It's very interesting to see Plex users slowly turn against the platform primarily due to costs being imposed. Plex has better client software than Jellyfin but the 'proprietary vs open source' debate for NAS/video streaming software seems to be reversing. Jellyfin is catching up to Plex and in a few years despite Plex having a first mover advantage here -- I expect it to surpass Plex in monthly active users.
I never even looked into Plex, I don't want to run proprietary software I have to pay for on my own computer to serve my own music. I've only ever used Jellyfin and it works more or less ok for my use cases.
Jellyfin was super easy to get running on Arch a few months ago. With a Tailscale network, I have all my media devices connected to my very small but growing collection of DVD and Blu-ray media.
I'm old, I ripped all my CDs in the 1990s and early 2000s, but abandoned all of it when Apple Music replaced iTunes in a disaster of product launch. After a decade of streaming, I'm trying to head back to curated media files, at least for video. Music is far harder to obtain in ways that compensate the musicians, at least for the stuff I'm looking for.
I have to thank Plex for changing their cost model. It motivated me to setup Jellyfin, something that took slightly more effort than Plex. And by getting that inertia going, I then followed up with Navidrome, a local OSM service with routing, and finally my own mediawiki copy that has a starting point from the pre-AI days as well as an annual content refresh so my "compare" history is short and simple on all articles.
That inspired me to build a homelab finally, which then became a NAS, which then became an OCIS server to replace my commercial cloud storage.
I finally got proxmox setup, OPNsense, with Caddy for reverse proxying the externally facing services and tailscale for access to those services I want to keep only for me and not others in my family.
So yeah, all of this big massive avalanche of work started with the little tiny snowball of Plex deciding they wanted to charge me to use my own media while away from my house.
Thanks Plex!
And thanks Jellyfin for being a fantastic alternative for video.
Can Jellyfin (or Emby, for that matter) get the interface half as slick as Plex? I keep checking every few months, and it leaves me underwhelmed. I've got the lifetime license from Plex so I'm less motivated maybe... but even ignoring that, there's the issue of badgering 20 or 30 other people to switch clients. It'd literally take me years to plan out such a project and I'm hoping someone can talk me into it.
> We have been moving quickly to address these issues, delivering four additional point releases with over 100 changes since the initial 10.11.0 release. To date, most point releases have focused on resolving general and migration-related issues. The remaining migration issues are largely isolated, one-off cases and are unlikely to be resolved.
I guess that's my cue to finally try and upgrade. I dragged my feet given how widespread the friction of the upgrade, but if this is as good as it's going to get, I might as well pull the bandaid off now.
For anyone with a Radar/Sonarr/Jellyfin setup - do yourself a favor and set up Jellyseerr too. It's a request system for other to request library additions. Install moonfin on your firetv/androidtv and downloads can be initiated straight from your TV!
The fact that Jellyfin lacks a AppleTV/tvOS app seems like it continues to make it a dealbreaker... at least for my setup.
I hear people recommending clients like Infuse, but it feels odd to swap out Plex at this point if I can't go all in on the open source side of things.
Am I missing something here wrt Jellyfin clients? I guess I could try running it side-by-side with Plex and see how it goes.
But they have a very long way to before they reach feature parity with even just the stuff I use. Let alone everything Plex can do.
I think this year I’m going to try and find an issue or feature I can contribute on. I’d like to end up moving to Jellyfin based on it being good and not Plex being bad.
Jellyfin, and my current job doing enterprise API management, inspired me to build out a home lab around a custom built application that does server monitoring and launches servers and proxies for both HTTP and WebSockets in seconds.
I've been running a Jellyfin server for nearly four years now. I never tried Plex or Emby but JF has been an impressive bit of software.
The availability of clients (Roku, Apple TV, Android, Xbox) is good enough that I have no problem inviting friends and family to join mine. I've learned so much about the tech bubble I live in simply from getting them onto the server.
I think the biggest obstacle to adoption beyond simple home servers is the reliance on SQLlite. If it were possible to set it up with Postgres you could run a monster server on AWS with RDS, S3, a Kubernetes. Not sure about the business case for that... but I would enjoy setting it up and pushing it to its limits.
Does anyone else not really "get" these media managers? Personally I still find it much easier to grab media from a torrent and watch it on a computer using VLC. It requires zero setup.
I do have the benefit of a PC connected to my living room TV, but even if I didn't, most TVs these days can natively play media from a network share.
I'm almost like you, I just download what I want to watch. But instead of going through network files - I have Plex Media Server on my M1 Macbook Air. Plex looks at the downloads folder, indexes it into a nice viewing experience that I use Plex app on the TV to connect to my local Plex server. It's a very seamless experience.
Is anyone running a horizontally scaled instance jellyfin?
I have a weird setup where power isn't really a concern, have a bunch of ancient blades, access to a fast uplink, and am looking to set this up for a smallish collective of about 100 people.
A single node would definitely fall over, but a little cluster should be able to do a good job.
I don't understand the jellyfin hype tbh. Every year I spin it up to test and am always disappointed. If you only consume your media on a web browser, then 100% recommend jellyfin. If you consume on anything else the apps are bare bones and seriously lacking, potentially not even existing. I despise the frequent and ugly Plex UI changes they push out, but the app works on every device and TV brand I've had.
The take away is the app ecosystem needs some serious bolstering. That's the holdup for most people I know who are still sticking with Plex.
I can't understand the love for Jellyfin. Kodi lets you pick multiple sources of data, but Jellyfin flips it on its head and requires you pick a single server, choose the sources there, then add Kodi or something else all over again. It's just more steps for no gain.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 50.0 ms ] threadI'm old, I ripped all my CDs in the 1990s and early 2000s, but abandoned all of it when Apple Music replaced iTunes in a disaster of product launch. After a decade of streaming, I'm trying to head back to curated media files, at least for video. Music is far harder to obtain in ways that compensate the musicians, at least for the stuff I'm looking for.
That inspired me to build a homelab finally, which then became a NAS, which then became an OCIS server to replace my commercial cloud storage.
I finally got proxmox setup, OPNsense, with Caddy for reverse proxying the externally facing services and tailscale for access to those services I want to keep only for me and not others in my family.
So yeah, all of this big massive avalanche of work started with the little tiny snowball of Plex deciding they wanted to charge me to use my own media while away from my house.
Thanks Plex!
And thanks Jellyfin for being a fantastic alternative for video.
[I'm aware there is one I can muck around with and install via Samsung developer portal]
I guess that's my cue to finally try and upgrade. I dragged my feet given how widespread the friction of the upgrade, but if this is as good as it's going to get, I might as well pull the bandaid off now.
I hear people recommending clients like Infuse, but it feels odd to swap out Plex at this point if I can't go all in on the open source side of things.
Am I missing something here wrt Jellyfin clients? I guess I could try running it side-by-side with Plex and see how it goes.
A game changing project that solved my streaming scenarios. It just works.
But they have a very long way to before they reach feature parity with even just the stuff I use. Let alone everything Plex can do.
I think this year I’m going to try and find an issue or feature I can contribute on. I’d like to end up moving to Jellyfin based on it being good and not Plex being bad.
You mean to say dropping version 11 (and moving straight to 12)
The availability of clients (Roku, Apple TV, Android, Xbox) is good enough that I have no problem inviting friends and family to join mine. I've learned so much about the tech bubble I live in simply from getting them onto the server.
I think the biggest obstacle to adoption beyond simple home servers is the reliance on SQLlite. If it were possible to set it up with Postgres you could run a monster server on AWS with RDS, S3, a Kubernetes. Not sure about the business case for that... but I would enjoy setting it up and pushing it to its limits.
I do have the benefit of a PC connected to my living room TV, but even if I didn't, most TVs these days can natively play media from a network share.
I have a weird setup where power isn't really a concern, have a bunch of ancient blades, access to a fast uplink, and am looking to set this up for a smallish collective of about 100 people.
A single node would definitely fall over, but a little cluster should be able to do a good job.
- server: my laptop. I manually download everything.
- clients: everything in LAN with a browser, plus Jellyfin android client.
- typical use: open android app, cast to big tv, watch on big tv.
next planned steps:
- move the server to a minicomputer. Still download everything manually from the laptop to the server
- convince myself it's time to use the *arr programs
- once Jellyfin has a Tizen client, ditch the android app + chromecast for good
The take away is the app ecosystem needs some serious bolstering. That's the holdup for most people I know who are still sticking with Plex.