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.
There’s a really strong bias on Lemmy for OSS projects. I’m glad they get so much love here, but everything people say here about Jellyfin has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. It works and you can use it. Depending on your needs, it may even work perfectly for you. There are tons of rough edges though.
Here’s a few:
Jellyfin is improving all the time, and I hope the recent EFCore update improves performance and development velocity. I’m also holding out hope it will eventually lead to externally hosted databases and active-active servers.
Disclaimer: I run Plex and Jellyfin and regularly check in on the state of things in Jellyfin. I donate to Jellyfin. I want Jellyfin to be better than Plex. I don’t think any objective measure bears this out yet.
One thing Jellyfin is way better at is offline viewing. I have frequent internet outages at my house and I’ve run into issues multiple times where Plex wouldn’t stream my own local media because it couldn’t connect to the internet. For this, Jellyfin has always just worked.
I have a huge issue with this post.
You install the plugin and run the routine. There’s literally nothing to setup…
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.
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.
This is the fault of the television manufacturers, not the android app. This isn’t even valid criticism against Jellyfin.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…
Since you run both, I have a few questions if you don’t mind.
I don’t have a plex pass but, so the only feature I want is intro skipping and from what you mention I understand it needs tinkering. Acceptable for me.
My usage is pretty simple if I migrate to Jellyfin do I need to fuck around with my folder structures ? No special case just /movie/title | tv/title in my use-case with the usual arr stack for grabbing.
The client used currently is a desktop client on arch/windows and I don’t need hardware transcoding. The server and libraries are on Truenas.
I don’t need remote playback for movies/tvs but I have no idea how to replace Plexamp and if you have suggestions, feel free to mention it.
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.