The privacy conscious choice is to not use Plex at this point. It is only a matter of time before they start directly screwing with private library’s.
I’m sad this isn’t just a link to Jellyfin
That was my thought.
The most optimal plex setting is Jellyfin
stopppp
it’s already dead
Not dead enough. We need to bully all high profile plex users such as Linus (tech tip man) into switching to Jellyfin.
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All the people yes jellyfin is great but plex is easiest to share to non tech people to just download an app and they are instantly connected to my server. It’s just works and it’s a lot easier to explain to my family then jellyfin is.
How difficult can it be to just give someone a login? I don’t get the whole sharing jellyfin is difficult argument. It is just as easy as any online service 🤷♂️
while I agree you have to remember everyone one here is likely way more techie than the average person
the ONLY issue I think non-tech people have with JellyFin is that you have to enter a specific domain/ip address to connect to a server - like I know to us that’s simple but it’s also very unlike how most paid-for streamers operate
Jellyfin was more work on my end so that family could connect with https, but for me to set them up it’s literally just “here is the URL, login, and password.”
It’s not just that. I’m a techie. I’ve been in the industry for decades. I know my way around computer very well.
I want to like Jellyfin and I want to ditch Plex (even though I have a lifetime license) because of what it has become and where it’s headed.
That said, the other day my Plex server had some issues that took me a while to figure out. Since when it failed I just wanted to watch an episode of a series and relax, I once again fired up the JF client. I couldn’t get seek to work, I had to manually find and download subtitles (that’s not always the case but when it is, it’s pretty annoying), and ultimately I couldn’t watch my series at all as playback would randomly stop, the player would close and I’d be back at the menu, without the position having been recorded and with no way to fast-forward as seek didn’t work at all.
I ended up spending 15min figuring out what was wrong and fixing Plex, then watched my series undisturbed.
Like I said, I want to drop Plex for JF, but in the 3 years or so that I’ve been running both, every time I fire up JF I end up running back to Plex as I just want to sit back and watch a bloody series or movie.
i wanted to share my library with my parents in another state. i set up a jellyfin server on my computer and walked them through setting up the android app on their chromecast in no time at all and they use it just like any other app
It’s not that hard. Everyone knows how to put in a URL.
Have fun doing that with a TV remote though, I guess you could buy a very short domain name.
jellyfin is great, IF you have an organized collection. If your collection is like mine, spread across 3 drives that have been used for the last 15+ yrs, and not organized into folders for each show…you’re gonna have a bad time. i found:
- jellyfin didn’t like when files used periods instead of spaces.
- jellyfin assumed that a year in the filename was the year the content was released and ignored using that year to search the title(i.e. if content has a year in it’s title jellyfin was ignoring that year).
- jellyfin seemed to choose random old shows instead of the obvious show that it should have been.
- jellyfin didn’t seem to have an option to change what show a file was a part of, i had to move it into a folder of the show’s name.
- jellyfin has issues with text files in the folders that have filenames that are urls(i.e. www.torrentsitehere.com-downloads.galore.txt would somehow tell jellyfin to go look at that url in the filename for info about the file, but of course it didn’t even parse the url out of the filename correctly and tried going to the full filename as the url and erroring out). i only found this out as it also wasn’t deleting the content that had these files in them as it was somehow trying to delete that url from the filename.
- jellyfin doesn’t like when content has it’s own NFO file to talk about where the content came from, or the person who claimed to release it first(since the NFO file is in this case is just a text file showing off some ASCII ‘art’ and edgy text, jellyfin isn’t able to parse the file)
using jellyfin did help me realize i didn’t need half the stuff i had, and helped me see that i wasn’t going to watch most of that again. It is open source, but that only means you can see the code and what goes into it, it doesn’t instantly make it better.
in the end i’m probly going to run both, since i primarly watch via the plex app on my xbox and the jellyfin xbox support is abysmal, it isn’t made for controller at all and it literally just a webpage that you move the cursor(mouse pointer) around with the left stick.
- jellyfin didn’t like when files used periods instead of spaces.
At least that can’t be the problem since my entire library (except music) uses periods instead of spaces.
Then again, I spent quite some time organizing my library when I first started using Radarr and Sonarr. Ever since those manage my library I had no issues in Jellyfin.
There are great apps that provides a way of organizing such libraries which you should do to have stuff organized regardless of problems with JF. They’re called Sonarr for tv shows and Radarr for movies, they also provide other features, but their media organization is great
Can’t figure out why you would use Plex over jellyfin, I have a life time pass to Plex, I haven’t used it in years, this isn’t about money, it’s about not having garbage running on your machine.
This.
Jellyfin is ugly, buggy, and the options to secure it aren’t really up to snuff.
If Jellyfin implemented proper SSO support (without needing the plugin) and the clients worked with it as well, I’d be much more willing to use Jellyfin.
Can’t figure out why you would use Plex over jellyfin
Probably the biggest reason is that it makes it so easy to securely share across the internet. With JF you’re on your own and you can really fuck things up. If you’re just running it on your LAN the JF is the obvious choice.
Jellyfin for me sucks. Not the server, the client. It works great on my wife’s machine but whenever I wanna watch something I get constant issues with crashing and seeking not working.
This is why I’ve stuck with Emby.
I get why people switched, and I’m open to it eventually, but Emby is much more polished. That’s not to say the Emby clients don’t also crash from time to time.
I recently had a weird bug with Jellyfin, are you by chance using a domain name? Try accessing Jellyfin using direct IP, e.g. http://192.168.1.123:8096/
Can’t remember but ill switch to direct IP and see if that helps. Thanks :)
agree in principal, but in practice:
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parents who live across the state
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plexamp for music
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You absolutely need to be careful sharing your own media with people outside your household as that’s probably illegal. If you still need to you can setup a VPN.
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The Jellyfin music player has recently seen a lot of love
- This hasn’t been a notable issue in a while. That’s why Plex’s https-by-default was such a big deal. With https, even your ISP can’t see what you’re streaming. They can see that something is being streamed, but not what specifically.
Also, you totally glossed over the fact that Plex is simply easier for non-savvy people to set up. Plex provides a unified login experience similar to major streaming services, which Jellyfin simply can’t provide; If your mother-in-law can figure out how to log into Netflix on her TV, she can figure out how to log into Plex too.
And the unfortunate truth is that Plex’s remote access is much easier for 90% of users to figure out. It doesn’t require VPNs or reverse proxies at all. You just forward a port and anyone with access can easily see your server. But my MIL’s TV doesn’t even have access to a Jellyfin app without sideloading. Not to mention the fact that I’d need to walk her through actually setting the app up once it is installed, because there is no unified system for logging in. And if I’m not using a reverse proxy for my Jellyfin server, then I also need to walk her through setting up Tailscale, assuming her TV is even capable of using it at all.
Any single one of those hurdles would make Jellyfin a non-starter if I want to walk my MIL through the setup over the phone, and they’re all currently present. And some of them will never be fixed, by design. For instance, the lack of a unified login page is by design, because a unified login would require a centralized server for the app to phone home too. That centralization is exactly what Jellyfin was made to rebel against, so it’s a problem that will never be “solved”; It is seen by the devs and FOSS enthusiasts as a feature, not an issue.
From a FOSS perspective, Jellyfin is a modern marvel. But it’s definitely not at the same level as Plex when you compare ease of setup or remote access. Jellyfin is fine if you’re just using it locally, or are willing to run Tailscale to connect back to your home network. But if you’re looking for true seamless remote access and need to consider the mother-in-law factor, then Plex is hard to beat.
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A privacy conscious selfhoster wouldn’t be using Plex.
