FFS Plex, the server is on my local network
Well I already have jellyfin running in a container, just have to figure out how to get mum's TV to work with it I guess
log in on a local IP and not the network name and it's working again. but I'll be moving to jellyfin from now
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Is there something better than jellyfin? I've been using it for a little over a year, and it works for the most part, but clients are often pretty buggy (especially on apple apple devices)
Have you tried the third party ones? I've seen recommendations for Swiftfin
https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin
Yeah that's the one I'm using on our appleTV, it's buggy as hell. "Continue" show often doesn't work and picks an episode that I've watched long ago and not the next in line, often never updating it despite watching several episode over several weeks. Aftee Pausing a show or movie and closing the app, if you want to continue from where you left off, well that doesn't work consistently either, usually it will just restart from the beginning. Switching language on shows pretty much doesn't work at all, it will either never change from default audio language, or use an entirely different language than the one picked from the list.
All these things work perfectly fine from a browser or official app on android.
I mostly use Infuse on the Apple TV and Streamyfin on the iPhone.
I'd be happy to pay for Infuse if the lifetime wasn't AU$150, and I just outright reject paying a subscription for an app for using something FOSS, even if it's only AU$20/year. A lifetime license that's 3-5yrs of a yearly sub is much more reasonable.
I’m no fan of software subscriptions. I have only one and it’s Infuse. Took the plunge mainly for Apple TV playback a few years ago and I’m glad I did.
It’s not just relying on FOSS through JF, but allows connection to Plex and Emby servers. And just as importantly direct NAS playback (side note - I honestly think a lot people go through the hassle of setting up a full JF/Emby/Plex server when this option would work just as well for them for single client playback). They also update regularly, and generally adhere to native OS design standards so it feels at home - https://firecore.com/releases
Back to the point, I pay the cost of a McDonald’s meal a year and I’m happy. IMHO it’s fantastic value. And I’ll continue to wait patiently for the official Jellyfin Apple TV client rework (Swiftfin). If it’s great and ticks the boxes I need I’ll cancel the Infuse subscription, if not we get enough value for £8.99 a year to make it a no brainer decision to continue.
Plex will do the exact same thing if you have an episode earlier in your history that didnt get marked as “watched”. But plex lets you manually tag episodes as watched which usually fixes it. Maybe there’s a similar option in jellyfin?
Jeælyfin also has this, is just doesn't work on appleTV
Was I supposed to read that with a Scottish accent?
I use Emby and it's flawless, might be worth swimming upstream?
Yeah, the way things at going I feel like I should protect myself further with a VPN, but it does break some of my services' access. Just another hurdle in the track to net independence that will be overcome! Heaven knows we've overcome many to get where we each are.
No need to bust your brain trying too hard - you'll find an answer eventually!
Infuse is so good on Apple TV it’s worth the money
I refuse to support companies with subscription based business models.
I just bought the lifetime since it works out to being cheaper than the subscriptions it saves me from over like a year
I have no trust that lifetime is in fact lifetime, and the price is also too high compared to the product value IMO.
https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin/discussions/1294
The Apple TV version hasn’t been updated in a long time. They are working on getting it to the testing fase in TestFlight but it’s basically a complete rewrite of the app
I can't say I've given Jellyfin a proper try (as in using it and the clients exclusively for a long period) but we have been using Emby for quite a while before I knew it existed.
If I'm not mistaken Jellyfin is actually a fork of Emby so they're pretty similar, but one is a bit older.
Jellyfin forked from Emby in 2018 when Emby chose to switch to a closed-source model. Because of this, there are many similarities, but the projects continue to become increasingly different from one another as time goes on.
I was probably using Emby already by then, had bought a lifetime license since it didn't require bouncing things off and outside server like Plex did (or was it that Plex was a renewing subscription, I forget) , so it just stayed out of inertia.
I'm pretty happy with Emby, but it's not open source.
What's an "apple apple" device? 😁
Yea, Jellyfin on iOS hsed to be buggy. Seems much better these days, and there's also Finamp for music
The web interface is fantastic. I just use a spare laptop with a wireless keyboard and mouse
infuse is a good jellyfin client. there's a free tier but im not sure of the limitations.
The free tier limitation is that it doesn't work with jellyfin
What sort of bugs are you experiencing? I’m using the official Jellyfin app and it’s been extremely stable on all my Apple devices. But I noticed a while ago that videos that were not MPEG were problematic so I converted all the AVI and WMV and WEBM to MP4 and it has been much more reliable. Scrubbing and previews have worked much better also
"Continue show" often doesn't work and picks an episode that I've watched long ago and not the next in line, often never updating it despite watching several episode over several weeks, even if they're marked as "seen". After pausing a show or movie and closing the app, if I want to continue from where I left off, well that doesn't work consistently either, usually it will just restart from the beginning. Switching language pretty much just doesn't work at all, it will either never change from default audio language, or use an entirely different language than the one picked from the list.
Plex.
What if you want to own your server?
You can absolutely run plex in a local only mode. You don't sign it in to an account and then set your subnets in the local networks section like so. Or leave it blank if you have a standard flat home network.
I do own my server. It's in my living room.
Then you signed it over to Plex. Smdh
For remote streaming access, sure. But I don't see a problem otherwise.
I mean, with a post like this, I'd call it baiting
I did try and preempt that in my comment - but it's hard to switch from plex when there are 5 other people with everything all configured and history etc
That's exactly what Plex wants you to say
How to migrate your watch history, apparently: https://www.florianjensen.com/2024/08/21/how-to-migrate-from-plex-to-jellyfin/
No it's not. Tell them to learn to switch or lose access. It's your server, do what you want.
btw i use jellyfin
lol crap, it's the new arch!
We need a name for lemmy users running arch on their pc that they’re using to watch stuff on their Jellyfin server
I wanted to move to Jellyfin, but there isn't an app for it on the LG WebOS library like there is for Plex, so I wouldn't be able to watch stuff on my TV, which sadly makes it useless for me :-(
I don't have the money to be going out and buying extra add-ons for my TV to watch stuff either, sadly. So, Plex it is for now!
Root your TV and install the homebrew channel on it.
Yes, this is real.
The Homebrew Channel for LG WebOS is got three pieces of absolutely essential software:
A YouTube app modified with built in ad blocking and sponsor blocking. The Jellyfin app. The Moonlight app.
With these three plus the toggle to block system updates your TV gets 1000% better for free.
now I need to find a Wiimote, damnit
You can use the Smart remote which is basically the fusion of a wiimote, a tv remote and a computer mouse
I tried googling some of this but I must be misunderstanding the thread, mind ELI5 for the rest of us? ^_^'
15 years ago a pirate decided to name the main channel on the Nintendo Wii for homebrew the "Homebrew Channel", as it has been for 15 years.
That was my reference. If you found a hacked Wii right now and turned it on, it would be one of the channels available.
OK.
So, you know of android rooting?
::: spoiler (I'm assuming no) Android rooting is the action of getting superuser prileveges on an android device, which lets you do literally anything. From removing bloat, to overclocking, it gives you full power over the device.
Keep in mind that "with great power comes great responsibility." -the
sudocommand on first use :::Well, it's that, but for TVs.
As for the remote, how you move the cursor is wii-like, and you can click the [OK] button to click stuff. You can also scroll, because the [OK] button is also a scroll wheel.
What I meant is I tried to Google homebrew smart remote and found nothing. I do have understanding of the concepts and was looking for the specifics :)
When was the last time you checked? A client was added to the WebOS store maybe 2 or 3 years ago for recent models, and support for older models (like my C9) came months later.
Yes there is, I literally have it installed on my two LG WebOS TVs. Plus there's a web browser app that you can create shortcuts for, which works for Dropout so I would assume it works for Jellyfin as well.
Yes there is. I have it on my tv.
https://us.lgappstv.com/main/tvapp/detail?appId=1030579
Can you try using DLNA to connect to jellyfin? You need to install the plugin first.
More effort, but there's also this https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos
USE JELLYF-
Oh.
Jel-ly-fin, jel-ly-fin, je-ly-fin!
Remember when Plex tried to sell you a subscription to use outdated versions of open source game console emulators?
Plex wants to be a profit-driven company, but their business model is piracy. They'll squeeze you for subscriptions, while making your experience worse to try and broker a peace deal with content owners.
idk I find $2/month to be very reasonable. I don't feel squeezed.
EDIT: Just to be clear there is no amount of condescending replies form trilby wearing neckbeard keyboard warriors that will change my opinion.
To stream remotely from your own server?
If I chose to use Plex's
plex.tvservices to expose my server to the internet, that's one thing. But I have my Plex server exposed through my own infrastructure (NPM + Let's Encrypt), so fuck that shit.The $2/mo is for the Plex relay service. If you access the server directly it should be free.
It's not. Now you need to pay any time you want to connect to your server from outside of your LAN.
Would a VPN be a solution to that?
Yes. You only need to pay if you’re connecting via their relay or trying to use the remote hosting functionality. But since a VPN would land you inside of the network, you’d be fine. You’d probably need to dig into the plex settings to specify that the VPN subnet is LAN traffic. But after that, you should be good.
You can use ZeroTier to connect from anywhere. It only makes you pay to use the plex router/relay.
I much prefer jellyfin + tailscale
I'm switching to Jellyfin myself.
Sorry to have annoyed you.
Unforgivable, have a wretched hour and a half.
Setting up ddns takes 15 minutes for a professional (mostly setting a 1-line script to reload a simple url every ten minutes)
and poking a hole in the firewall takes maybe half an hour (since every router puts the relevant page in a different spot)
And for this you think it's reasonable to pay ~$25/year for the rest of your life? You're not wrong in the sense that you're welcome to choose your own values, but I … disagree with you on the value position.
I would be ashamed of myself and be tempted to leave the industry in disgrace if setting up DDNS and allowing a single port through a firewall took me 45 minutes.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. I want the newbs to feel accomplished when it only takes them 2 hours to figure it out. 😉
But seriously, you and I have it on reflex, but there's merit to the notion that we also have our mise en place - we've read the manual, we've saved or memorized the script, already know our local equipment passwords, etc - all things we took the time to do before and now have at the ready.
I mean, you just listed the most insecure way to host Jellyfin. Poking a hole in your firewall will technically work, but that doesn’t mean it’s the correct way to do things. A good setup would use a reverse proxy, and some sort of authentication wall like Authentik or Authelia.
All of that would only take about 15 minutes for someone who knows what they’re doing. But the vast majority of people setting up Jellyfin for the first time won’t know what they’re doing. And seeing the inevitable “lol just open your firewall” comments only serves to scare them away, because even the noobs have heads that’s the wrong way to do things.
ok
👌 ok!
I'd be fine paying $25 a year to not maintain that shit myself. Plus the money should contribute to development efforts.
It should. I agree, but speaking as someone in the industry - usually it doesn't. Just lines some rich guy's pockets.
Fair in the instance of Plex, but I'm happy to pay for the feature with Home Assistant.
Good call! 100% (at least for now 😅)
I'm more just agitated that they paywalled free functions that don't have to rely on their services.
Watching people realize this toejam eating weirdo was right about everything makes my day everytime.
::: spoiler context I was searching for a fitting response and found this, took me long enough to realise it was not a meme, so I decided it kinda fits ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :::
So glad I installed jellyfin years ago and never bothered to set up Plex.
I got the Plex lifetime pass over 10 years ago for pretty cheap and Plex has served me well over the years. But it's just so damn bloated now and the biggest recent change to their android app is atrocious. The app is so laggy and slow now. And downloading movies to watch locally on a tablet is just painful.
So I decided to start experimenting with Jellyfin this month and I am blown away at how fast and snappy everything is. It still isn't as refined as Plex but there's something to be said about privacy and using FOSS apps.
I'll be using Jellyfin going forward now.
I know it's fashionable to shit on Plex here, but OP either has his server misconfigured or is just trying to stir the pot:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202526943-plex-free-vs-paid/
Right, the $2 is to use the relay service, which costs Plex bandwidth. They can't just do it free for everyone forever, bandwidth costs money.
They charge for remote access whether it's through their relay service or not, and you can't opt out of fallback to their relay service.
If you connect with the IP address it doesn't charge you. You can use ZeroTier to connect from anywhere.
That's not quite the same - that gives you the appearance of being a local device, which is enough to fool the restriction.
Their policy and technology enforcement is to charge for remote access, not relaying.
Can you give me an example of remote direct access that would be blocked? You can use nginx to forward your public IP to your Plex and it's fine, you can forward ports directly on your router and connect to your public IP, you can use a VPN to connect from a different network; what are they limiting? It's the same hurdle you have to overcome with Jellyfin. Relays are convenient, but they also cost money.
Yes, however using the relay is not a prerequisite to being required to pay for a Plex subscription. That is what he is trying to say.
I can run Plex on the open internet and not use their relay at all, however if the IP of the viewer is not an interal IP on the same subnet as Plex (I assume the same subnet is required) then you'll be greeted with the Plex paywall.
You are absolutely correct that it costs money to run a relay, but the relay has nothing to directly do with the paywall.
Thank you! That is exactly my point.
That isn't how it used to work.
Why would they care what subnet the request is coming from? That's wack.
But there are dozens of people in this very thread who if I am understanding correctly are willing to offer the same service for free to prove their point that Plex is evil.
People are free to take some rando on the Internet up on their offer.
It means the same specific subnet. If you have multiple subnets (one for wired, one for wireless for example) it will also trigger that limitation unless you go in and manually tell it hey these are local.
Yes, but they're still sending emails to people even when it doesn't apply. I had a Plex pass and still all of my users received emails and freaked out. They're trying to trick people into thinking they need to pay, that's the asshole move here.
I have always connected via a FQDN, for some reason last night it decided to shit it's self. Resolved by accessing via local IP, then the FQDN worked again
I'll shit on Plex as much as anyone, but I wouldn't rule out some kind of DNS nonsense here.
except not via mobile devices. you have to pay for the app to work.
Think they worked out that using the IP instead of the hostname solved it.
I have always connected via a FQDN, for some reason last night it decided to shit it's self. Resolved by accessing via local IP, then the FQDN worked again
Longtime lifetime Plex Pass holder here.
FOSS is important. Having control over how you use your own hardware and files is important.
But even if none of that mattered, once I actually used Jellyfin for a few days the snappy bloat-free feel of it won me over. Switching between Plex and Jellyfin felt like switching between windows and linux.
I have a lot of custom artwork, covers, playlists, etc. How easy did that data migrate? I've got 6,500 movies
Ah the weekly "Plex should be entirely free even though it's commercial software!"
Plex is entirely free and completely local, but only if you don’t use the features that make it so convenient (the relay server they offer, authentication and authorization, etc). Things I’m pretty sure jellyfin doesn’t provide at all. If people spent half the time reading as they do trying to convince people to get angry at optional features then maybe we wouldn’t have so many posts like this.
Jellyfin does offer authentication and authorization. Relay can be done via nginx iirc?
The authentication is lacking 2fa and has a half hearted attempt at fail2ban
If you try to properly implement either of those, the standard device clients won't work anymore.
Plex provides default SSL.
The relay is actually a bit more useful.
You can be on a carrier grade NAT with no real external IP.
It's more akin to running a VPS somewhere and SSH tunneling your home server through it.
They also cache* the entirety of the TVDB and EPG Services.
I'm not sore about most of this with jellyfin, and I am trying to primarily use it, but I really miss some of the features. But realistically, adding 2FA to the clients would be a huge benefit. trying to replace 2FA with wish.com fail2ban feels particularly dirty.
You can run the OIDC version and use SSO and implement MFA on the IdP. I use Keycloak for SSO w/ MFA and users sign into my Jellyfin via Keycloak. Just disable username/password auth and leave it SSO only.
The only benefit Plex really has is the relaying, but I was able to sync watch with 3 people basically as far across North America as you can get from me and it worked without issue so...
That's fine for browser-based watching, literally no one in my group watches via the browser. Even on android it'd be a fight. Grandma's not going to go on to a browser to auth her session.
The clients need to support it. If it were just backend, I'd fork it myself.
Neither do I - I use either my phone, or my smart TV, or my fire stick. SSO works fine there, or you can use the QR based session transfer to SSO on your phone and then "sign in on another device" or whatever by scanning the QR your other device is showing. I think they call it quick connect or something.
It does what you want.
And if you think Grandma can't figure out scanning a QR code, Grandma is also not gonna figure out MFA lol.
Good explanation. I'm out in the boonies with Starlink for internet right now so no port forwarding for me. I paid like $100 for a plex lifetime pass 12 years ago or something so none of my family or friends even notice most of the time. HEVC encoding helps too (you can squeeze 720p through their relay server with it).
Relaying gigabytes of traffic per user costs serious money. Rely on them to do it, and they are either going to charge you or are just waiting to charge you when their VCs come knocking.
Having to set up a reverse proxy is basically a non-starter for most people, while I've talked extremely non-technical people into running Plex since it just works out of the box.
Also the weekly intentionally misunderstanding how Plex pass/Plex remote pass works in order to complain:
Can you get around that bs with a VPN?
You should be able to. I have a wireguard tunnel to my parent's house and when they watch plex it doesn't go over the relay server (I can't port forward on starlink).
How is Plex used if you aren't using it to stream your self hosted media? I remember seeing channels and such before. Is all the official stuff licensed content? I can't imagine their offering is very competitive.
99.9% of the use mine has seen for the past several years has been to stream to my living room TV in the same house. But regardless, what point are you making? It's commercial software. And btw the $85 I paid years ago to use it forever was more than worth it to me.
I'm not trying to make a point, I'm just curious how many this impacts and so on. I imagine it will go down similar to Netflix account sharing crackdown; generally viewed unfavourably, but will convert enough users to pay for it to be worth it.
Gotcha. We'll see, I guess.
digital cancer
Here's a controversial and complex stance, but you may be able to understand it eventually:
Don't buy it.
I am a proponent of FOSS too but that doesn't mean anything built for profit is shitty, let alone "cancer".
Hey, you paid for them to spy on your media, give them their money's worth.
God I hate humans
I do too. They tend to speak from the heart but the second something is inconvenient, they're cool with relaxing their morals.
They've added commercial supported live channels like many other free services but yeah, it's lacking compared to others. Pluto.tv is my go-to if I want to throw something on at a family members house or something like that. Owned by the networks, reasonably short ads, completely free. Too bad they didn't figure that out 10 years ago lol.
Oh I've actually heard of Pluto.tv and watched it somewhere.
Except they're spamming to users that they need this subscription even when they host locally or already have a membership.
I bought a plex lifetime pass for $100 over a decade ago and I never see ads like this. I only occasionally get the notice for plex pro week and stuff like that.
I also bought Plex lifetime pass also for $100 and I am getting ads like this.
That's pretty fucked up. I'd be shootin off some angry emails to customer support. Sorry to hear that!
y'all don't use jellyfin???
for music: navidrome
What benefits does navidrome provide as a separate music server if jellyfin can host your music already?
I can only tell you that personally I'm interested in trying out Navidrome because I don't like all my eggs in one basket (Jellyfin is more complex sw for sure too) and I think I'm not the only one caring more about my music collection than movies and tv. But I did try Jellyfin for music (not with my main library) and it works very well, Finamp on android has offline mode which I find almost essential.
Does Jellyfin do smart playlists yet?
Edit: There seems to be a plugin. So, now it's just about the fact that I already have it set up the way I want, and that I don't wanna put all my eggs in the same basket. But I guess using Jellyfin for music is totally viable now.
Jellyfin can’t even do smart collections of TV and movies
With navidrome, my library is a little messed up from what I have on my local and the album art is wrong. Do you know any guide to properly setup navidrome library.
i wish i could help. i got the privilege of having a friend who took the headache off me and just set everything up properly before i even got my server ready lol
we haven´t encountered this issue, so all i can say is: it´s solvabe. sorry
Lol, thanks anyway. Glad your library is not the headache I got
Something like picard to fix the metadata for you?
Thanks, that's actually what I've been using but I guess something got messed up locally after I copied the data over. Maybe I'll pass Picard directly over the server side data or try copying the music again because the metadata looks fine locally which was the cause of my confusion.
Oh weird. Then I don't have anything to offer other than generic troubleshooting and best wishes.
I’d like to personally, however with my home environment being Apple TV device the plex application is fantastic. And sharing my libraries with other friends sharing back with me is pretty great. Does jellyfinn have that ability? I’ve seen about an app that’s supported but I’m not sure about it, the Apple TV app that is.
This feature is imo THE killer feature of Plex, although I use Jellyfin. There's no sharing of libraries like Plex does. Multiple user accounts per server, yes, but you have to switch between servers and search separately.
unfortunately i have no idea about the apple ecosystem. the ios app is smooth. i hope you can just download it and test it somehow on your apple tv.
jellyfin supports several user accounts for friends and family.
for music: not streaming.
Music is a solved problem, the files are small even at FLAC quality and can be tiny with Opus whilst sounding transparent. Any SOC made in the last 15 years features a more than fully capable DAC.
Why even bother with streaming? Have a local collection of files. Even syncing is easy.
i understand what you mean. there´s bad phone reception in my area and streaming is a horrible experience, i download everything on my phone. if i have a stable wifi connection i can stream easily. the benefit of it is just not bloating my 128gb phone to it´s limits
That's kinda the thing though, using modern codecs there's no way you'll get anywhere close to facing this issue. A song encoded with Opus at higher than necessary quality is 2.5 MBs on average - that's over 20 thousand songs in 50 GB, not even half of your total storage gets you 50 days of continuous audio.
Imagine wanting to charge to stream your own media with your own hardware and resources... Hey wait, we don't have to imagine it anymore, Plex already did it.
I forgot as I am a Plex Pass Lifetime user, and oh boy I'll be sure to milk that out (actually after all these years I think I have already done that) just to keep being an annoying stat for Plex and nothing else 🤣
Aren't they charging because it passes through their servers so you don't have to expose your server directly to the public Internet?
Like, I pay $5 a month to access my Home Assistant setup remotely, although I could do it cheaper with my own AWS setup. But the money goes to development, so I'm happy to contribute.
Yeah... That only applies for non CGNATED networks, and as we are in 2025 I'd say most users worldwide are CGNATED or don't have an IPv6 address... Or worse, both.
If you are CGNATED Plex approach is useless, as their relay sucks as it only lets you play up to 2 (or 4 can't remember) mbps 720p files lol (server will transcode to meet those requirements), if they wanted to charge for remote streaming they should at least increase the minimum Mbps allowed in their relay, that way I understand they fall into server costs by proxying our media... But until that happens, charging for remote streaming is a completely joke (much more if we have free alternatives to keep doing so in a plethora of devices thanks to Tailscale and Zerotier, the true GOATS with a CGNAT environment).
Something that's getting glossed over in these comments is the ability to easily watch or listen to friends' media.
I have my own library with about 1k movies, a bunch of anime and TV, and 10k albums. But I have like 6 or 7 friends with libraries even larger. My one friend has 37k albums, they all have thousands of movies I never even heard of, etc. It really makes it like my own mini streaming service, and I love throwing on a huge music library on shuffle via plexamp while driving to/from work.
I paid like $70 for a lifetime pass years ago, so I'm along for the ride I guess. I really rely on the music aspect of it, I haven't had a spotify subscription in like 7 years.
I know they changed a lot lately, and particularly what pisses me off is how vague and how they intentionally obfuscate how their model works now. I have friends that for years used my library, and recently have been like "I saw Plex started charging now so I stopped using it" and I have to be like "no it's still free because I have a lifetime pass". It's definitely just to trick people into getting monthly subscriptions.
Plex recently switched the remote watch thing to be behind a paywall. If your PC/App was also on the same local network it would probably work.
Leaving Plex and switching to Jellyfin would work even better.
I know Plex is a business that has to make money, but if I hadn't bought a lifetime pass for $50 a decade ago, I'd have dropped them at this point.
I paid too, but consider that you basically paid $5 per year for 10 years and I'd say that good. You don't need to feel guilty if you decide to leave, you got your money's worth.
(And I mean, I have a sneaky suspicion they're coming for the lifetime users sooner or later)
Yeah, for sure. They can't survive if people just paid 50 $ ten years ago. They're going to restrict the service for lifetime users sooner or later.
Same here. I have no complaints about the service and it's easy for my tech illiterate family and friends, but I'll switch as soon as they try to charge pass owners for new features.
"Try our new Plex Pass Lifetime* Plus!"
*Valid for the lifetime of the product^†^.
†2yearsSame. Lifetime pass. That money is gone, and I use jellyfin nowadays. My photo collection will be stored on ente soon. Still no idea where to host my music library.
I setup music with Clementine, and output analog via the jack. Surely there must be better way... But it was easy & I can choose songs to play from cellphone.
For your photo collection I'd also suggest Immich.
Aaaand that’s one of the reasons why I got rid of Plex. “Bought” it, then they found some other feature to paywall. Bought that, then another feature. Then it stopped playing files of certain extensions through chromecast. Fuck that. Put together Jellyfin and moved my collection over. Zero trouble since.
I jumped ship early on. They didn't include skipping intros (or removed the plugin or the capability to use plugins, I don't remember).
Went to Jellyfin, took like 2 hours to figure out what's different. I don't even remember, are there any features worth it staying on Plex? At least I'm not missing anything.
Also for watch together you start a watch group and can watch a show episode for episode. Instead of having to open each episode separately and having everyone join again (but maybe Plex fixed this already, I wouldn't know).
Fellow jellyfin user 😍
For a perfect pairing, Jellyfin + Tailscale.
I don't get this? is this because I have a lifetime pass?
Either a lifetime pass, or you actually configured local access correctly instead of botching it (or ingoring it entirely) and then coming to lemmy to complain.
Yeah
Last I knew it was only a thing for sharing between accounts and outside of "Plex home"/managed users.. I haven't seen anything since the announcement months ago. Lot of whiners tho...
E: I'm wrong (except about whiners)... It only affects free/non-pass users.
I got fed up one day with Plex because it blocked me from getting to my server from one of my televisions. My LAN's internet gateway was down and Plex was useless even though all the content was on the local network. I'm sure there's configuration things or something that I could have changed but in the end I decided I didn't want to be pressured into buying anything and I didn't like the constant commercialization of Plex.
So I installed Jellyfin and never looked back. Yes, it's missing a few features but you can get around that with nginx so totally worth it not to be harassed.
There is a dlna server but it has "totally unintentional" memory leaks that cause it to crash after a few days and they refuse to fix.
its pretty fucking easy to use jellyfin on any device after you have it set up. most platforms have it in their app store.
There are a bunch of awesome jellyfin clients as well
That's what freedom looks like ;) choice!
foss is such a beautiful thing
Not easy enough for the majority of my Plex servers users to figure out on their own. I would love to switch away from Plex, but until the clients become as idiot proof as Plex I have to keep using it. Luckily I bought a lifetime plex pass a long time ago for GPU transcoding
i feel as if the initial setup is a lot more of a learning curve than connecting a client. getting your home server accessible over wan(?) is probably one of the hardest parts if thats what you mean though
Setting up the server to be externally accessible was easy to me since I have lots of experience hosting stuff both from home and from VPSs. Although not as easy as with Plex of course, which will even automatically forward the ports for you if you have Upnp enabled in your router.
It's the clients that are the issue. They are not as easy to use for less technologically inclined people, my dad already struggled with the switch from Netflix to Plex. And for many of my users there isn't even a Jellyfin app available, like for older Samsung smart TVs for example
I host a plex server with at 90TB library for my family and friends, which are about 50 users atm. Jellyfin just isn't idiot-proof enough that it can replace Plex for me, I don't want to play tech support for all the users that can't get the client working on their devices
thats fair, 50 users would be a lot to manage if something does go wrong after setup.
Jellyfin or Emby.
What’s plex better at?
Well that's one less customer they'll have, it's time to take your money elsewhere!
Edit: oh right.
Are you runnin multiple subnets? If so you need to enable them all as local nets in plex or else it’ll trigger this.
Why this isn't the top comment is disappointing. This is accurate, because he's running Plex in a container, which would generally be on a different subnet than his LAN.
OP already acknowledged in their edit that logging in with a local IP 'fixed' the issue.
Genuinely Plex has become so obtrusive about NEW FEATURES, NOW WE HAVE THIS, USE THIS THUS WAY!!! and then also my libraries have somehow become even slower to load. I've been using jellyfin way more often
User error, at least you figured it out. It’s always free to stream in your own network.
the thing is I always use the network name. Once I used the IP I couls go back to using plex..TLD
So now that you know the problem was user error, why exactly are you still switching to jellyfin?
how is using a FQDN user error when the logs show the access is from a 10.1.1.x address?
You’re using the wrong address, that’s how it’s user error.
If you just use the Plex app you wouldn’t have this issue either. Were you watching media on your Plex server machine through a browser instead of just opening Plex, and you typed in a url in the browser? Plex say to always just use app.plex.tv as it takes care of it all for you so things like this don’t happen.
There isn’t even a debate here though - it’s an issue with the way your network is set up, not with Plex. Plex’s networking is far more advanced and better technically than jellyfins.
I would go with jellyfin, but my stupid old Samsung TV has tizen and can't find a way to install it.
You could plug in a firestick or something similar as jellyfin has an android app.
You need to setup a developer account so you can install apps from local sources
I'm running Openelec on a Raspberry Pi... Awesome interface, high wife approval factor.
I tried that through network and an app on my pc, didn't work.
I had a similar issue where I wanted to use my Xbox Series X to play Jellyfin but there was no client available. I ended up switching from Plex to Emby. I tested it for a month and then bought a lifetime pass, I'm quite happy with it. The client definitely isn't as polished as Plex's clients are but they allow me to do everything I want with much more control. I especially like the plugin system, being able to create my own persistent 24/7 faux tv channels is A++
I use an nVidia Shield for it. There's probably cheaper ones, but you tend to get what you pay for, and I've got a few 4KBR remuxes that even that struggles on.
Is this an okd systen now, how does it hold up? Is it lacking anywhere?
It's been pretty decent.
Supports Dolby Vision/Atmos etc. Image based subtitles (e.g. those ripped from a disc) end up getting transcoded, but that seems the only thing it doesn't natively support. Had trouble with AV1 but I'm not sure if that's a general thing or that one specific file.
Get an Onn streaming device from Walmart for ~$30
I don't live in USA.
Can you get a firestick from amazon?
Surely they sell something similar in your country
Okay. What streaming devices can you order online?
People often involved with piracy probably love entering personal information in that context...
I used Plex about 12 years ago. The first time my internet went down, and I couldn't use it, I stopped using it. Garbage. Not what I wanted.
I used Windows Media Center as long as I could, I loved it. But, eventually, I had to leave Windows 8 behind. Now I use Jellyfin and SABnzbd, it works okay most of the time, but I don't serve media to the outside, so I don't know if it works for that.
And this is why I'm setting up Jellyfin. I paid for a lifetime Plex pass a while ago, and I would have been happy to toss them some more money if they had just stuck to the core service (like Nabu Casa/Home Assistant - absolutely worth $7/mo), but nooooooooooooooo Plex decided to spin up their own streaming servers and go down that path instead.
I smell an IPO coming soon.
It was a pain to get up and running, but now that it is i actually prefer it. OSS aside there are things I like, like editions/versions are all kind of merged, more customization of the appearance, more performant. I'm pretty happy. Granted it was months of reorganizing my media for it.
I don't have the link(s) on hand but there's a Tizen build of Jellyfin for Samsung TVs. It runs rather slow on my old tube so I wouldn't recommend it outside of a last resort. It's actually smoother for me to just open the app on the TV and then remote control it from a browser/app on another device (my Steam Deck is my homelab universal remote). But you can use the Tizen dev tools or a simpler docker container to push it to the TV.
For my folks I got a cheap Walmart brand Android box (Onn 4k Plus). I installed Jellyfin from the app store then black hole'd the thing because I'm wary of cheap Android apps and their history of supply chain attacks. It's much more responsive and also leaves me with the option of installing additional stuff like Smart Tubes, Retro Arch and whatnot.
Sorry to hit you with a random question, but since I'm in a similar situation: are you using Tailscale to remote stream to your parents, or how do you get that working seamlessly with Jellyfin?
Unfortunately I can't help in that regard. I keep everything local/unexposed so my solution for them was just running Jellyfin at their place. I was already
rsyncing some stuff to a NAS I set up for them (and vice versa), as off-site backup. Since the files were already there it made the most sense to just give them their own instance.Not the guy, but I use a domain I bought from cloudflare with a cloudflare tunnel on my network. Not as secure as a VPN like tailscale, but doesn't require setting up a VPN for my friends and family's TVs so they can connect to the server while keeping my actual IP hidden and without needing to do any port forwarding.
This is a helpful. This sounds like a way, even if I'm still in the "hmmm, yes, I recognize some of those words" stage. Maybe I'll look for a detailed guide.
I admit, though, the details of how to do this are pretty hard to imagine for me - networking and tunneling seems very technical. Before I can jump off the Plex enshittification train, I just want a way to share my media with tech-illiterate family without complex setup on their end.
Yes, I'm a technical person, but not a web developer and so this was all new to me until very recently. Good luck!
The way I think of the cloudflare tunnel is very similar to a VPN into your system from outside, but for web application traffic specifically.
Imo Plex is worth the lifetime pass if you get it on sale.
All the comments saying Jellyfin is better always puzzle me. I've given it like three chances now and each time it feels just as buggy as the last. And that doesn't even consider the fact that you'll need more steps to expose it to the Internet for remote viewing or the fact that there's literally a list of unaddressed security holes https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415
From one of the Jellyfin devs in the issue you linked, posted in April this year:
That only addresses one of several items.
Yes, but it's always the one people come back too.
They mention the other issues are either being tracked elsewhere or already solved.
At the end of the day, it's a community project, done by primarily volunteers, who is not making any money doing this. No VC funding to hire developers to take care of these issues.
I understand there's an explanation for it. Doesn't make these things not things to consider when choosing one's solution
But it's FOSS, compared to Plex. And it also does not ask for money for anything.
You can also add more security yourself if you want to. Not by coding new stuff into jellyfin, but by adding some sort of auth BEFORE jellyfin.
Setting up auth before Jellyfin breaks clients. This is not an option. Edit: Unless you meant VPN like Tailscale, but then you'd have to install Tailscale too, which I don't want to explain to others.
Tailscale needs you to explicitly add your device to the tailnet, so it's some form of authentication.
Also, why don't you want to explain tailscale? It's really simple.
Good luck installing Tailscale on my friends' LG webOS TVs.
And making sure Tailscale auto launches on a FireTV stick is a pita too. Telling them to open Tailscale on each start is not an option.
Feel free to go read the multiple writeups from the maintainers that go over each one, we don't need to copy them all here into the comments for you.
I used Plex for privacy reasons. I stopped using Plex for privacy reasons.
So don't expose it to the internet - which should be the default stance for anything.
The internet was (mistakenly and intentionally) built without security - that doesn't mean we should just accept that, but instead build everything with our own security.
Numerous mesh VPN solutions exist: Hamachi has been around since at leas 2006. NeoRouter since at least 2012. Then we have Wireguard and Tailscale, and others.
Business build their own tunnels between locations, using routers/gateways with that capability. Consumer routers from Linksys could do this in 2006.
There's zero excuse for running anything exposed to the internet.
In closing NO SOFTWARE is free of bugs. With Plex you get to pay for those bugs and still have software that depends on a connection even though you're hosting and viewing your own media, locally.
You wanna denigrate Jellyfin, at least be honest about the pros/cons between the different solutions.
No
...except this entire thread is based on a use case for it
You're condescending dude. I wouldn't be using Plex if I didn't understand like 37 things you're implying I don't understand here. I paid for it once, it was a good value for me, and I find it pretty weird that you apparently want to admonish me for that. If you want to use jellyfin have at it. I found it buggy to the point of barely being usable. Just sharing that experience and I don't need anyone to agree with that.
Don't expose stuff to the internet
Are you advocating for an self hosting to only exist locally? Or are you advocating for hosting everything on corporate servers?
Don't expose things to the internet
That goes for corporate settings as well as personal stuff. You almost certainly do not need your self hosted services to be publicly accessible by bots. Anything on the internet gets pounded.
... You just literally said hosting shouldn't exist. You are using the Internet right now.
Also pretty weird to keep phrasing this as a command, discounting an entire class of use cases to be invalid because bad actors exist?
The problems with Plex are not technical. The problems from Plex are that they take away features and change the terms of use to the detriment of the user. Given plex's pricing changes over the last year, I would be concerned that your lifetime pass be affected by some policy change.
Yes, they changed the free featureset, and afaik those changes were fair. Providing a tunnel for remote streaming for free doesn't seem like a good business plan. I mean, yeah they could always back out of the promise of what a lifetime pass is, and if they do I will find a new solution and hope they're sued for it.
If they do back out of their lifetime commitment, I suspect that would drive some other similar apps to get better. Maybe I would even learn to live with jellyfin as it currently exists in that situation. But so far I don't see a reason to, and that would almost have been true if I never paid for plex.
Fair enough.
I'm speaking from both sides here, having used Plex for years and now jellyfin:
Don't tie technical competence of a product with its monetary cost. They are not necessarily equivalent.
I didn't realize I did that. Given that my opinion on OSes is that "the larger the budget, the shittier it is", I don't knowingly do what you're suggesting here. Linux over windows and macOS any day.
Except it's not. OP is trying to watch stuff on his own network.
Then they aren't doing it correctly, or lying. That is an included/free feature. They advertise it that way and other users ITT say it works. I've no reason to doubt them.
For my media consumption, I use jellyfin for streaming thing. Like music and movies to mobile or laptop.
I use OSMC on a pi4 for TV viewing, it's a kodo remix but I like it. Have the media from jellyfin mounted over NFS and in kodo directly.
I did run tvheadend for live TV, but we don't watch any live TV now as the kids get TV priority. I also had tvheadend setup in jellyfin so I could watch TV out and about
Honestly, I lowkey hated plex when I was using it. We never used it because it wasn't very good at the one thing it was supposed to be fore.
It was trying so hard to get me to use their media, when what I wanted was to watch my media. By contrast, jellyfin just shows me my media.
If you have a few bucks, the chromecast with android TV is what I'd recommend. The jellyfin app for android TV looks and works great -- as good as any paid streaming service imo. I got my wife using it daily, and she's not a tech person at all.
As soon as I saw Plex show media that wasn't part of my personal library I knew it was becoming enshitified.
At one time it was great. Because it's just become slowly shittier over the years. As any for-profit product becomes.
Plex does not show me anything but my media at the forefront. 🤷♂️ But it's slow on my TV.
By default for me it seems to really want me to get off of my server altogether and get onto their servers, and it seems to really want to get me off of my media and onto their half-baked streaming service.
Really complex compared to just having my media show up.
When you first set it up it asks what you want to see, you probably just kept everything. Seems odd to purposely keep all their stuff, then complain about seeing all their stuff.
If plex is “complex” to you then I don’t know what to tell you, my parents can use it with zero issue, and that’s saying something.
Definitely sounds like a human error, for sure. Somebody messed up during installation/configuration.
Well, let me tell you a story.
Recently I needed to use BitTorrent to download a very large file from an independent project. Usually I can just use my web browser, but this one was in the hundreds of gigabytes there just was no way.
So I installed the original official bittorrent client, because I'm really out of the game I haven't torn today anything outside of my browser in years now.
I had to pay close attention to not install multiple pieces of unwanted software. I had to uncheck a bunch of stuff and carefully navigate the installer. Even after that, the client was junk and constantly showed multiple videos ads at all times, and besides that it just didn't have the horsepower to download my torrent for me.
I remembered using transmission on Linux so I decided to try getting that instead, turns out it had a Windows version.
Downloaded, ran the executable, pressed next three times, opened up the torrent file, pointed to my existing download hoping it'd figure out what parts the file needed and in fact it did and the download was done quickly.
If I had failed to uncheck any of the boxes, I guess you could call me stupid for non-un checking them, but to me it seems a lot simpler using the FOSS products that never had any checkboxes to uncheck in the first place.
Meanwhile, and honestly I didn't use Plex very much because it just didn't seem like a very good product, but I also seem to remember I kept on ending up on the plex.net website instead of my own server. I think it was something along lines of if you go in to change certain settings it'll change domains on you? Either way, it was just not very well set up compared to Jellyfin, which had everything that I was using right there I never even remotely tried to send me somewhere else.
It's literally one checkbox in the settings to shut those external media sources off
Zero with jellyfin.
sigh
This is why I switched to Jellyfin and recommend everyone to switch to Jellyfin
The most annoying thing about Jellyfin is that there's no way to consolidate all of your servers under a single interface.
With Plex, I have a huge library made up of all my friends' libraries.
Jellyfin's local download function suuuuuucks by comparison. Lifetime Plex pass has been worth it.
Not gonna argue that Jellyfin is technically superior, but I switched to Plex to stop others from giving/selling my viewing habits. Stopped using Plex when it leaked they were doing the same.
Because OP doesn’t know what he’s doing? Or because you like opening your server to the internet without any authentication?
How about... Neither.
I don't think OP doesn't know, but I feel like its been said multiple times here, so maybe op either missed it or has a use case where he still wants to use Plex.
I have a Jellyfin server and I don't need to expose it to the internet. Look at all the posts and comments here about setting up a reverse proxy and to securely expose your server to the internet. But you can also just keep your server locked behind your firewall and only access your network using a self hosted VPN.
Op doesn’t know what he’s doing, otherwise we wouldn’t have this thread.
JellyFin can’t be securely exposed to the internet.
VPN go burrr
Not sure if you understand what a VPN is?
Ok buddy, go bother other kids now. I obviously know what a VPN is. But you don't like Jellyfin so keep using whatever you are using and I'll keep using whatever I'm using.
You obviously don’t though lol. Using a VPN is not exposing it to the internet - it’s a private network. It’s even in the name!
That’s why I switched to Emby and only sometimes regret it lol.
My server seems to have easier time transcoding with Emby and personally like the UI over Plex. Emby sucks at finding metadata though.
Jellyfin.
That is all.
I thought the topic said "FPS Plex" and then I imagined a streaming service where you could play any first-person shooter instantly
Had the same Problem and needed to use the htcp client to make it go away.
I tried hitting the X thinking it was an ad XD
This is why I use emby.
Or you could properly configure your server to recognise local ips
well everythig has been working fine for years as is, and still works fine on firefox (I wanted to cast to chromecast tonight, it worked fine 2 days ago)
I'm not gonna waste my time explaining how software might change over time, if you think you'll never have to touch your Jellyfin server moving forward you're sure to be disappointed
when you cant read and dont know what youre talking about but you want to say something anyway:
after seeing this edit on the top post I felt like OP was not not really looking for input and instead jumped ship when he had to change a single setting after an update in a software he had been using for years
Never. Break. Userspace.
You can stream from a jellyfin server to Kodi
Rip. I use AgentDVR for security and they do the same thing, but at least with camera footage you don't want that to be external
Check out zoneminder, it's the defacto open cctv server.
As for anything that offers a service for external access, that's just setting up dynamic dns and setting up one port forward, I don't understand why so many people struggle with that that they pay a third party a monthly fee to do it for them.
Frigate is pretty good, too. I've only been running it for a few months but I'm very happy with it.
I agree, streaming on local network should be free, what is.
I had other reasons too, so a while back I tried other self hosted solutions and I got back to Plex, it is more polished and a cleaner user experience. I'm happy to pay for a well written software as long as it is reasonable and not too greedy.
I looked back at jellyfin's history. I have had it installed for over 3 years, just not transitioned to uisinf it as up until last night plex had worked just fine (even with remote access)
Should have got the lifetime! The jellyfish UI is garbage without a mouse and keyboard BTW. Make sure to get that set up as well.
Just pay for bad software! That solves all problems.
Jellyfin is garbage compared to Plex. You can't even use a remote properly. Sorry not sorry.
No you're doing it wrong! This is a Plex bash thread! Angry face!
I mean it's a mouse cursor, it's not exactly a secret, just a limitation for a small project. I thought most here knew that lol.
Dude(ette), I have nothing to do with this self hosting thing and even I knew years ago plex was shit. It's been extremely obvious just from browsing reddit (before leaving) and lemmy. I don't know anything about any of this other than plex having an extremely bad reputation. How did you manage to become part of this and still chose to use it?
because like 10 years of use, maybe more?