Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!
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I have a huge issue with this post.
You can get things like intro detection and subtitle downloading to work with plugins, but you have to work at it.
You install the plugin and run the routine. There's literally nothing to setup...
Hardware acceleration still kind of sucks.
What are you even talking about? Hardware acceleration has worked absolutely flawlessly in Jellyfin since I've set it up. HEVC encoding is particularly great, and required nothing but a single click to enable it. Jellyfin re-encodes my videos using my GPU into HEVC without issues.
The variety in app experience is bewildering sometimes. Apps look and feel very different between platforms.
This is the only real valid criticism, but it's not even an issue. It's by design. Plex designs a single app and stretches it so it's the same on every platform which may sound great, but it's not... It's only to save them development time. Jellyfin has an android app for phones, and android app for tablets, and an android app for televisions each of which play to the strengths of the different platforms... That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing.
Android TV app support sucks.
This is the fault of the television manufacturers, not the android app. This isn't even valid criticism against Jellyfin.
The app is difficult to navigate and has a bunch of weird edges, like subtitle defaults not working.
- You can change the theme in any way you want. You can even download CSS directly from the web and change the TV app presentation in just about any way you want...
- The subtitle feature, again, is a limitation of the devices that display jellyfin, not a limitation of jellyfin. It's also easy to get around by extracting the subtitles.
Public network support is finicky. This is hard to quantify, but I’ve been on several remote networks where my Jellyfin connection dropped in and out and Plex did not.
Yet another example of you blaming network devices on Jellyfin... My Synology NAS sleeps if it's not used for 5 minutes--so if your buffer to jellyfin caches more than 5 minutes of media, then yeah, you're going to have issues with buffering because you'll run through your 5 minutes of media, and have to wake up the NAS to get more cache. This is again, not a jellyfin issue, it's a configuration issue.
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I tried Jellyfin out on my most recent build - don't think it's quite as good as Plex so far. Still using it though - I think either is perfectly fine for a simple home media server.
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I think that is incorrect in my case. Plex did not come preinstalled on my TV – I installed it via the LG app store on the TV itself. Same with Jellyfin. I have both, and they both update when there are updates available. I have the latest versions.
My TV supports direct play, both in Jellyfin and Plex, so I am streaming 4K HDR with Dolby 7.1 over WiFi 6 without any buffering issues ever. Streaming is not the issue. The navigation lag and startup time for Plex only is the issue.
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Ahhh, good call-out I forget I have that since I bought it so long ago. Much appreciated
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Yeah, I have 31 remote users (though less then 10 are actually active). If you're running to the point of supporting that, the plex lifetime pass is just a piss in the wind.
But the lemmy FOSS crowd is strong, we're severely outnumbered here
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So uh, what’s your favorite way to enable secure remote access?
It needs to be something that people can use with smart TV apps.
I looked at some of the instructions out there, but my head is killing me so I’m not in a “figure out computer thing” mood. Otherwise I’d be at work, lol.
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just not so easy to setup or comparability for my shared users.
Yeah, the biggest reason I use Plex is because of the wife/mother-in-law factor. Basically, how easy is it to get the people around you to use it? If it’s more difficult to use than Netflix or Hulu, many will immediately throw up their hands in learned helplessness, claim it’s too confusing, and refuse to try any more. Plex is the only self-hosting option that actually provides an elegant user setup experience. With Plex, adding a new user is as simple as having them make an account and then sending them the server invite.
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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.
