I’ve feel like I’ve used Plex forever. I also feel like every couple years I try Jellyfin to see how it’s going. Recently I tried it again because of Plex restriction on more than one user.
Well, I just tried it again and it’s substantially improved! This time it actually properly detected most of my library!
Also the Android TV app is AWESOME! No more glitches, lagging, and freezing trying to play my stuff like Plex did. It is butter smooth.
Wow! I’m impressed and I just deleted Plex. Good riddance.
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any reason to use this over real debrid + stremio?
Storing media locally is great on the off chance your internet goes out, in addition if there’s shows that RD hasn’t cached yet and have no seeders.
I tried Jellyfin years ago, it is in my test for later todo since then, it was pretty vanilla compared to my Plex Media Server (for instance I couldn’t get to work the transcoder to use quick sync to lower the CPU load if needed, meanwhile Plex worked fine with the Docker container even).
With that said, I stopped using Plex daily in order to give some use to my Real Debrid account (so Stremio and Kodi are the next logical alternatives for me) and because I only have a two bay NAS with 10 TB in total, and I like to hoard so I struggle every time I need to delete something, since I knew about Riven/Zurg/Rclone/DMM combo I have returned using Plex without worrying each day about my drives, keeping it updated and enjoying the thinkering process of this new experience, also sharing the love with a couple of friends, I see no need to try Jellyfin, even after that many years.
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
I’ve been running plex since 2016 and jellyfin since 2019. I’m slowly moving users over to jellyfin with the plan to cut off plex at somepoint in the next couple years. Jellyfin is missing some quality of life features but nothing super crazy
Am I the only one here using emby? I’m pretty happy with it honestly.
Jellyfin seems solid.
The only issues I’ve had are with dodgy media files. Obviously better player hardware gets you better performance, but transcoding eliminates some of those issues.
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”.
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.
Jellyfin is so underrated
I would probably be using Jellyfin if it were just me.
The handful of people in my family that use my Plex server though are all non-tech people. When I hear that random smart TV apps aren’t nearly as good, that is what gives me pause.
That, plus the fact that a lifetime Plex pass was a one-time purchase on sale several years ago. It may be a proprietary product instead of FOSS like it should be, but at least they aren’t trying switch me to $1.99/month or some BS like that. But they’re probably smart enough to know they’d really start the Plexodus!
Maybe I should run jellyfin alongside Plex to keep better tabs on it.
Absolutely run them together.
Especially in light of Plex trying to keep tabs on what everybody’s doing and probably resell that data.
I’m a bit biased as I started with Jellyfin, but the Roku Jellyfin app works flawlessly on the family TV.
I’d advise at least becoming mildly familiar with how you’d go about it, since corpos suddenly rug-pulling existing users and forcing subscriptions is pretty common, basically expected, behavior of American business now.
That way you have an “out” and your service can have minimal downtime. :)
On the other hand, you might just find you like how sleek and functional Jellyfin is. I can only see wins for you here. :p
If the apps don’t work for you then I’d stick to plex. But I had the opposite experience, especially with the Plex Android TV app, it is so shitty… And the Jellyfin Android TV app is rock solid
I installed Mint last week and haven’t addressed media players yet… strokes chin. Thanks for the info!
Yep
Welcome to the future
It is……if you use a computer. Their AppleTV app still looks like some random coder’s pet project with random playback issues.
I just sucked it up and paid for Infuse Pro and now my Apple TV experience with Jellyfin is great
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.
I mean, just like everything else there’s an optimal setup. I have a NAS with an extensive media library and running Jellyfin on it was a terrible experience. The NAS simply isn’t powerful enough to make Jellyfin usable.
I fixed that issue by running the server on my PC, and the libraries point to my NAS library locations. It’s the perfect setup. I get access to my GPU for HD video transcoding, and an overpowered CPU with the advantage of not having to worry about storage.
I feel like it’s the perfect setup for me.
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.
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.
Huh, it works great on my android os Nvidia shield
The TV/mobile apps vary wildly in their capabilities and performance. Swiftfin is better for iOS devices, but not sure about AppleTV. That’s my main gripe with Jellyfin overall.
The app on my LG TV is acceptable, but does have random problems, like it can’t connect over TLS, and it’s kinda slow to navigate. But it works, and my kids know how to work it.
I also use it on an LG TV and sometimes it can’t run at its normal framerate with subtitles on. I haven’t figured out why yet, but it might be embedded files like someone else says in this thread. Other than that it works like a charm.
Yeah, I did have a to transcode a bluray rip, but I think that might be a network limitation rather than a processing one. 1080p transcode worked fine, so it’s not resolution.
One of these days I’ll DIY a HTPC, but for now, the Jellyfin app works acceptably well.
Been using jellyfin for a few years now, never had a problem vs constant problems with plex
I don’t use it for myself but my experience with Jellyfin is the subtitles UX kind of sucks. It got a lot better on the Android TV app recently (ty to the maintainer!), particularly with improved subtitle support, but because of ExoPlayer it still can’t play bitmapped embedded subtitles easily, only .srt subtitles.
The experience on iOS/appletv with Jellyfin/Swiftfin was so bad that I ended up recommending Infuse. Infuse is a great app, but it’s not a libre app, which kind of clashes with the rest of Jellyfin in that regard. And, once again, it needs massaging: unless you want to be popped up with a buy Infuse Pro pop-up your video and audio has to be in certain codecs.
As I said, I don’t use these things, myself. I don’t even have a TV. But every now and again, I will put a file up for some relatives, and I want it to be totally directly playable, because my server is just an old laptop. So I have to spend a lot of manual time making sure the files are juuuuust right. If there comes a day where there’s direct playback with embedded PGS or SRT subtitles on all platforms that will be the day the Jellyfin suite of software becomes 10/10 software for me.
Embedded subtitles definitely work, and I’ve used bitmap ones before, although I generally avoid them so I’m not sure if they consistently work well. Directly playback also does work with those subtitles, so if you had issues it was likely related to codec support.
Unfortunately I can’t play around with it anymore because I live a thousand miles away from everyone I support who actually uses Jellyfin. My experience with the Android TV app was embedded SRT subtitle support is now 100% good as of late last year, but embedded PGS trips things up so much that I cannot use them.
Fair enough, not saying you should bother with it, just surprised to hear it happening.
I genuinely do not understand the issues people are having with Jellyfin subtitles. I just have Bazarr set up to automatically download and they play on every device (web, android, iOS, roku, android TV) with zero issues.
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.
Sounds like it’s mostly with embedded subs inside the media files already. Thats where all my subs are so I’m going to test soon but haven’t played anything on jellyfin needing subs in a while
I now extract all my subs, but for the first 2 years using it I left everything embedded and it always worked normally. Even with some advanced ones like Jujutsu Kaisen and One Pace, which both use stylized ones.
Just tested and with Findroid on my phone, no subtitle options appeared at all, though it had 4 languages embedded. On my roku they showed up but as soon as I picked it it loaded until it said Error During Playback
I’ve never used Findroid, but they work on my regular Jellyfin app. I think on Roku transcoding is required, but afaik that’s on Roku not supporting the subtitle format.
