settings that you have to go figure out.
There's probably some way to fix the issue but it'd take a ton of fiddling, and that's the jank I keep referring to. A lot of people on Lemmy just ignore the rough edges and act like it doesn't matter just because they can get past it or because it's FOSS and they refuse to use anything else. Not everyone on here is a full-time software engineer, though; IMO it's better to be honest about shortcomings and set expectations well. More people self-hosting their media is a net positive IMO.
Plex has people they can pay to make their product better (and at least for the moment they're still paying them), Jellyfin straight up doesn't have those resources. I hope that changes because Plex is not on a good trajectory as a company. The Homeassistant model seems like a good one that gives people a good reason to contribute code and money, I really hope the Jellyfin guys do something along those lines.
