Plex is starting to enforce its new rules, which prevent users from remotely accessing a personal media server without a subscription fee.
If anyone needs it: https://jellyfin.org/
Anybody still using Plex kind of deserves what they get at this point. They’ve been announcing these anti-consumer “features” for a while now.
Two years ago, when I found out that you need damn subscription, to watch YOUR stuff with transcoding on your device in local network, from your local server - I complained on reddit and a lot of people was disagree with me for harsh position.
They_got_what they_focking_deserve.png
Pure rent seeking. It’s not the only example. So many products have artificial defects deliberately added by the manufacturer so that they can then charge you to disable the defect.
Years ago now, they pushed an offer for lifetime subscription onto my server. I clicked it, went through to their website and bought it, paid, the subscription activated and worked.
The next day they emailed to say actually i wasn’t eligible for the offer, they cancelled it and refunded me and said it would actually cost $30 more.
I installed Jellyfin that same day, it was pretty buggy back then but was definitely the right decision.
People don’t deserve to be mistreated but it is surprising that folks haven’t abandoned it if they’re so actively anti consumer.
I kind of understand why someone would honestly. Jellyfin subtitles are still a hot mess for a lot of formats unfortunately. Also, while plex has tried really hard to ruin their UI, I’ve still had more trouble explaining where to find things in Jellyfin. And if you’re sharing your collection with friends or family members there’s a lot more technical stuff involved.
So I can see why the balance might still tip toward paying plex still for some people.
Luckily I bought a lifetime license ages ago before the first price hike so this doesn’t affect me yet. So I’m just riding out the decline, running them in parallel until plex completely breaks. slowly transitioning the family as they get annoyed with broken features. Plexamp is quickly taking care of that 😅
Are there legal ways today to have your own media server serving new TV shows? I see the point if you’re sailing the high seas, but curios if there’s other uses for one (for videos)
I have a couple of USB Hauppauge TV receivers in our HTPC which I use with NextPVR. I cut the ads from the recordings then bang them into Jellyfin
Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin are all legal, and each have ways to serve liveTV alongside your own locally stored content, and DVR that liveTV if you want. You’d just have to purchase a liveTV subscription from your local provider (or go the Pirate route ofc).
I forgot that live TV is a thing. I thought the primary use was to serve VOD
Any recommendations for Linux distros for a Jellyfin server?
Debian and Ubuntu have the most docs and guides If you know what you’re doing nixos or ucore would be pretty unbreakable Paid for product I love Unraid
Trash guides is pretty good for getting started https://trash-guides.info/
I have my jellyfin container running in podman on Alpine Linux.
I just downloaded the .deb (unless it was an AppImage) and it ran without further tweaking.
I set mine up with Debian and Swizzin community edition.
Yunohost
Jellyfin users, how is the transcoding situation? I have a mix of AV1 and H265 and I need to get smooth playback to my living room Apple TV for families’ sake.
All dependent on the hardware you run the server on. Give it a good GPU and you’re off to the races
Just as long as you’re fine with your media server absolutely eating power all the time
Stop encoding in av1 and get a low power older intel chip around 10th gen or so with quick sync. Unless you have like 5+ users watching 4k media at the same time this will handle transcoding absolutely fine while using far less power than a dedicated gpu
I don’t encode in AV1, I use HEVC. But while your argument is not unreasonable, it misses the component of file size and amount of disk space required.
HEVC (x265) takes half the space of x264. While it does require a more modern GPU, it can be run on lower powered Intel CPUs with an integrated GPU just fine, so long as the CPU is new enough. Though it can only handle 2-3 streams on a CPU like the Intel chips in a ZimaBoard. So you need to choose wisely.
Person you responded to said av1, I didn’t mean to imply you did. HEVC is good balance and quicksync will handle it as you’ve said. 10th gen stuff will handle 4-5 at the expense of more power (but less than like a typical gpu build).
Last statement you made is critical - usage dictates build
I guess it’s a platter vs energy cost thing. For me it’s way cheaper to buy more storage for my little puck PC that can handle ~4 streams at 1080p and sips power.
Infuse player with jellyfin or direct nfs/samba if in same network
Infuse is not free. I love it and use it on my Apple Devices, but just wanted to have this as an FYI.
If you’re ok with Plex, then you’ll be ok with Jellyfin
And we also have metadata manager, so you don’t have to rename your TV show files every time!
I can’t speak for client capabilities on Apple devices, but what’s your server hardware? CPU or GPU transcoding?
I have an AMD GPU in my server and have no issues transcoding AV1 and H265 for my lesser capable clients.
You can also setup Jellyfin in parallel to Plex and give it a whirl.
You can also setup Jellyfin in parallel to Plex and give it a whirl.
Usually. When Plex leaked that they were selling user data, I was running Plex server on an Nvidia Shield, a unique build of Plex that ran as a core service of the Android device. There ain’t no Jellyfin analogue of that monstrosity.
To anyone saying they’re happy since they already have a lifetime Plex pass, do you really think they won’t come for you too?
Bought a lifetime pass, switched to Jellyfin after way too much Tidal promotion on my server.
I paid 79€ almost a decade ago. I got more than my moneys worth. Even the current lifetime (on sale) is less than a year of Netflix. More expensive than piracy + Jellyfin ofc if that’s your benchmark 😀
I have a Jellyfin instance running anyway, I’ll switch to that if Plex enshittifies.
This is a "slippery slope’ argument and thus a fallacy.
Let users decide how they want to run their own stuff. Right now if you have Plex pass this isn’t an issue. If it becomes an issue, then you’re in the exact same position you’d be in today if you decided to move away from Plex now.
I moved away from Plex years ago, but I don’t blame users for sticking with it, it still has a lot of advantages over jellyfin.
EDIT: Y’all are trippin’ over yourselves to complain about what other people choose to deploy on their own hardware.
If it becomes an issue, then you’re in the exact same position you’d be in today if you decided to move away from Plex now.
I disagree. Right now you got time to do the research, plan the move and test it out with a demo setup. You do not know if you got the time if Plex decides to screw their lifetime users.
Yes this is hypothetical.
The steaks are very high. I could lose access to my media library for 1-2 evenings (the time it would take me to switch to Jellyfin).
It’s entirely hypothetical. Jellyfin could also close source tomorrow, hypothetically (It happened with Emby so there’s precedent).
Jellyfin can’t go closed source as it’s a fork of Emby from before it was closed source, licensed under the GPL. They don’t own that code so they can’t change that license, thus the whole project is GPL. In addition, Jellyfin isn’t being developed by just one company (it’s all volunteers), so every new contribution is also GPL licensed, owned by each contributor. The only way Jellyfin could go closed source would be to cut out the Emby backend and for every single contributor ever to agree to change the license, or have their code cut out. In short it’s not happening, and if somehow it did the project would just get forked regardless for everyone to switch to (the community did it once already!).
No, you have not understood anything. Assuming Jellyfin would go closed source, (ignoring the GPL license and so on) you would not notice anything. Your server and service would be unchanged by this.
Emby is the best example, the community will fork it and you server lives on. Even if not, then the server and software is still yours.
Introducing “Plex pass plus”! With no advertisements!
But they haven’t yet
I should not have paid for it.
Oh I’m fully aware I’m just to lazy to set up jellyfin and navidrome quite yet.
Am I the only one who thinks jellyfin is not only superior to pure, but also way more intuitive to setup? I still don’t understand how plexs routing works, and why I need a central account in order to connect to my own server.
Probably not the only one, but configuring your server for outside access is way easier with Plex.
Since I mainly use these services for streaming my music collection (long time cd collector), I declare that Plexamp is simply superior to jellyfin. It is really awesome and feature-rich and jellyfin does not even come close to Plexamp regarding music in my opinion.
Have you checked out the Finamp app? It’s to Jellyfin what Plexamp is to Plex. It’s much better for music that Jellyfin proper.
Have you checked out the Finamp app?
Yes, and it’s nowhere close to PlexAmp. Have you ever used PlexAmp?
Is it more intuitive to set up for remote streaming to friends…? That’s the use case here and as far as I know the answer is a big “no”.
I got Jellyfin set up and available for streaming in less than two hours. Plex kept demanding that my friend buy a pass to download something, so I was like, nah. Jellyfin works flawlessly and is (in my opinion) a far superior option. I constantly had issues with Plex.
If you have a static IP it’s super easy. If you don’t, it’s less easy, but you should configure Plex the same way if you don’t want to use their proxy, which lowers the speed anyway.
Simple reverse proxy like Nginx PM or Caddy before Jellyfin server and that’s it? Yes, it’s also good to have some DynDNS domain but those don’t cost a thing. Then CrowdSec plugin to keep the bots away and look you’re homelabbing like a pro! Next thing you know you are building this all on top of hypervisor like Proxmox, configuring GPU passthrough and whatnot.
Vs “just install Plex on any NAS from its built in appstore” that’s like 42 steps too many for the regular user.
pretty easy with tailscale
Explain how you connect your in-laws roku to Jellyfin with tailscale.
forgot most of you here are americans, roku isn’t a thing in my country. everyone who i share to uses a pc, htpc, phone or tablet for that
Roku is also a thing in Europe.
Though I also gave up trying to set up Tailscale for people and just exposed Jellyfin (behind a reverse proxy).
Guess what I didn’t have to setup with plex? That’s right, a reverse proxy.
A VPS with a reverse proxy connected to your tailnet and a dyndns domain. It would be cheaper than Plex premium, you can use the vps for other stuff, and you have 100% certainty it will never ever show ads.
If you want to try it I think you should be able to do it With a Raspberry pi or equivalent on their network running Tailscale, use iptables to forward all inbound traffic on the Jellyfin port from that device to your Jellyfin server which is also running tailscale. Connect their Roku using the pi as the address for Jellyfin. I’ve not tried this with Jellyfin but I had something similar working with a Minecraft server
Step one: get your in-laws a cheap Apple TV from whatever site you use for used electronics. Or even a new one.
Step one: you buy it and send it to me if you’re so bent on people running Jellyfin.
Lol
Edit: honestly, I could start itemizing why this person’s response is terrible, but all it feels like it deserves is “lol”.
well hello Mr. cranky 😅
took all of 5 minutes to convert plex-on-pi to jellyfin-on-pi. Probably harder to rename the host than install… fstab’s already set up and errything
Love jellyfin, super easy to install on my proxmox server. Its been running for nearly a year now, no problems. ❤️
Same. The setup was super easy.
Why would anyone use Plex over jellyfin anyway? The writing was on the wall years ago.
Skip intro on Apple TV not working on Jellyfin is probably the #1 reason I do not use it.
When tvOS 26.2 comes out I will tentatively test Jellyfin + Infuse, but until then, Jellyfin is a non-starter for me.
But I use Emby over Plex so still not using Plex.
Shout to another Emby user!
I set up Plex on my mum’s TV and she can just push play. The UI is intuitive (read: familiar) to her.
Jellyfin has a reputation for giving users more control and customizability, but the other side of that coin is that it’s more “fiddly”.
My users don’t want to fiddle.
This is legit the opposite of my experience. I am a relatively tech savvy user, I like to fiddle with all the settings and an ugly UI doesn’t inherently deter me as long as the experience is good, so when I first installed jellyfin I was ready to have a clunky experience fighting the UI.
Despite that, I was legitimately surprised at how Jellyfin was far less confusing for me to use out of the box than plex ever was. I found Plex’s UI very confusing to navigate on my TV and my family did not like using it either. I remember especially hating all the extra categories and freemium content plex added that I wasn’t interested in viewing but couldn’t remove (or at least did not find a way to remove). In Jellyfin all of my content is just there and very easily categorized and there’s no superfluous elements in the UI, just my stuff that I want to watch.
I remember plex also gave me more trouble during installation than jellyfin did. I actually found jellyfin very pleasant and intuitive to setup. Plex sent me down a Google rabbit hole to diagnose why it wouldn’t boot at all.
It was genuinely such an awful experience as a first-time user that it made me wonder why anyone would use plex.
I remember especially hating all the extra categories and freemium content plex added that I wasn’t interested in viewing but couldn’t remove (or at least did not find a way to remove).
Not doubting your experience at all. For all I know it’s a new option; I just discovered it, but for the other folks like me still stuck with Plex, most (all?) of this can be disabled in the Online Media Sources setting on the server (yeah - I know 🙄)…
That’s the opposite of my experience. Jellyfin just works and immediately exposes the content we’re looking for, plex tries overloading you with bullshit and burying your actual content
For remote streaming to, say, your mum’s house? (Or a friend, etc)?
Yes, after I set up the server properly (reverse proxy). With this change the same setup on the server side is necessary for remote streaming with free Plex.
My mum puts in the domain, username and password and starts streaming.
…reverse proxy…
Guess what I didn’t have to setup with Plex or Emby.
That’s because you had somone elses servers doing that part for you.
I believe you. I feel that way about iTunes (trauma intensifies).
But Jellyfin doesn’t have that reputation.
Are you seriously telling us you reading from three reddit threads from almost a decade ago and consider that “reputation”?
I am beginning to remember what made me think Jellyfin wasn’t user friendly.
Maybe it wasn’t the user interface after all.
What it’s like in these threads:
You’re not wrong.
I set up Jellyfin on my mother-in-law’s TV, it’s just push play.
My mum has an Apple TV (the device, not the subscription) and on there she uses swiftfin. The only issue has been sound not working on certain audio tracks on certain movies, but in general it is easy for anyone.
Both are very familiar interfaces for anyone used to playing something from a streaming service.
Not sure about swiftfin but try the option
downmix to stereosomewhere in the client playback settingsThanks, I didn’t manage to find many options in swiftfin, you don’t know if I can enforce it for a user from the server side?
That will be transcoding so from the server side make sure it’s enabled and working. Then you can limit the bitrate (per-user, or globally)
This way the client will stream the content and not direct play it.
Hopefully this fixes the issue with audio.
I think I tried this when troubleshooting and didn’t notice a difference. Nevermind, I pretty easily taught her how to bring up the menu and switch audio streams so she can solve it herself now.
I never really understood intuitive as a description for user interfaces. I remember back when opinion articles on Tech news websites would use that term to mean it “looks and functions exactly like Windows XP”
Idiomatic usage of ‘intuitive’ regarding interfaces breaks down into
-
‘familiar’, so, confusing intuition with knowledge, or
-
‘discoverable’, which is more accurate and describes things like icons and tooltips and menus, where the rules of usage become more or less apparent with exploration and logic.
Yep. What’s considered intuitive UI changes depending on what you’re used to.
It’s why Google fought so hard to put Chromebooks in American classrooms.
-
Plex is more polished, jellyfin is basically functional but we use Plex in our household because we watch movies all the time. I have my own personal jellyfin server on an old computer
I don’t think it is that is more polished, it’s just you pay for them to do the stuff you need to do yourself with reverse proxying, opening ports, securing stuff. This is only an issue if you are sharing outside your network of course.
How much more polish you need to watch a movie? Jellyfin has everything you need. I keep seeing these discussions and for the life of me I cannot figure out what is missing from jellyfin that people use Plex after all they have been doing for years
Working “watched” labels on the Apple TV client would be nice. Not having those is a deal breaker for me considering 99% of my use case is streaming media to my Apple TV over LAN.
I have Jellyfin running along side Plex in case I want to do remote streaming, but I never use it and generally just copy the files for what I want to watch to my laptop if I’m going to be watching something away from home. Or I can just VPN in to my home network.
Currently my biggest complain with Jellyfin and the reason I can’t switch to it completely is the bad subtitle support. There’s a bunch of clients and some subtitles work on one, but not the other and vise versa. It’s annoying to jump clients depending on what you watch. Sometimes subtitles just don’t want to load by default and you have turn them on for each episode. And even though I have Bazaar, sometimes I still need to download subtitles, and Plex has that built-in.
Either way, I already have lifetime subscription, there’s no point in switching. At this point I’ll only switch if JF becomes better or Plex becomes worse.
JF becomes better or Plex becomes worse
Both will happen.
Besides.
some subtitles work on one, but not the other and vise versa
For me it has worked everywhere. All of my media is in .mkv so it already contains the subtitles. It works in all browsers clients, Desktop clients, TV and Mobile clients. Works in VLC and MPV as well on desktop, TV and Mobile. Works with Kodi as well. Works on same network (via both host IP and reverse proxy) as well as remotely via Pangolin.
So you can try putting everything in one MKV Container or maybe change the subtitle formats (if that’s a thing).
Both will happen.
🤞. Hopefully it’s just JF getting better, of course, but that last app redesign on Plex was really rough. I had to downgrade the app to make it work well again.
Of course I can put extra work into formatting my subtitles to make them work everywhere. Sometimes they are embedded, sometimes they are an .srt file next to the video file. And I don’t want to spend time normalizing all of them. It already just works all the time on Plex, so I’ll simply wait until JF fixes the support.
I don’t think Jellyfins focus is currently to support irregular naming schemes. Naming media correctly with a proper scheme is the way to go.
Just so you know I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I’m not talking about naming schemes. The subtitles are detected, but they either crash the client or render improperly or just don’t show up despite being selected. I guess I’m really waiting for a decent multi-platform client that just works.
You can also try Wholphin, it’s a jellyfin client with subtitle search like Plex.
Thank you for your suggestion. That seems like a very nice JF client, but unfortunately it’s Android-only, and we do most of our watching on iPads.
I will definitely try it on my Android TV though.
I switched from a heavily used Plex server with about 10 users to Jellyfin with the samw usage patterns abour half a year ago. So far it’s been pretty smooth sailing. A better world is possible!
Can I install/use jellyfin directly on my tv? That’s the only think keeping me on pkex (I haven’t tried jellyfin but I’m open to other options)
I have a kinda old but still working great 4k TV that is not supported so I use a fire tv dongle. No complaints so far. The same for other family members who have Android tv and webos
It depends on the TV. They have official clients for Android TV, webOS and some more.
Depends on the TV. They have an official app on Android TVs, but I still happily use Chromecast for everything
Plex still has the most fully-featured music streaming app (Plexamp)
Also Audiobook apps don’t really exist for Jellyfin.
Yes. There’s AudioBookShelf for audio books.
There are plenty of good Jellyfin players too. I‘m currently using Discrete and I‘m quite happy with it.
Unfortunately it looks like that one is for Apple devices, whereas I use Linux on desktop and Android on mobile.
There’s some, but I haven’t seen any that have the main features Plex and Plexamp have:
- Cross-fading when playing random tracks, but gapless playback when playing an album in order
- Analysis of the music using a local neutral network, such that you can tell it to play play “similar” sounding songs to the current one
- Automatic playlists - liked songs, decades, etc
- Downloads for offline playback
- Multiple libraries, for example I keep regular music separate from DJ mixes
- Equalizer with presets for common headphones
And probably other things I’m forgetting.
Navidrome for service. Dsub2000 on android and feishin on desktop.
There, all your needs covered.
As a plus, dsub also does podcasts and audio books.
Because I don’t have to learn about things like proxies to try and open the service up outside my network in a secure manner or try to explain to family they need to run tailscale at the same time and then inevitably have to provide tech support for another aspect of “why is this not working?”
I just check allow remote access and it just works and I can go about my day doing things I enjoy more because fucking about with Linux and providing tech support are pretty low on that list for me :)
Why bother self hosting at all then? Paying somone else to do it for you and the deal constantly getting altered is pretty what you signed up for.
Same. For whatever reason Jellyfin just does not want to work outside of my network. I have fiddled with port numbers, settings, and everything else. I have no idea why it won’t work.
Sounds like you’re behind cgNAT, which essentially means there’s another router owned by your ISP that’s between yours and the open internet, which also requires port forwarding, but your ISP will never do that for you.
It complicates things, but the solution(s) are tools like tailscale, cloudflare Tunnels, or to rent a VPS just to host a proxy/vpn.
Plex solves this by using their own public servers as a proxy for you, but this is part of how they have control over your users/server/data, such as blocking remote streaming… That makes more than a few people uncomfortable.
Yeh these are things I realise and I know there are solutions. The way Plex does it isnt ideal but also it works for me and my current knowledge level.
Maybe in the future as I learn more I can move on but right now it works for me and I dont have the time or motivation to put into learning everything else I need right now, as with everyone else in the world right now there is a lot of other shit going on that it just isnt high on my priority list unfortunately.
I’m still in my first year of self hosting personally and as well as being a Linux newbie I have learnt a lot and it has been a steep learning curve with everything.
I only bring it up because you explicitly said you have no idea why it doesn’t work.
Take things at a comfortable pace; there’s no sense overwhelming yourself. Then you just forget what you’ve done and end up lost in your own maze.
I started with Plex myself, almost 10 years ago. Moved to Emby, where I learned about buying a domain, setting up ssl through a reverse proxy, and just continued to explore from there. Today I run ~26 containers/projects across three systems and I’m always keeping my eye out for interesting new things.
Best of luck with your journey m8.
The way networking has developed is honestly embarrassing. We shouldn’t have to have cgNAT or any of the other problems that come with how we’ve broken the end to end principle, and it’s made us reliant on centralized Services when there’s absolutely no technical reason why that ever had to be the case
Thankfully CGNAT isn’t as common in the USA as it is in other countries. In the US, ISPs generally either offer native IPv4 (most of the major ones), or only use IPv6 and provide IPv4 at all. The latter is the case with a lot of the mobile carriers, especially T-Mobile. Your phone only gets an IPv6 address, and their network uses 464XLAT to connect to legacy IPv4-only servers.
I can’t wait till meshvpn technology becomes so common that we forget what life is like without it. Tailscale is awesome but it is just the beginning
Should I begin telling you about the wonderful man in the middle attack that I reported to Plex over 3 years ago and how it’s still not fixed? Anyone can setup a plex instance and use that very instance to request an ssl certificate on behalf of any other plex instance, and then setup shop and gain complete access to your machine.
You’re going to need to back up your claim otherwise you might as well be lying as there’s no CVE like this I can find nor any public disclosure.
Plex have a bug bounty program and a responsive security team too.
Post your security report.
Do you have a CVE for this?
Sounds like a skill issue.
Typical condescending reply that I expect, yes it is a “skill issue” and I don’t really give a fuck. We don’t all have the same skills or the same levels of interest in acquiring those skills, some of us just want a solution that works easily for their skill level.
It is your kind of attitude as well that puts more people off learning these things because without a real interest in learning these things those kinds of hostilities just put people off of wanting to participate in those circles.
Quick question, do you know how to wipe your own ass?
Do you know how to rebuild your car’s engine?
Do you know how to remediate black mold spreading on the walls of a houseboat?
Do you know how to compile Linux to run on some custom arm hardware?
Do you know how to repair or rebuild a crumbling stone retaining wall?
There’s a good chance you may not know how to accomplish all of those tasks. There’s also a very good chance you may not care about knowing how to accomplish all of those tasks, as some of them may not be relevant to you. This is ok.
Finally, I know you’re posting on the Internet, but you don’t have to be an asshole, that’s a choice.
No, I am intending to take that course next year, any tips?
Yes. You could learn everything you need to know by watching a 20 minute YouTube video, but you’d rather use a paid product instead. That’s, like, the definition of a skill issue. The issue isn’t that the software is hard to use, it’s that you refuse to learn how to use it.
And that’s not the fault of Jellyfin, because the “ease of use” of Plex is because it’s a paid product. They can afford to run servers to make everything work for you without having to put in any effort to learn. You’re using their servers to make it easy for you, and you’re paying to do it.
It’s fine if you don’t want to learn to set up a service, but it does make me wonder why you’re commenting on a self hosting community. It seems to me like you’re not interested in self hosting. (Not trying to assume, but what you said is not what I would associate with someone who likes to self host.)
Except that just isn’t true unless you have prior knowledge of lots of other things. As with a lot of documentation within this space it all presumes prior knowledge of different things.
Most things you read or watch will start with just do x but if you don’t already even know how to do x then you have to go down a further rabbit hole to find out how to do that. Everything you try and do is a series of these things so your 20 minute YouTube video turns into hours of trying to learn other things to tie in with it.
On top of that I dont understand the underlying security implications behind opening my network up to the outside world, it is all well and good following some 20 minute video but without understanding the underlying implications of what you are doing how can you really fully trust that information because I dont understand everything behind it?
Again, I never said it wasnt a skill issue, I literally agreed with you that it was…
Also why can I not comment and participate in a self hosting community just because I dont do things exactly the way YOU want me to does that mean I automatically can’t participate?
It is your kind of hostile and condescending attitude along with documentation that assumes too much prior knowledge that makes both the self hosting and Linux communities really unwelcoming to people that are looking to even dip a toe into them. This all or nothing attitude where only your method of doing things is acceptable and anything else is seen as fair game for mockery and condescension.
I’m new to the space and maybe in the future as I learn more about it I can move on to other things as I gain the knowledge I need but people like you, whose attitude is just fucking shitty are really off putting in these spaces. Everyone needs to learn and the culture of condescension and mockery towards new users by a large majority of the existing user base doesn’t make more people want to join in and learn.
Cheers for adding absolutely nothing to the conversation though and further putting me off wanting to learn any more or continue to interact with the communities though. You’re really helping push adoption of things like this.
Again, you just sound like you’re not interested in self hosting. I wasn’t even that condescending to you, but you took it that way. You said you don’t want to learn how to self host in a community about self hosting. Like, imagine if someone went into a community about bicycling and was like, “Well, I don’t want to ride bikes, but I like motorcycles because I don’t have to pedal.” You should expect a certain level of disregard in a community if you’re going into that community saying you’re unwilling to learn the basics of what that community is about.
If you’re not interested in self hosting, I’m not saying you’re not welcome here, because a. you are and b. I don’t moderate this community anyway, but I genuinely wonder why you’re here. You did say you might be interested in the future, so…
This is a genuine offer: if you want to learn how to self host, I will get on a video call with you and teach you how to set up some services on your home network and open them up in a secure way. I write and run my own servers, and have for well over a decade, so I am qualified to teach you what you need to know, if you want to learn.
Yeh that is fair enough, maybe I worded it wrong in the first place as it is more that right now I dont have the time or motivation to do the learning due to everything else going on in life and I do conceded that I did jump first to condescension but that was based more on a lot of previous interactions I have had within the broader Linux community so I apologise if that was not your intention but “sounds like a skill issue” is a usual dismissive response that is often meant to be condescending.
I have put a lot of time in the last year into learning Linux to get to a place where I have proxmox running as well as a NAS and that was all from a place of zero prior knowledge and that was a steep learning curve and I think I am some what jaded from that experience going forward too due to some interactions and how not easy to follow documentation is for someone entirely new to the space.
I do appreciate the offer and maybe in the future I could take you up on the offer when I have more time and mental capacity to put back into furthering my learning within this space. Apologies for jumping straight to an assumption of your position based on previous interactions if that wasnt your intention, it just came across as such.
What?! Why don’t you have to do those things with Plex?
Because it does it for me? In Plex I just tick one box in settings to allow remote connections and then choose which libraries to share to which users and bam they can access all that content just by downloading the Plex app and logging in on their end.
No fucking about.
Doesn’t Jellyfin operate the same way?
I’m not sure there is any difference.
Plex has an automatic proxy service hosted by their public servers. If you haven’t or can’t configure port forwarding correctly, plex will route the connection through their own servers.
The problem is, that also means Plex co has total control over your server and the data sent between it and clients if they so choose. Anything from quietly logging the data sent back and fourth, to controlling who can connect and what they can do while they are.
Jellyfin has to be correctly exposed to the internet via port forwarding or tools like tailscale/a vpn; but it’s entirely your server under your control. You have ultimate control over how your server can be accessed, but that also means you’re responsible for actually setting that up.
Thanks! It’s been so long since I’ve used plex. I didn’t know they offered their own proxy service now.
It does not, not at all.
No, not at all. Jellyfin you’d have to setup a proxy or some kind of VPN like tailscale for the remote client to be able to access the media. I started to try and figure it all out when I first set up my server but as I have said in another reply j dont really care to waste the time learning how to do it in a secure manner and minimise the friction on my other users so I dont know the ins and outs but jellyfin you absolutely can’t just tick a box and share a library.
Also jellyfin meta data analysis was shit compared to Plex and so I’d have to spend even more time actually managing the server that I dont have to do with Plex.
Jellyfin is free open source software, they don’t have the money to provide free proxies to their users.
I mean Plex is not free, you pay for those services.
I’m ready to replace plex but unless something major has changed in the last several months I simply can’t understand how people feel jellyfin is a comparable solution to plex. I couldn’t even get past the user interface and it falling flat on its face with media recognition.
Jellyfin is the solution if you have a media file on your computer and you want to stream it to your TV in a different room and Bare Bones works fine. It serves my use cases for a lot of things pretty well, but for hardcore self-hosted streaming Plex still has more features and polish
Might want to take another look at Jellyfin. My experience has been that as long as the video file s are at least somewhat reasonably named and organized, Jellyfin has no problems identifying a file and looking up its metadata.
I dunno what you were doing wrong, but Jellyfin is a strong alternative to Plex that has feature parity. The only reason to use Plex over Jellyfin is if you want the streaming channels Plex has. Especially since many of the features Plex has are locked behind a paywall, whereas on Jellyfin they are free.
I use consoles because I have kids. Ps5 doesn’t have jellyfin but does have plex in its store.
This is a big part of the problem. You can use Plex on PlayStation, xbox, Roku, apple tv, iPhone, android, etc…
The apps are ubiquitous, the coverage is complete. In just about any situation, Plex is a workable option.
What about remote streaming, to other users…?
what about it? anyone who hosts a Jellyfin server probably already has a reverse proxy set up. if not, then that is another 2min setup required, if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I think the situation under discussion is converting plex users to jellyfin though. Most plex users won’t have a reverse proxy setup because it’s not needed.
this is the selfhosting comm. I’m willing to bet that virtually ever person here who has a home server of some kind, has a reverse proxy or VPN set up that they could access Jellyfin from.
You need to properly name your media with a proper scheme (including tmdbid/imdbid).
Looks fine to me, I replaced plex like 3-4 months ago
Jellyfin / jellyseer + arr
There are custom themes out there that change the interface.
Right click -> identify-> Title name, has yet to fail me.
Its been a long time since i used plex so I can’t say how much “easier” its over there but compared to the days before streaming this little upfront work takes less time then going to a physical store to rent.
Maintenance takes no work and it cant be enshitificated (someone will just port it)
Jellyfin is notoriously full of security holes. It’s recommended to not expose it to the Internet. It’s also easy easier on Plex, at least until this bullshit, to have a random non-techie family member sign in to your Plex server from anywhere. I never liked Plex and never got into it, but I see why people used to prefer it.
I think Emby is a good middle ground for people looking to jump ship from Plex. But I switched to jellyfin from my lifetime Emby sub because the plug-in community there feels dead and Emby development felt dead in the water.
Please do explain or link sources to what you think are “security holes”.
It has several unsecured endpoints.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415
If you read the comments the devs know it’s a serious issue but don’t want to break backwards compatibility fixing them. Their solution for now is to warn people of the risks of exposing their instance to the Web. Which I don’t think they’re doing a great job of.
Aside from most of those being “potential issues”, which weren’t proven, the rest are GETs of things that do not need to be secret, things like album art and list of installed plugins. Besides the one plugin issue, which was an actual security issue, which was fixed over a year and a half ago. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/pull/11436
Contrast that with Plex which has numerous high severity CVEs that include things like remote code execution, directory traversal, and more.
list of installed plugins.
Yeah, as you said, that’s a pretty serious security issue. That’s a data leak that explicitly lays out the shape of your attack surface. It tells the attacker exactly what additional software your server is running and if any of it includes known vulnerabilities, the attacker now knows how to gain access.
That only works if the plugins are somehow accessible through an api controller, which as far as I’m aware, is not how jellyfin plugins work. So no, it wouldn’t increase your attack surface at all.
You’re aware those CVEs are only relevant for ancient versions of Plex and were fixed long ago?
Those are the the ones that somone has managed to find in closed source software…
They are not marked as resolved.
CVEs don’t get issued “resolved” statuses… They are either reserved, published, or rejected (technically NVD have a few extra for published). That’s just junk data in that tool you’re using. Use authoritative sources like cve.org or nvd.nist.gov.
You can see the CPEs on NVD and they’re old versions of Plex (and were old when the vulns were published).
And you think if Jellyfin were a comparable size, there wouldn’t be just as many or more?
No… because more people would be working on it.
Isn’t that the point of major version upgrades? To make breaking changes?
Its also possible for a webserver to offer two versions of an API. Add a new one that needs authentication, mark the old one as deprecated and add a checkbox to disable it. Then clients can update to use the secure one and if you use and unmaintained client you can enable the old insecure api
Using jellyfin on Chromecast. For the past 3 weeks I’m stuck not being able to use it because some update broke subtitles support for external players. App became useless, I can’t downgrade it, and the bug is still not fixed.
Not going to use Plex, just my 2 cents.
I haven’t had any problems with subtitles. You mind linking the issue report you’re referring to?
I am buying a old computer to setup a jellyfin server. It looks simple enough for me.
Setting up Jellyfin as a local media server is very simple. Setting it up with easy access for remote friends and family is a hassle.
Well I just want it for myself. I have no immediate plans on sharing.
it’s not a hassle. just add a reverse proxy and you’re set. the setup for that takes less time than setting up Jellyfin.
Works great for me, I pay nothing, why would I change that?
I’ve never used jellyfin, but do they also host proxy servers? AFAIK plex does and its costing them money, hence the need for paywalling this. You can still use tailscale and reverse proxy to allow remote streaming
You can still use tailscale and reverse proxy to allow remote streaming
I used to use Plex and when I discovered there was paid remote streaming function - that goes through their servers - my reactions were “Haha, no”* and checking whether my existing WireGuard setup would do it instead.
Whaddya know, remote streaming using Plex and PlexAmp at no cost.
*Not because I begrudge them recouping costs, but because it’s designed that way to justify charging for it, gives them whatever information they want from my viewing, and it’s not self-hosting if there’s any third party cloud/account component to it.
Jellyfin does not host anything. With this change free Plex users behind a reverse proxy (or VPN) and Jellyfin users behind a reverse proxy (or VPN) work the same for remote access.
The only difference is that Plex no longer provides expensive services for free, while Jellyfin never provided them.
This is my understanding and I’m surprised with the negative reaction. I think jellyfin is the better alternative being FOSS but this is not the reason.
The only reason I went with plex was easy remote access. Now with the state on reverse proxies and tailscale tunnels we happily ditched it.
just pay for a lifetime pass…
I did in like 2007 how is that relevant to what I posted?
I’m almost certain you changed your comment.
however, I fail to see the relevancy of proxies and tunnels to the content of the original post.
You’d be wrong both times, have a good weekend though
Enshittification intensifies
Plex is not free. Plex is paid software, just like Google Photos or iCloud. The only free software is open source. Open source everything. Doesn’t matter if the client is open source. If the server isn’t, it’s not open source. (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, SNAP!)
Unfortunately this idea that open source is free is a bit toxic in a way. It’s definitely not free to make, it takes years of dev time, and sure, those people often do it without any compensation. And therein lies the problem. People here bitching about jellyfin not doing x or y, but doing nothing to support full time development of it’s creation, then shitting on the devs for not having a perfect product, leads to good devs leaving OSS behind.
Edit: I’ll also say, I get the issues that come with proprietary software in the modern age, especially anything online, but there’s almost this push towards not paying for software. Because some software is free and open source, paying for closed source software makes you a rube or something.
Yeah, I am one of those open source devs who doesn’t get paid for it. But I can’t really say it’s the fault of normal users. They’re just people trying to get by. The fault really lies in corporations using open source without supporting it. Some corporations do give back and support communities, but a lot just take and don’t give anything back.
Personally, most of what I write for my company, SciActive, is open source. The only thing I don’t release is my actual product (Port87), but everything I’ve built in order to build it (the ORM, Nymph.js, the UI library, Svelte Material UI, the WebDAV server, Nephele) are all open source.
I do get users shitting on these projects sometimes, but the majority of communications I get are respectful and gracious. It does sour the experience when someone acts rudely, but I try to not let them get under my skin. Some devs have trouble not being bothered by it, and for them, the rude users and lack of compensation are so much worse.
What keeps me writing open source though is that I just genuinely have a passion for writing code. I recently built a full text search engine into Nymph, and the whole process was so much fun. I think that’s what powers open source, genuine passion for what we build.
(There’s one project that gets shit on a lot more than my others, QuickDAV, which I’ve never really understood. A lot of people say they’d rather use SyncThing, which is fine, but they have different use cases, so it just baffles me. It’s like someone looking at Inkscape and saying they’d rather use GIMP.)
Longterm MythTv user here, watching the discussions
🍿
Lol, guess who just made themselves a target. They are now profiting directly on people who stream content they don’t own from other people’s servers. Plex is going to go down when Hollywood sues them.
I believe if the server hosting the content has a plex pass then end users are allowed to stream from it without any additional subscription or membership. At least that is how it was several months ago when they announced this.
But you are right, even with the above being true, there will still be a non-insignificant portion of users paying to stream from servers.
Only old accounts are grandfathered into this for sharing libraries to other plex accounts.
When did/does the grandfathering period end?
I hadn’t heard that aspect of it before and would like to know more.
Thank you for the info!
I don’t know maybe 2023?
And the account had to have a Plex pass at the time.
Ok, if you find any info on that please post it. I’m going to be on the look out for it and do the same if I find it.
I’ve had a plex pass since before 2023 so this doesn’t affect me either way.
But 2023 doesn’t sound right for when the grandfathering ended. I do not doubt that there is an end date for grandfathering but for that to have happened in 2023 sounds punitive towards their users and not a good long term strategy.
Sure, enshittification and all that. I don’t doubt greed is the motive but they had to have known by ending grandfathering 2 years before implementing a policy like this would stir a user revolt and strengthen their competition. Especially with all the increased enshittification they have pushed out over those 2 years.
Bought a lifetime Plex pass a few years ago so this doesn’t affect me. It’s honestly worth the cost especially over time.
I also bought a lifetime Plex pass a few years ago, but I’ve migrated to Jellyfin because Plex is no longer a trustworthy project.
Same. That’s for me a red flag that a company took the enshittification path and things will get progressively worse.
Plus I would rather support an open source project that benefits the whole community than a greedy company who is trying to milk their customers.
Tbf Plex lifetime is often on sale and relatively cheap. For me Plex is a paid Software the free part was always more of a demo.
🥾👅
