[HN Gopher] End the Streaming Struggle with Plex
___________________________________________________________________
End the Streaming Struggle with Plex
Author : sp8
Score : 124 points
Date : 2022-04-05 18:12 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.plex.tv)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.plex.tv)
| mdoms wrote:
| I tried to find these features on my Android TV and it's nowhere
| to be found. Same on my Android phone. Great work team.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I stopped using Plex when it started requiring a cloud login to
| access my local media
| morganvachon wrote:
| Same. Several years ago I was a happy Plex user, but our
| Internet got knocked offline and we wanted to watch some local
| content, no dice. I canceled my Plex Pass sub as soon as I had
| Internet again. I use Emby now which offers pretty much the
| same experience without the need for a permanent Internet
| connection. Their subscription offers a few bonus features but
| it's not required for LAN streaming.
| enobrev wrote:
| Not that I'm trying to convince you to come back, but Plex
| does work without internet access. The Roku app allows you to
| set up a fallback ip when it happens as well.
|
| I don't love the cloud login either, but I do still use it.
| Just wanted to point out that the server and (some?) clients
| work without it.
| [deleted]
| zzzeek wrote:
| I hope plex devs read this thread and get the clue that their
| system is totally ripe to be replaced with something else, I've
| used plex for many years and the technical quality of the server
| has just declined. people who use plex, who are therefore the
| types of people with an appetite to "run their own server", have
| _absolutely no interest_ in having to sign up on a website, or
| get ads, see anything "streaming" (insane! the streaming market
| has tons of huge players, plex...) or any other kind of crap, all
| of which has been added to plex over the years, while meanwhile
| the server uses tons more disk space and memory than it used to
| and still fails to classify some very simple content quite often.
|
| I havent bothered to look at alternatives in a long time and it
| seems there are more now than there used to be. will be looking
| when i next have time.
| mdoms wrote:
| So you think they should stake their whole business on pleasing
| customers who not only don't pay for the product but who make a
| hobby out of not paying for media? How do you supposed they
| keep the lights on?
| tbyehl wrote:
| Keep taking VC money? /s
| hnaccount141 wrote:
| That's the strange part though. The streaming service and
| most of these new features are free. Most of the major
| features they charge for via Plex Pass are geared at people
| running their own servers. So they seem to be alienating the
| only people who have any reason to pay them in the first
| place.
| parkingrift wrote:
| Remove the login requirement except and unless users try to
| access PlexPass features.
| freetime2 wrote:
| I do have some sympathy for Plex trying to run a viable
| business based on a fairly niche product, but I agree the
| direction they've gone is pretty puzzling. People use Plex for
| basically the opposite reasons that they use streaming services
| - they want to actually _own_ their content libraries, they don
| 't want to pay subscription fees, they don't want their
| personal information stored in the cloud, they don't want to
| see advertisements, etc. Plex's strength was that they offered
| an alternative to all of that - and I wish they would have
| doubled down on just making that whole experience as nice as
| possible, while also maybe adding in some tools to make it
| easier to obtain content from "alternative" sources.
|
| Instead they've kind of gone down the route of trying to copy
| streaming services, and done a really poor job of it, and my
| experience the last time I logged into Plex was basically "wtf
| is all this nonsense?". To be fair though I was actually able
| to accomplish what I wanted - which was to be able to stream a
| ripped DVD from a media server (Raspberry Pi) to my TV - and
| for that it still worked pretty well.
| wppick wrote:
| VLC is a pretty viable alternative, and it has client apps for
| pretty much every platform. There could be some basic features
| added to make it a bit more usable (text search/filtering), but
| for basic use cases it works pretty good for me
| op00to wrote:
| I use Plex for my whole family, storing all our content on a
| cloud provider. I don't mind at all the internet
| connectivity/login requirements. I enjoy the "channels" Plex
| adds, if only to add a little background noise so I feel less
| lonesome when home alone.
|
| If the internet goes down, we'll read a book or play a game.
| keb_ wrote:
| I got so fed up with Plex constantly shoving their streaming
| service and nagging me to log into Plex servers when _I just want
| to stream my own files locally_ that I threw my hands up and
| installed Jellyfin[0]. It 's severely lacking in the same polish
| and functionality as Plex, but I'm pleased that I can run
| Jellyfin without ads or having to create a non-local account.
|
| [0] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
| noxvilleza wrote:
| I basically never see Plex adverts (and I only use local
| streaming really). Where do you normally see them?
| keb_ wrote:
| I think what I meant was the Home screen being full of
| Crackle & other movies/tv on demand.
| jdonaldson wrote:
| You can remove those if you want. It's a bit cringe to deal
| with, but I'm not going to call it a line that should never
| be crossed.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Plex doesn't allow system admins to remove them for all
| users - each user has to do it themselves. The intention
| behind the decision is pretty obvious and soured me
| considerably on Plex.
| unixhero wrote:
| Them you didn't learn that you should disable all other sources
| and feeds than your own servers.
| branon wrote:
| You should not have to do this at all, and you didn't have to
| with older versions of Plex.
|
| You also used to be able to log into "your" Plex server with
| a local account, but some years ago it was changed to require
| authenticating with Plex, Inc. to log in.
| unixhero wrote:
| No you can log in with your local username and password.
| Use the local IP and port. It lets you log in without
| contacting plex
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Plex probably has changed this, but a couple of years
| back it asked for my Plex account on the clients when my
| Internet went down. It let me login from localhost, and I
| had to disable login for my LAN so other clients were
| accepted. IIRC later Plex Inc also was down for a short
| while, and many people complained on the forums that
| their servers couldn't stream if Plex Inc. was down.
| joshspankit wrote:
| ... from every device. Each time you install. Sometimes after
| an update.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| You can disable all of that though. I do.
|
| I've considered switching but I have a very large and
| disorganized media library that Plex does a great job of
| organizing. About 10TB worth
| RajT88 wrote:
| Twonky. PlayOn. TVersity.
|
| All good options. Although some are trying to push a yearly
| subscription now. I bought one time licenses for all 3 when
| they were 20 a pop.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| I made the switch recently as well. I just don't trust plex not
| to engage in creepy stocker behavior by analyzing my viewing
| habits.
| bsharitt wrote:
| I also went the same Plex to Jellyfin route. Though it took me
| a couple of tries because Jellyfin wasn't quite up to snuff the
| first time I tried it, but the server/web side seems to be
| pretty great these days, at least I don't have any issues.
| While I'm glad they finally have an iOS app, I wish I didn't
| have to rely on a thirdparty app for Apple TV.
| sn0wf1re wrote:
| There is a Jellyfin Client for Apple TV, SwiftFin[1]. Even
| though it is in beta it seems to work really well.
|
| [1] https://github.com/jellyfin/swiftfin
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Reasonably happy Jellyfin user here, though my install is old
| enough that I guess the Fire TV app doesn't work with it? I'm
| a little scared to upgrade.
| brimble wrote:
| If you're running it in docker, just backup the config and
| cache dirs and try the new version. If there's a problem,
| roll back. If that breaks (probably not, but maybe),
| restore the backup, _then_ roll back.
|
| If you're not running it in docker, that'd _probably_ still
| work, if you track down those two directories. Just a bit
| less clean, and a little chance there 's some important
| stuff configured to be saved other places in the non-
| dockerized version, so it's a little riskier.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Are Emby and Kodi not popular alternatives anymore? I have
| been out of the game for awhile
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| The devs of Emby were always fairly hostile to the spirit
| of open source and when they closed the source in v6, the
| community's opinion shifted in favor of Jellyfin. As far as
| I can tell, Emby is pretty irrelevant now.
| ineptech wrote:
| Ditto. Plex was great but I'm not creating a web account to use
| local open source software that decided to be something else.
| branon wrote:
| The Plex software that you'd be running on your local machine
| (server) is closed-source/nonfree anyway, so yeah.
|
| Jellyfin is a much nicer alternative.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Can't emphasize this more: Plex was awesome compared to the
| alternatives years ago. XBMC (Kodi now) was my goto, but all
| media was played locally, Plex not only transcoded and
| streamed, it has native clients even for smart TVs.
|
| I'm still annoyed that by default it requires a login to
| their cloud to stream locally, which I found when my Internet
| failed and Plex refused to stream locally. Also the useless
| third-party stream channels, and the insistence on enabling
| DRM on Firefox when none of my media needs it to play.
|
| I've installed Jellyfin in parallel, and I agree it lacks
| polishing compared to Plex, but it gets the job done without
| getting in your way.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| I guess I wasn't hurt so much with their ads yet, but I've been
| seeing wonky behavior on Streaming to mobile and some other
| transcoding issues because of which I keep running into
| frequent pauses while I'm watching stuff. Was looking into
| alternatives but haven't found much yet.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Plex shines when transcoding, but sucks with direct
| streaming. Unfortunately direct streaming has to be disabled
| on the client, but the buffering and stuttering will go away
| once Plex always transcodes to that client.
| DrPhish wrote:
| You can put me on that list, too. The minute I found out I
| couldn't block my plex server from the internet and keep it
| working was the day it went in the trash. Except instead of
| finding another transcoding server, I just stream local media
| with Kodi over nfs and choose not to watch media outside of my
| home network. So much more problem free
| spike021 wrote:
| This happened to me recently.
|
| The internet went out, but I had some tv shows I wanted to
| watch already downloaded and indexed by my Plex server. So I
| tried loading Plex locally from my phone and it kept trying to
| "phone home" to have me login to the Plex website, which failed
| due to not having any internet access.
| arprocter wrote:
| Enable DLNA in Plex and you should be able to play things
| from VLC
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| DLNA is a horrible experience compared to Plex, just above
| a network share. Did you know you can install Jellyfin and
| point to the same storage that Plex uses? That way you keep
| Plex (in case you bought the pass), and have Jellyfin as a
| backup.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| It has an option to disable the login requirement for certain
| client IPs, or your whole LAN. Maybe it's erring in the side
| of caution, but most users just want to stream, disabling
| login in your LAN should be the default.
| ineptech wrote:
| Yes, for a while Plex was usable without creating a SaaS
| account, but with some features blocked, and this (reaching
| the server from outside its LAN) was one of them.
|
| (I say "feature" but of course what actually happened is that
| the plex developers decided to block requests from outside
| the LAN unless you sign up for their SaaS offering, which is
| kind of the opposite)
| Melatonic wrote:
| Isnt that the main feature of Plex? Playing local files?
| Seems ridiculous to require this....
| Larrikin wrote:
| Plex works without Internet just fine, but very
| annoyingly to enable local streaming without Internet,
| you need internet.
|
| Had to enable hot spot on my phone briefly when I had an
| internet outage. Annoying but now just works.
| fgonzag wrote:
| It has to be setup for local network streaming (and
| requires a network connection to do so the first time).
| Plex is far from perfect but its pretty much the best
| local media service I've found, so I'm not too mad at
| some of its idiosyncrasies.
|
| Getting plex pass is a must if you use it regularly in
| order to support hardware encoding.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| There's a setting that tells it not to require authentication
| for clients on the local subnet. Pretty much everybody should
| set that.
| uoaei wrote:
| How/why is that toggle not part of the configuration
| process during installation?
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| If you can write what about plex do you miss, I could also
| suggest you emby, if that makes sense. I also grew to dislike
| Plex, the UI detached from the base system, the continuous
| bugging, (it was also very slow for me, and buffery), but I got
| a lifetime license for emby and never looked back, I wasn't
| using anything in particular from Plex, but I also have IPTV +
| integration with the kodi "filesystem", and auto subtitles +
| conversion + own music streaming, but yeah if you have anything
| in particular missing I can maybe help, I kinda like Emby so
| I'd like to help them grow
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| admittedly it has been awhile since I tried it, but a good
| amount of the stuff I acquire is anime and plex handles it
| better than anything else, with the AMSA plugin at least.
| Anime can be a little weird with a different naming formats,
| multiple language audio and subtitles, fansub preferences,
| and sequel seasons sometimes having a different name from the
| first.
|
| I also need to be able to set a language preference for both
| audio and subtitles since I am one of those subs>dubs
| weirdos. If I have to set the audio track every single
| episode I am just going to hook up my laptop and play it in
| mpchc.
|
| Whenever I look at open issues for emby or jelly I get the
| impression that anime is annoying to deal with so I'll just
| stick with the plex plugin that already works.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Mh yeah sorry I have never watched anime so I am not sure
| how emby would handle that, it's a segment I have no
| experience with, but about setting default language for
| sub/audio it's possible, but not sure how much would it
| help ^^
| brimble wrote:
| I've got about a dozen (yeah, I know, not a lot) anime
| series on my Jellyfin, and also prefer subs in nearly all
| cases. I've had a problem with them. But, if someone's
| got something that's already working, they should
| probably just stick with that.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| If you are open for suggestion, there is a software that
| would work for you. Shoko Server[0] would be best for
| managing Anime. I like them since they made my anime
| folder easily to be managed. And they uses AniDB as their
| anime lookup. Basically it is a cataloger, file manager,
| file renamer, database lookup, file tracker software.
|
| They have a plugin for JellyFin, ShokoFin. And I believe
| they do have a integration with Plex.
|
| This replaced my previous setup and it works amazing with
| my Kodi.
|
| [0] https://shokoanime.com/downloads/
| brimble wrote:
| Oh good lord, I meant to write "I've _not_ had a problem
| with them. " Jeez. Too late to edit now. That is,
| Jellyfin's been fine for me but it _might_ only be
| because I 've been lucky, since I haven't tried a _ton_
| of anime on it.
| monkaiju wrote:
| I have a ton of anime and it indexes it quite well. Its
| organized by Sonarr though
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| Jellyfish is a fork of Emby.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I think it's the other way around? But emby went the paid
| way?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Which is why Jellyfin forked from Emby, and why you'll
| find 540 references to the word "emby" in the source
| code.
|
| https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/search?q=emby
| sodality2 wrote:
| Jellyfin is a fork of the Emby code back when they were
| OSS. They stopped being OSS, and Jellyfin forked.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Mh are you sure about that? I use emby because I like
| open source but I despise free stuff (at least when one
| can afford to pay), and I've seen that their server is
| definitely release under GPL license? But is paid?
| https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby https://github.com/M
| ediaBrowser/Emby/blob/master/LICENSE.md
|
| Afaik I am not sure anymore who forked who but I've seen
| convos on IRC back then and the issue was solely the fact
| that emby devs wanted to be paid
| keb_ wrote:
| https://archive.ph/5Rx3x
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Aaaa you're right I just noticed that the last tag is
| <3.6
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Making a project open source doesn't mean you can't
| close-source it later on and cease distributing updates,
| like what Emby has done. Jellyfin forked from the last
| open-source version of Emby that was available under a
| liberal license.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Yeye I just didn't notice the last tag on GitHub
| Melatonic wrote:
| It is unfortunate they did not just do the paid route and
| keep it Open Source.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Yeah it is a shame agree
| asabla wrote:
| They've been hinting this for a while now.
|
| It kind of is one of those missing features which I would have
| wanted back when I was subscribed to several streaming services.
| But now there is only one at the time + plex.
| criddell wrote:
| How are they indexing Netflix? Are they scraping or does Netflix
| have an API?
| STRiDEX wrote:
| I assume they've either partnered with a service like reelgood
| or justwatch or built their own version.
| phil21 wrote:
| I do wish Plex would focus more on technical aspects of their
| ecosystem than features at this point.
|
| I run a server for family, and use the Nvidia Shield as the
| client for pretty much any "nice" TV or sound system. This worked
| great for a couple years until a software regression made all 4k
| content have a 70% chance of locking up the Shield - which exists
| to this day.
|
| There are other small annoying bugs like that that don't make
| much sense, things like transcoding being weirdly laggy (minutes)
| on a quite idle machine that I never fully tracked down.
|
| I suppose writing this I am on the "bleeding edge" in that I
| expect to have "gold" 4k remux copies on-server, and then
| transcode down to whichever device is playing it.
|
| The Plex Kodi plugin is a workaround for the above mentioned 4k
| "original quality" playback bug, but that is not a great option
| for most end-users.
| smm11 wrote:
| No longer works with my VPN. No thanks.
| Stephen304 wrote:
| Did you try adding your VPN subnet to the trusted / local
| networks setting? I use OpenVPN in opnsense to access my local
| plex, though I can also use app.plex.tv which usually
| automatically uses direct connect using my forwarded wan ip
| which is fine for me.
| Markoff wrote:
| I was surprised to find out recently there is even whole sub
| dedicated to paid plex sharing r/plexshares
|
| I don't use it personally, but I guess it can have some appeal
| for some, I'm fine with no nice UI for my downloaded files from
| USB stick, I do all my research prior downloading so I'm in no
| need of fancy UI.
| compsciphd wrote:
| this broke plex for at least the non US users that is me on my
| shield.
|
| it insisted on throwing up the configuration screen for selecting
| the streaming services that I am subscribed to. However, since
| I'm not in the US and they didn't test where I am (unsure how
| many places they did test) it failed and crashed the app on
| startup.
|
| A redditor found the solution that you needed a vpn into the us
| to get past the initial configuration. One still can't
| reconfigure the streaming services, but that doesn't matter as at
| least it doesn't crash once one gets past the initial
| configuration.
|
| I wonder how much plex devs get paid, because my job wouldn't be
| happy if I broke peoples usages like they regularly do.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I, for one, still enjoy the plex server and plex app. The new
| version on nvidia shield fixed 4k performance issues, and plex.tv
| being an IdP for friends to login to my server is cool.
|
| I don't think logging in locally with a cloud account should be
| required, but IIRC it isn't strictly required... just a dark
| pattern.
| traspler wrote:
| I'm assuming this is at least partly a client feature so every
| user has to add their own subscriptions to their Plex account or
| does this allow to share subscriptions through a server with
| multiple users? So so you could add your subscriptions to your
| server and anyone with access to that server will also be able to
| use your subscriptions?
| Markoff wrote:
| r/plexshares is the way to go nowadays for certain group of
| lazy pirates
|
| personally I watch everything downloaded offline, streaming is
| still too unreliable
| traspler wrote:
| Ok scrap that, you only indicate what services you have access
| to and this is only the search engine part, it will simply
| redirect you to the services app/site when you select play on
| something, it is not embedded.
| ggoo wrote:
| I manage a Plex instance for my whole family (old). Plex keeps
| adding "online" features like this and each and every time I get
| evening messages confused with the changes. I'll be getting a
| couple tonight it looks :)
| ryandrake wrote:
| I predict a "Streaming Day of Reckoning" happening one day, where
| a critical mass of users suddenly loses access to a critical mass
| of content, because they became utterly dependent on streaming
| instead of physical media or local media storage. We occasionally
| read news of a handful of users losing access to a handful of
| content, and just shrug saying "Oh, well, streaming isn't perfect
| and this is growing pains." Maybe a user loses access to all
| their purchased Amazon movies because they got banned from the
| platform. "So sad," we say, as we continue to depend on streaming
| more and more. A niche streaming platform goes out of business
| and its small user base loses access to content. "Oh, well,
| there's still Netflix and Hulu," we say, as we keep switching to
| these platforms.
|
| One day, a big one is going to go dark, and millions of people
| will suddenly lose access to the hundreds of movies they got used
| to accessing, and _maybe_ we 'll start waking up and looking for
| better alternative business models than streaming the same bytes
| over and over from centralized services.
| brimble wrote:
| We ought not allow production companies to own distribution
| channels (and vice-versa), nor long-term exclusive deals with
| distributors. That's how we solved this when similar issues
| arose with studio ownership of movie theaters--those
| restrictions _just_ ended a little while ago, IIRC. But then,
| that was back when we, like, _ever_ told companies "no" when
| it was clearly in the public interest. Not sure we can still do
| that.
|
| Ideally, a production company shouldn't give a shit _where_ you
| watch their stuff, just _that_ you do. That 'd remove most of
| the friction that makes creation of a universal streaming UI
| difficult. It'd push distributors to compete on price and
| features, not exclusive access to content. All around a win for
| viewers, creating a healthier, more robust market.
|
| So, probably won't happen :-(
| noahtallen wrote:
| I completely agree! I've been thinking about that a lot. I
| think not allowing exclusive licensing deals at all would be
| a huge win for consumers. Especially in streaming, but
| possibly in other areas too. I can't think of a single reason
| it's good for consumers -- exclusive access to something on
| Netflix is ONLY good for Netflix. It's advertised as good for
| me, but it'd be even better for me if other services also had
| it.
|
| Exclusive licensing is just a way for the entire streaming
| industry to avoid competition. Are Netflix and HBO really
| directly competing if you have to get both to watch the
| content you want?
|
| Sure, they're competing for my attention with what I end up
| watching. But if I really want to watch something else, I'll
| just get to it later. It's not really either/or.
| op00to wrote:
| Where have the mysterious bits to be streamed run off to in
| your scenario? Is it possible they still remain available to
| rightsholders, and will simply pass the streaming rights to the
| next "big one"?
| vosper wrote:
| > One day, a big one is going to go dark, and millions of
| people will suddenly lose access to the hundreds of movies they
| got used to accessing
|
| Probably one of the remaining streaming services will just buy
| the content at fire-sale prices, and people who want that stuff
| will have to switch services - which they had to do anyway,
| because their one went dark.
| [deleted]
| julienb_sea wrote:
| The right to stream content is an asset which can and will
| change hands. If a streaming service is on the verge of
| shutdown, its streaming library can and will be sold off as
| part of shutdown proceedings and other streaming providers will
| happily step in. As such a "big one going dark" is going to be
| more of an annoyance than anything else.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I really don't understand this as a problem. Maybe for
| hardcores, who watch the same content over and over again and
| _need_ to see things as soon as possible, in a particular
| quality, but those are the types who are likely to invest in
| physical media anyway (and really, that is the "better
| alternative" for people who are paranoid about online services
| going dark/removing access/whatever).
|
| There's just so much content on so many systems, all cheaper
| than buying one dvd per month that (some even free), that I
| just can't see anyone really being at a loss for how to
| entertain themselves in the case Netflix goes dark.
| [deleted]
| zapataband1 wrote:
| can we all please just go back to bitorrent
| gadders wrote:
| Plex is nice if you have one of the TVs they support, but they
| recently pulled the Panasonic client over a falling out over
| certificates (iirc) and their attitude in their forums seems to
| be that they are doing you a favour.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I use Nvidia Shield's on all my TV's to run Plex. It's the only
| way I have found to reliably stream 4K HDR content.
| quaintdev wrote:
| I am just gonna live this here
|
| - https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
|
| - https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Having used both - I also strongly prefer Jellyfin.
|
| You get the whole service, open source, easy to run as a docker
| container or on K8s, love the web UI.
| brimble wrote:
| Indeed: #/bin/bash docker run
| -d \ --volume /opt/jellyfin/config:/config \
| --volume /opt/jellyfin/cache:/cache \ --net=host \
| --restart=unless-stopped \
| jellyfin/jellyfin:10.7.7-amd64
|
| That's "docker, run this and detach the console..."
|
| "Also, mount these two directories in the image, to where
| Jellyfin expects to store its config, so that stuff persists
| across container restarts and upgrades..."
|
| "... uh, I don't remember what --net=host does, I think maybe
| it directly exposes the container's ports on the host
| interface, because I was being lazy when I wrote this?
| Anyway, it works..."
|
| ".. restart this unless I explicitly stop it..."
|
| "... and run this official Jellyfin image, at this particular
| version"
|
| Then after the second "--volume" insert more lines for every
| folder you want to map in, like so:
| --volume /mnt/storage/movies:/media/Movies \ --volume
| /mnt/storage/tv:/media/TV \ --volume
| /mnt/storage/kid-movies:/media/Kids \ --volume
| /mnt/storage/music:/media/Music \
|
| Add as many as you like.
|
| You'll see the directories on the right of the ":" show up in
| the Jellyfin UI, where you can add them as media sources and
| tell it what's in them, who has access (say, granting some
| users access only to that "Kids" library), et c.
|
| Save as "jellyfin.sh" or whatever, and chmod +x. Run it.
| Done. To upgrade the version, change the last line to the new
| version, kill the container with a docker command, and run
| the script again. Do the same if you want to add more
| directories.
|
| (might want to check the version, that may not be latest,
| it's just what mine is running right now)
|
| You could also do it with docker-compose, I just tend not to
| do that unless I'm dealing with a container that depends on
| other containers.
|
| Works ~anywhere that can run Docker containers. Doesn't
| matter which distro you're using. I'm pretty sure it even
| comes back up on system restart, and I didn't do any extra
| work to make that happen. Self-contained, simple, and clean.
|
| [EDIT] To be clear, you also need to create those
| "/opt/jellyfin/config" and "cache" directories. The left side
| is what's on the host filesystem. But, you can put those
| anywhere, they don't have to go in "/opt".
|
| Helpfully, the "--volume" list is also a complete list of
| everything (aside from the shell file itself) that you might
| want to back up. Which is one of the things I love about
| configuring services with Docker.
| davemtl wrote:
| This is disappointing: "Note that this
| project is supported on all major operating systems except
| FreeBSD, which is still incompatible."
|
| Considering both Plex and Emby support FreeBSD, I'm sad to to
| learn that Jellyfin does not.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Is FreeBSD support really something worth worrying about?
| Perhaps it's also disappointing that Jellyfin doesn't run on
| AmigaOS?
| terrabitz wrote:
| In my case, I'm running FreeNAS/TrueNAS for storage and a
| Plex jail. I'd imagine there are a number of people in the
| same boat considering the popularity of TrueNAS.
| izacus wrote:
| It's great that you left this here but can you also leave a few
| words about why is it better than Plex (or Emby)?
| dont__panic wrote:
| Jellyfin has been really nice in my experience for audio
| streaming. I'll also plug Finamp, my mobile audio jellyfin
| client of choice, and Sonixd, my macOS jellyfin client, two
| amazing little pieces of software. Haven't tried it much for
| video though. I love the fact that I can manage my own logins
| and self-host -- if the media has to live locally, after all,
| why not handle the whole thing?
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| These are both great! Especially Sonixd. Finamp appears to be
| missing a "recently added" section but I'm going to test
| drive it for a week or so anyway.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Finamp is missing a few features, but it's a work in
| progress so I can forgive it. Planning on making a couple
| of PRs myself, for things like fixing the reverse sort
| order of album view and implementing other views offline.
|
| Oh, and for some reason local storage _deletion_ doesn 't
| work for me on iOS -- need to investigate that. But if you
| want to listen to music that's stored on Jellyfin and store
| some for offline use, it's great so far. Just needs some
| small stuff built out!
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Jellyfin is awesome. The DLNA support enables streaming to my
| local TVs without having to install apps on the TVs themselves,
| though I haven't heavily tested it with video yet (works great
| with music). Also the visibility of libraries can be managed
| per account, so not everyone you give a login to has to see all
| your content.
| dundarious wrote:
| I have a decent size library and accessing Jellyfin via DLNA
| from a PS4 was unworkable for me. There is no search, and I
| couldn't find any way to select specific movies other than
| scrolling through the entire library by title name, or
| finnicky categories like genre or release year. Plex's DLNA
| implementation provides a "By First Letter" listing so you
| can find it via "By First Letter > M > (scroll down past a
| dozen entries to 'The Matrix')" instead of "By Title >
| (scroll down past a few hundred entries to 'The Matrix')". I
| don't think I'd be able to stomach that amount of scrolling
| to watch "Zardoz" on Jellyfin.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| The way I do it is search for the media on my phone using
| the Jellyfin app, and the app has an option to cast it to
| whatever detected device via DLNA. You can do this from the
| phone app or web browser on your LAN.
|
| You do have to have your media metadata correct though,
| e.g. ID3 tags, etc.
| LinAGKar wrote:
| I haven't been able to get subtitles working with DLNA though
| TruthIsHeresy wrote:
| Plex also has DLNA support [1].
|
| [1]: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200350536-dlna/
| brimble wrote:
| The Roku app is tolerable (so, about as good as anything not
| from one of the companies that's big enough to gain access to
| the lower-level SDK)
|
| The Android app works really well on a Shield, and is much
| more pleasant to use. Can't vouch for other devices, and
| Android experience, especially Android TV, can vary a lot
| with the device. The Shield also handles more video codecs
| and can pass through more audio formats than my Roku can,
| which means less transcoding, which means my poor, weak old
| server doesn't get abused while still only barely managing to
| generate a slideshow. In fact, I'm not sure I have _any_
| files that the Shield can 't handle natively.
|
| I love, love, love having a Web interface to use when I want
| to change things. Mixing the library & settings management
| interface with the "6-foot" remote-friendly interface, as on
| Kodi/XBMC, is a UI disaster. It's also very nice as a
| fallback streaming option, and works way better than I'd have
| expected.
| throwanem wrote:
| How's it compare with Subsonic and allies? I like the interface
| and the clients for Subsonic, but I've never had good luck with
| its indexing and transcoding from network sources like my NAS.
| zeruch wrote:
| The literal only thing that keeps me from moving to Jellyfin is
| that I cannot seem to get it to work with a Chromecast.
|
| If that worked (and I'm not sure if its a cert problem or
| something else) I'd be happily away from Emby/Plex and every
| other option I've used in the past.
| majora2007 wrote:
| I could only get it to work when I was out of the house, but
| inside, it never connected. You can ask on their Github for
| support, but I wasn't able to solve even with their help.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| This could be a whole lot of causes. For example, our home
| access points by default isolated each wireless client, so
| they couldn't even see each other, much less a central
| server.
| Goz3rr wrote:
| I believe this might be caused by Google. Chromecasts will
| only cast from URLs that have a valid HTTPS certificate (self
| signed will not work). If you're accessing your Jellyfin over
| the local IP it will be impossible to get a valid certificate
| for it.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| > If you're accessing your Jellyfin over the local IP it
| will be impossible to get a valid certificate for it.
|
| I just made a domain name for all of my local network
| services. Each service gets a subdomain that resolves to a
| local IP address, so like jellyfin.mydomain.com ->
| 10.x.x.x. Then just do DNS validation with letsencrypt.
| Boom, valid cert.
| Goz3rr wrote:
| Correct, that's what I do as well. I meant if you
| actually use 10.x.x.x:8096 to access your Jellyfin
| instance
| flimsythoughts wrote:
| Interesting. I recently installed jellyfin and have no issues
| streaming it to my chromecast. It works beautifully.
| manifoldgeo wrote:
| I'm genuinely rooting for Jellyfin to overtake Plex in
| functionality and popularity; someone needs to. Plex isn't even
| fully FLOSS.
|
| That said, I don't actually like Jellyfin, and I wish it
| weren't implemented in such a Windows-centric language
| framework.
|
| Once I found out that Jellyfin existed, I excitedly spun up an
| instance and put all my media on it. It can't handle any AVI
| videos and lags a lot more than my Plex VM with exactly the
| same specs. Worst of all, it can't detect my external
| Chromecast, only the one built into my smart TV.
|
| After assessing how well Jellyfin worked, I had to hang my head
| in defeat and return to using Plex. I can see that Jellyfin has
| a very active user / developer community on Matrix, and I bet
| things will get better.
|
| EDIT: I accidentally said Windows-centric above, but what I
| meant was Microsoft-centric. I meant the company and not their
| OS. Leaving it the "wrong" way above for posterity.
| achn wrote:
| C# and .net 6 are not windows-centric.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Then MSSQL or PowerShell are technically not Windows-
| centric since they have native Linux ports? While cross-
| platform, the .Net ecosystem is decidedly Windows first.
| Zero of the .Net developers I know develop on a non-Windows
| machine.
| achn wrote:
| I think those are very different. .Net 6 (formerly core)
| is specifically branched to get away from being tied to
| windows only. In fact the initial versions lacked many of
| the windows API supports! It is open source and cross
| platform by design.
| manifoldgeo wrote:
| Here is the very first sentence of the Wikipedia entry [0]
| for .NET Framework:
|
| "The .NET Framework (pronounced as 'dot net') is a
| proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that
| runs primarily on Microsoft Windows".
|
| The official documentation for both C# [1] and .NET
| Framework [2] live on Microsoft.com.
|
| I would say the above constitutes a pretty Windows-centric
| existence relative to some other vendor-agnostic languages,
| but maybe we're saying different things. What did you mean?
|
| Refs
|
| ----
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework
|
| 1: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/
|
| 2: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet-
| framework
| sequence7 wrote:
| Here is the very first sentence from
| https://dotnet.microsoft.com:
|
| "Free. Cross-platform. Open source. A developer platform
| for building all your apps."
|
| The download page for .NET which includes downloads for
| Windows, MacOS and Linux is
| https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download
|
| What the GP meant is exactly what they said, "C# and .net
| 6 are not windows-centric.", sadly it shares a name with
| .Net Framework which was windows centric.
| mvonballmo wrote:
| That sentence has perhaps not been edited in a while.
| .NET has been multi-platform for years. (edit: my bad, I
| didn't see that you'd linked to the .NET Framework, which
| is the Windows-only legacy runtime.)
|
| There are several GUI libraries that are still Windows-
| only (e.g. Winform, WPF, etc.), but the latest one MAUI
| targets MacOS as well as Windows desktops, in addition to
| iOS and Android.
|
| Just glancing at the code on GitHub, Jellyfin is
| primarily an ASP.NET web server targeting .NET 6. The
| download <https://jellyfin.org/downloads/> page shows a
| wealth of platforms, of which Windows is only one.
|
| The original statement suggested the Jellyfin was somehow
| weaker on other platforms than Windows when there's
| nothing to suggest that there isn't parity on all
| supported platforms.
|
| The .NET team has put a lot of effort into shedding its
| Windows-only past. I'm honestly not sure how FOSS the
| platform is, but at least some of it is open-source.
| manifoldgeo wrote:
| I made the mistake of saying "Windows" instead of
| "Microsoft". I didn't mean to indicate that it somehow
| works better on Windows. I'm running it on Linux and
| don't have Windows, so I couldn't even be the judge of
| that. Thank you for this clarifying statement, it helped
| me to understand.
|
| I was also not aware that .NET 6 is not the same as .NET
| Framework, so that was my mistake. I'm partly going to
| blame my ignorance on Microsoft for that one; for us
| folks that don't develop in M$ land, these distinctions
| can be subtle.
|
| What I _meant_ to say was that I wish it weren't such a
| Microsoft-centric language framework.
| filiphorvat wrote:
| Jellyfin is written in .NET 6, not .NET Framework. .NET
| Framework is the legacy Windows only version, but .NET 6
| is FOSS and cross-platform.
|
| And the documentation is on Microsoft's site because it
| was originally developed at Microsoft.
| spencerhakim wrote:
| The .NET Framework is not quite the same thing as .NET,
| and they have separate Wikipedia pages which reflect that
| distinction.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET
| majora2007 wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, I actually like Plex, but want a truly
| open source solution so we can keep up to date with FFMPEG
| and a more clear roadmap. But in the 2 years I've been
| following, I haven't seen much improvement. They are very
| active, but from a UX and ease of use, it doesn't come
| anywhere close to Plex.
|
| Also just a note, C#/.NET is cross platform and totally open
| source. I run an open source app that is in .NET, like
| Jellyfin, but just for reading and it runs of everything,
| including Pis.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I'm genuinely rooting for Jellyfin to overtake Plex in
| functionality and popularity; someone needs to. Plex isn't
| even fully FLOSS.
|
| XBMC (now called Kodi) still exist and is open source. I've
| been using it for going on 15 years now and it's never
| disappointed.
| brimble wrote:
| Different niches. Jellyfin's a server first, with a built-
| in (but I think, technically, removable) web UI, and
| optional clients for a variety of platforms, including set-
| top boxes like Roku and Android TV and (I think) Apple TV--
| and Kodi, actually.
|
| Kodi's for running _on_ your set-top box, mostly. Like,
| yes, you can link Kodi instances together and stuff like
| that, but it 's mainly for running _attached_ to a TV.
|
| I've tried with Kodi off and on, never really being happy
| with it, since it was still XBMC. I much prefer the
| Jellyfin model of operation. I spend a lot more time using
| it and a lot less time having to mess around with it, while
| using _more_ features than I ever even tried to with Kodi.
| od1nos wrote:
| I even use both, Jellyfin as a backend and easy web
| interface, Kodi as a frontend on my htpc thats kept in
| sync (Jellyfin for Kodi plugin). Best of both worlds.
| Mainly because streaming JF from Firefox doesn't seem to
| support surround sound, maybe it's a browser limitation?
| stryan wrote:
| > That said, I don't actually like Jellyfin, and I wish it
| weren't implemented in such a Windows-centric language
| framework.
|
| That's an unfortunate holdover from it's origin as an Emby
| fork.
|
| > Once I found out that Jellyfin existed, I excitedly spun up
| an instance and put all my media on it. It can't handle any
| AVI videos and lags a lot more than my Plex VM with exactly
| the same specs.
|
| AVI is just a container format and Jellyfin leverages ffmpeg
| to do most of the actual decoding work, so that sounds like
| an issue with the VM's ffmpeg. Jellyfin also doesn't enable
| hardware decoding by default; could be related? I'm not sure
| what Plex does (for codecs/etc).
| brimble wrote:
| > That's an unfortunate holdover from it's origin as an
| Emby fork.
|
| Unfortunate? My initial guess on first contact with the
| project was that it'd be some Node thing. I was _so_
| relieved to see it wasn 't. My unkind but honest and built-
| on-experience assessment is that it's a big part of why
| it's so not-shitty. C#'s a great choice for a backend
| language.
| EricE wrote:
| Channels-DVR blows Plex out to of the water for live content,
| including live streamed content from services like YouTube-TV.
| Will have to see if Plex can aggregate the rest now!
| rdudek wrote:
| That and I have over-the-air antenna to get local channels
| hooked up to HDrunner and Channels-DVR makes easy work watching
| local stuff and record as needed.
| thedougd wrote:
| Thank you for this as I'm ready to try something new. Used
| MythTV, then tvheadend, and now plex for LiveTV/DVR. I
| absolutely loathe Plex, nothing but problems with transcoding.
| I shouldn't need to have a transcoding server in 2022 with
| hardware accelerated devices.
|
| Kodi + TVHeadend had me 90% of the way there, but a handful of
| persistent bugs around PVR destroyed it for the family.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| The Apple TV+ app gives me a dashboard with Netflix, HBO, etc.
| material at the top of the screen - even before their exclusive
| content. I just wish Apple supported all streaming services with
| this.
| dewey wrote:
| > I just wish Apple supported all streaming services with this.
|
| I believe this is not an Apple thing but something that the
| third party app has to do, they can "offer up" their content to
| the Apple TV app but bigger ones like Netflix want to keep
| people in their app.
|
| Just like third party apps can integrate with Siri and provide
| Siri with a list of titles / podcast episodes if they want.
| zapataband1 wrote:
| f2movies.to
| judge2020 wrote:
| I feel like Plex is late to the game with this given that all the
| new, up-to-date smart TV/streaming stick interfaces already have
| this feature - either they allow downloaded apps to register the
| movies they can stream, or there's a central directory that
| surfaces apps that can stream certain content even when they're
| not locally installed. See the TV app on iDevices or Google TV
| for an example.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I have my personally owned media on Plex so this is natural
| progression for me--to use it as a hub.
|
| I have been using Roku TVs for years and if they have this
| feature I'm not aware of it. I also have various TV's around
| the house that have different OSes and apps...Plex can simplify
| that cruft.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| You've never used the search on your Roku? This is exactly
| what it does.
| philote wrote:
| So it's just a search feature? This Plex feature is more
| than just search. It seems it also allows browsing and
| discovery.
| swores wrote:
| Anecdote of one, but personally I found the Apple TV app on my
| physical Apple TV (and yes I add my name to the long list of
| people asking how high they were when naming overlapping but
| not nearly identical hardware and software products the same as
| each other) to be so bad that I never use it.
|
| I love the idea that it can pull all my media into one place,
| but realistically it doesn't work with all apps - a
| particularly relavent example in this thread being that it
| completely ignores my plex - and is buggy with the rest, such
| as BBC iPlayer which usually correctly shows up in Apple TV app
| (all be it with a worse UI than BBC's not-amazing-itself app)
| but doesn't always show my latest next-up info.
|
| I dislike it so much that I have watched illegal rips of Apple
| TV+ shows on plex despite having a valid subscription to watch
| them in the Apple TV+ section of the Apple TV app on my Apple
| TV device.
| cerebralfrog wrote:
| This is a neat feature to introduce alongside what Plex offers.
| It seems pretty similar to what JustWatch [0] does; I'm
| interested to see how they compare in practice.
|
| [0] https://www.justwatch.com/us
| janeerie wrote:
| I love JustWatch, but it's frustrating that they don't have a
| Roku app. It looks like this will be a good substitute.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| Plex uses the JustWatch API
| cerebralfrog wrote:
| Ah, I didn't know that! Just wondering where they document
| that?
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| The Kodi plugin interface is a giant pain. Any time I'm trying to
| do a Kodi plugin I spend 30% of my time searching for an
| alternative to Kodi.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The latest Chromecast w/remote has this kind of functionality,
| and it's a real gamechanger. Kind of funny how we're right back
| where we were, price wise, but at least now you do the bundling
| yourself and can dial in what you are paying for.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Except it doesn't support all services in the "global" search,
| and you get spammed with all sorts of ads. I like my Chromecast
| with Android/Google TV, but the software experience could be a
| lot better.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| yes, Chromecast with Android/Google TV is all ads all the
| time on home screen it is rather unpleasant.
|
| I changed my home launcher to one like this one https://play.
| google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.cosinus.la...
|
| it has made the experience much much better.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I've got YouTube TV and I haven't seen a single non-
| broadcast ad in my time using it with my newest Chromecast.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Roku has had this for over a decade.
| philote wrote:
| How do you access it in Roku? I have a Roku TV and haven't
| discovered this feature yet. Seeing all content in one place
| would extremely useful.
| dewey wrote:
| But only for the US or very few big countries.
| unknown2374 wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but I have been interested in setting up Plex
| (or similar) in my homeserver but never figured out a good
| workflow or source to add movies/shows to it? Are people
| generally just torrenting, or are there DRM-free stores that I do
| not know exist? Or if there is an efficient workflow for ripping
| blurays?
| nerdjon wrote:
| I am annoyed that somehow Plex got this to work but Apple TV app
| does not with Netflix.
|
| Also annoyed that Plex does not integrate with Apple TV App
| itself.
|
| I wish I could make the TV app my goto. It's great for the things
| that support it, but sucks that not everything does. I wish apple
| would be "brave" and force any apps to integrate with it.
|
| I keep looking for a good alternative (especially given the
| online requirement), but it seems like Plex is the only one with
| a decent Apple TV app. I have jellyfin running but the app
| situation is less than ideal.
|
| If anyone has any recommendations with good Apple TV support?
| Phlarp wrote:
| Get Infuse for Apple TV, it's just a front-end app / media
| player, but it works much better and leverages your existing
| Plex server installation.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I tried infuse maybe a year ago? maybe more, idk... it was
| around that time that Plex had that big outage that stopped
| you from even viewing your own local content.
|
| I didn't hate it, but it had some quirks that annoyed me
| coming from Plex. But maybe I will give it another shot.
| Pretty sure my Jellyfin server is still just sitting there
| running alongside Plex.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I am annoyed that somehow Plex got this to work but Apple TV
| app does not with Netflix._
|
| I have a feeling that this is because Apple has some onerous
| little line in their contract that Netflix was not willing to
| accept. There's certainly no technical reason that it can't
| happen.
|
| And it annoys the hell out of me.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I always figured that it was just Netflix wanting to be in
| control of the UI, recommendations, etc.
|
| But apparently other's have this ability?
|
| So you are probably right. Annoying as hell and tbh has led
| me to use Netflix significantly less... which has led me to
| consider canceling it.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Apple's search is run locally, and requires each app to make
| its content metadata available to Apple. Plex will not--cannot
| by design--do that.
|
| Apple _could_ pass the search request to each service /app and
| collate the results, but that's not their way.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Roku has had this for ages, but some time ago the results for
| Netflix were crippled - if you are searching in the mobile app,
| selecting a Netflix result will bring you to a launcher for the
| Netflix mobile app instead of playing it on your TV. I haven't
| the foggiest idea why they would want this behavior but I have
| to conclude Netflix mandated it for some reason as they've
| taken other efforts to cripple the Roku experience in recent
| years as well. If Roku can't even get this working I have a
| hard time believing Plex will, considering they represent a
| much more existential threat to Netflix.
| DenseComet wrote:
| This is the explanation a Plex employee gave for the lack of
| personal media showing up in their Apple TV integration.
|
| > This feature will only work with our free on demand movies
| and TV shows. We'd love to integrate personal media as well but
| that's not technically possible for a couple reasons. To make
| this work we provide Apple with a list of content we have
| available for streaming. As detailed in our privacy policy, we
| don't know what content our users have in their personal media
| libraries.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/lniiij/plex_testing_t...
| poxrud wrote:
| I'm curious if this displays the content in Plex's media player
| or if it simply launches the streaming service's own player.
| dstaley wrote:
| It's the latter.
| MisterBiggs wrote:
| Looks like Plex Pass (paid [1]) features are all aimed towards
| people running their own media center and Plex is targeting
| casual users with free features that the core audience of Plex
| doesn't care about or use. I understand that the market of people
| running their own media server is pretty limited but if growth
| means totally alienating your core (paying) audience then maybe
| the approach is wrong.
|
| [1] https://www.plex.tv/plex-pass
| watermelon0 wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919220
| trevcanhuman wrote:
| I'd argue that the post you link to should be flagged. The
| title is editorialized.
|
| If it were indeed the original title, I'd flag this one.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| So how would I use this when I have an Apple TV? Is there an app
| I download and then I use Plex to find what I want to watch and
| then it launches whichever streaming service has the content?
| asabla wrote:
| That's how I've interpreted it. So basically what their Apple
| TV+ app does but with the addition to your local content (and
| what's been shared with you through other plex servers)
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