[HN Gopher] State of the Fin 2026-01-06
___________________________________________________________________
State of the Fin 2026-01-06
Author : wise_blood
Score : 186 points
Date : 2026-01-06 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jellyfin.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (jellyfin.org)
| s_dev wrote:
| It's very interesting to see Plex users slowly turn against the
| platform primarily due to costs being imposed. Plex has better
| client software than Jellyfin but the 'proprietary vs open
| source' debate for NAS/video streaming software seems to be
| reversing. Jellyfin is catching up to Plex and in a few years
| despite Plex having a first mover advantage here -- I expect it
| to surpass Plex in monthly active users.
| vachina wrote:
| Plex misjudged their market bigly. They're turning into a
| streaming company, when what people paid for is a media server.
| gadders wrote:
| They've done so badly you would think the Mozilla Corp had
| bought them.
| benoau wrote:
| Microsoft Plex has a ring to it.
| ninju wrote:
| Plex Copilot 365 Office by Microsoft
| paxys wrote:
| It's about more than just costs. Plex started out as a home
| media server (a direct port of XBMC/Kodi in fact), but over
| time due to its success the creators decided they wanted to
| turn it into Netflix instead. So using Plex to stream your own
| media to your own local or remote devices is being made harder
| with every update.
| bombcar wrote:
| XBMC is still somehow the best of them all, perhaps only in
| my memory.
|
| But damn if it wasn't magical having all those movies at your
| fingertips in the early 2000s.
| gf000 wrote:
| > own media to your own local or remote devices
|
| This was the point that made a bunch of people (me included)
| absolutely furious with Plex. Like I gladly pay for services
| and donate to open source projects. But it hits differently
| to pay for my very own hardware being used.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| What is the difference between paying for plex to stream
| your own video from yourown hardware and paying to use
| microsoft word to write your own letter which also runs on
| your own hardware?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| You still use word?
|
| ---
|
| As a more serious response - The last time I purchased MS
| office (decade+ ago) I paid once for a product license I
| could use forever. That felt fair - I buy a tool, I use
| it.
|
| Plex had that payment model and got a lot less pushback
| from the community - but this whole "we're a SaaS now!"
| thing is just not going to fly.
|
| I just don't trust the company anymore, and Jellyfin is
| absolutely great.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| I don't think anyone would've had an issue with buy to
| use, that's not their business model however.
|
| As a matter of fact, I paid them 150EUR for a "lifetime
| license" - because a long time ago, that was their
| business model.
|
| I too left for jellyfin because of their pivot to being
| "Netflix" as paxys phrased it.
|
| They just decided to throw away the market they
| established themselves into previously. Saltines should
| be expected at that.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Accurate. I'd pay for Plex if I was supporting the
| development of software designed for watching your personal
| media collection. Genuinely I considered it not long ago,
| until I found out that they'd shifted away from caring about
| local media.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Totally. I'm not into politics and basically all I want is a
| local streamer and I'm running Plex (on an old HP EliteDesk
| NUC) but... I already tried Jellyfin (and trial was successful
| with a few movies), so I'll very likely be switching my entire
| setup from Plex to Jellyfin soon.
| jdboyd wrote:
| I paid for Plex, but then they broke the the downloading
| features from the server to the Android client, and never
| repaired it to work reliably.
|
| Meanwhile most of their updates were about streaming support,
| and then they started cramming their streaming service into it,
| and pushing it, and I just got sick of all of that. Eventually
| I just switched to jellyfin. It is far from perfect. The music
| player isn't as good as plex's, there is no download feature.
| But at least it hasn't turned on me yet.
| NegatioN wrote:
| I feel like they did a somewhat recent update to the
| downloader which fixed things. I had issues before as well
| but not anymore.
|
| The streaming issue is another matter though :/
| BeetleB wrote:
| It's still poor after the new design. If I downloaded N
| episodes for M shows, it shows me N*M episodes all at once.
| No way to say "Hey, filter this list to just episodes of
| show M, Season K".
| crtasm wrote:
| Jellyfin's Android app does let you download files but having
| to do music tracks one by one isn't very useful.
|
| Finamp is the app to use for proper offline playback/sync of
| music from your Jellyfin server. Go for the beta version,
| it's far ahead of stable and works well.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| Yeah, I don't mind paying for something, but they broke a
| bunch of stuff last year and it's still not fixed. That's
| what annoys me about plex.
| Krastan wrote:
| I have the old version of the app pinned so it doesn't update
| to the new app. I occasionally check the reviews but they
| continue to be really bad.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I've never paid Plex a dime because I don't need any of the
| paid features. But its usability gets worse with every update,
| which is an underappreciated reason to want off the platform.
| observationist wrote:
| JellyFin is an open source project and is community driven and
| motivated by open source principles.
|
| Plex is a VC funded project, they've raised some $50m to date.
| Crazy what money can buy, isn't it?
| gosub100 wrote:
| I also want to shout out to Emby, which is almost identical to
| Jellyfin. It seems a bit more polished, and works very well.
| I've been using it for over 2 years. It does have a paid tier
| and nags me to upgrade for 10s on my TV, but that doesn't
| bother me. I have it running in a freebsd jail and it's been
| rock solid.
| Macha wrote:
| Note that Jellyfin is a fork of Emby from when Emby closed
| their source.
| xienze wrote:
| For me it wasn't even about cost, it was the fact that logging
| into my self-hosted Plex server required an auth flow that went
| to Plex's servers for some reason.
| zen928 wrote:
| [flagged]
| xienze wrote:
| > 'For some reason'? You mean for the sharing library and
| streaming services and all the other features that require
| identification to even use ...?
|
| All I wanted to do was self host a Plex server and access
| it from devices on my intranet using Infuse. Why should I
| have to bounce to a third party server to do that?
|
| And to be clear, the devices using Infuse didn't have to do
| that, but accessing the dashboard (for admin) did require
| an external hop. There's no reason IMO for that to be
| necessary.
| zen928 wrote:
| > All I wanted to do was self host a Plex server and
| access it from devices on my intranet using Infuse. Why
| should I have to bounce to a third party server to do
| that?
|
| Cool, a real discussion. Plex has the weakness of
| requiring a first time online auth because they didnt
| implement a local ldap/oauth/sso pathway. After that
| point, Settings > Network > "List of IP addresses and
| networks that are allowed without auth", use a generous
| netmask. Entirely local after that point if desired.
| xienze wrote:
| Well, I didn't know that at the time, and I was so
| annoyed by it I just moved to Jellyfin. And based on
| another comment in this thread:
|
| > https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authenticati
| on-fo...
|
| They certainly try to scare people away from changing
| this setting, which is not a good look IMO.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Why should I have to bounce to a third party server to
| do that?
|
| You don't. There's a setting for which networks are
| allowed access without authentication.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| You're being a bit obtuse here yourself. The original
| premise of Plex was to stream your own media on your own
| network. I was a very early user of it, before these
| additional "features" that were pushed more by the Plex
| team than by user demand were added. They made it so you
| had to hack the xml config file to be able to use it in the
| traditional no login way, that was a pretty hostile move in
| my opinion and was the first eyebrow raiser for me. They
| also made it so you had to have a paid account to use any
| of the mobile clients in a clear monetization move there is
| no technical reason why you can't open your plex server to
| the internet and connect a mobile app that way, that's what
| jellyfin allows. I worked around this for a while by
| connecting to my home network on a VPN and just using
| chrome mobile to stream but it was less than ideal,
| obviously. Yes then they offered the proxying service with
| dynamic TLS cert generation as another paid for service, I
| remember it, but having never had a plex account let alone
| a paid one it was no interest to me. Do you work for Plex?
| Because your post reads like you do, especially the
| attitude of people not knowing what features they want and
| needing Plex to tell (sell) them.
| barnabee wrote:
| > You mean for the sharing library and streaming services
| and all the other features that require identification to
| even use
|
| Plex is for streaming my media from my server to my
| clients. I know a decent number of people who use (or used)
| Plex and I don't think any of them would ever use it to
| access streaming services.
|
| I have no problem with charging for functionality that
| needs their servers, or introducing streaming. But the way
| their authentication, "services", and streaming features
| hae been shoved in our faces in the UI over time feels like
| a rug pull to those of us who paid for something else.
| nebezb wrote:
| Your response is both unnecessarily aggressive and plainly
| wrong.
|
| Yes, Plex _should_ work without an internet gateway. Why?
| Because it's a client/server media application; it
| transcodes media to clients/players over the network.
|
| Plex used to work like this. Actually, it was exclusively
| unauthenticated. Then early 10s they added optional auth,
| and eventually allowed you to reserve "server names", and
| finally enforced with for running their server. But you can
| still use a client without auth today. Just read their
| docs:
| https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-
| fo...
| dang wrote:
| Can you please refrain from personal attack, regardless of
| how wrong someone is or you feel they are? and also please
| avoid denunciatory rhetoric? It's not what this site is
| for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind
| reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful.
|
| You obviously know a lot about this, and your comment
| contains fine information, but unfortunately the negative
| elements do more harm than the fine ones do good.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| Agree with others it's not solely about cost. For me it was
| about the very clear monetization drive Plex started doing
| years ago, while remaining nominally free to use for your own
| media. At some point, and I've already switched off it so maybe
| it's already happened, they will monetize tracking/meta data
| about what is in your own collection.
| darknavi wrote:
| I have a Plex lifetime subscription but hold no strict
| allegiance to the company.
|
| If Jellyfin was a comparable product (in user experience and
| ease of use for my extended family's platforms) I'd switch
| tomorrow.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Yeah... worth looking again (or... with all due respect,
| maybe actually trying a first time).
|
| Spoken as the person hosting a jellyfin instance for my
| extended family. I switched years ago and it's only gotten
| easier.
|
| You can find things to complain about if you want to, but
| generally speaking - Jellyfin just works. The idea that it's
| not comparable is pretty silly.
| driverdan wrote:
| I have a lifetime subscription to Plex. I hate everything
| they've been doing over the past few years. They're completely
| ignoring their existing users in the quest for growth.
|
| * Social sharing stuff that shows what you watch to others by
| default.
|
| * Adding their streaming services and other paid services.
|
| * Changing the UI layout to hide self hosted content, promote
| paid services, with poor UX for changing it back.
|
| * Ignoring bugs that have been known and unfixed for years.
|
| * Ignoring user feedback, doubling down on their poor
| decisions.
| TheCondor wrote:
| Are they that terrible, or is it the market and those of us
| with our own media are becoming more of the minority? I do
| question, at times, the amount of effort I put in to curating
| and backing up and maintaining our media.
|
| I too have a lifetime subscription, I don't mind a lot of
| what they do, but it feels like our media has become less
| centric, they want to stream pluto.tv channels and stuff like
| that.
|
| The biggest thing I dislike was how I had a single app to all
| my media and then they blew that up and I need multiple apps.
| It's not that big of a hassle; I just wish I had more heads
| up to when it was going to happen. And while I'm not aware of
| them having any music-streaming media, the music app ever
| only streams my own media and feels like it might be on life
| support. Maybe music streaming is "done" but it feels kind of
| neglected.
| driverdan wrote:
| > Are they that terrible, or is it the market and those of
| us with our own media are becoming more of the minority?
|
| That's what I was implying with saying "existing users." It
| seems they're caring less about their self-hosted core
| userbase and trying to expand to other types of users.
| barbazoo wrote:
| We run a plex server and I hate it. Hiding "timer"
| functionality (turn off in x minutes) behind a paywall feels
| like a shit move to me as a parent for whom this is a pretty
| basic functionality.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| Ask for a refund.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Didn't buy, not gonna reward them for it.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| > Didn't buy
|
| My point exactly. If you want the timer pay for it?
| Otherwise what are you complaining about ?
|
| Ferrari dont' even let me use a car for free, and I dont
| post complaining about how if I wanted one I would have
| to pay.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Sure obviously you're right. I think it's shitty of them
| because I learned about it after already setting up
| everything because I thought this was basic
| functionality. My bad.
|
| So it would be more like Ferrari giving me the car for
| free, and then after a while when it starts raining I
| find out the windshield wipers are behind a paywall. Sure
| that would also be my fault, technically but it's also a
| shit company for doing that.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| Can you not just set your TV to turn off after X hours ?
| In the EU this is actually a legal requirement that they
| can do this. (for 'energy saving')
|
| Many TV's also have an explicit sleep timer. Yes this
| doesn't resolve plex issue but could solve the issue in
| the meantime. Or go old school and plug an actual
| electric timer in the socket and cut power to the TV
| after X minutes/hours
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Can you not just set your TV to turn off after X hours
|
| That's actually clever, I didn't think of this and is
| much better than just a timer. I'll check that out later!
| gilrain wrote:
| Does Ferrari have a competitor that lets you use a
| similar car for free? Because Plex does.
| 0x457 wrote:
| It's not just that. It was great for all of us with large media
| archives, but every "big" release is making things better for
| those who don't run their media libraries at expense of those
| who do.
|
| Syncing (a paid feature) was broken for years. It might
| download video, it might fail. You will find out on the plane.
|
| When internet goes down, Plex becomes weird...my home network
| still works just fine.
|
| Library navigation follows netflix pattern, but netflix pattern
| is to let me browse for hours without finding anything.
| BowBun wrote:
| Not to pile on, but the reason we're pissed at Plex is because
| they did a classic rug-pull: advertise to nerds like us who own
| our servers + media, then slowly make deals with publishers,
| requiring them to police _my_ content. Then start adding
| subscriptions and limiting how I can share (again) _my_ content
| - what are they offering me anymore?
|
| The irony is they won't have a customer base from my mom/dad.
| Why in god's green earth would a layperson pay for Plex when
| they can get streaming bundles? I just don't get it. And that's
| why I got rid of my ~10 year plex instance and replaced it with
| Jellyfin in maybe ~1 day.
|
| Happy to help others do the same!
| epistasis wrote:
| Jellyfin was super easy to get running on Arch a few months ago.
| With a Tailscale network, I have all my media devices connected
| to my very small but growing collection of DVD and Blu-ray media.
|
| I'm old, I ripped all my CDs in the 1990s and early 2000s, but
| abandoned all of it when Apple Music replaced iTunes in a
| disaster of product launch. After a decade of streaming, I'm
| trying to head back to curated media files, at least for video.
| Music is far harder to obtain in ways that compensate the
| musicians, at least for the stuff I'm looking for.
| hk1337 wrote:
| That's pretty much exactly what happened to me. At the very
| least, I wish I had stored all the DVDs away somewhere. :(
|
| I cancelled all my subscriptions this year and working on
| getting JellyFin up and I was thinking of paying for GameFly or
| some other DVD service and start putting a library back
| together. Torrenting just seems icky to me and I am not
| convinced I could find good copies.
| spikej wrote:
| What about your local public library as a source? (that's
| worked for me)
| bombcar wrote:
| If you have a local library they can often get most anything
| eventually.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Don't forget Hoopla
|
| https://www.hoopladigital.com/
| cheschire wrote:
| I have to thank Plex for changing their cost model. It motivated
| me to setup Jellyfin, something that took slightly more effort
| than Plex. And by getting that inertia going, I then followed up
| with Navidrome, a local OSM service with routing, and finally my
| own mediawiki copy that has a starting point from the pre-AI days
| as well as an annual content refresh so my "compare" history is
| short and simple on all articles.
|
| That inspired me to build a homelab finally, which then became a
| NAS, which then became an OCIS server to replace my commercial
| cloud storage.
|
| I finally got proxmox setup, OPNsense, with Caddy for reverse
| proxying the externally facing services and tailscale for access
| to those services I want to keep only for me and not others in my
| family.
|
| So yeah, all of this big massive avalanche of work started with
| the little tiny snowball of Plex deciding they wanted to charge
| me to use my own media while away from my house.
|
| Thanks Plex!
|
| And thanks Jellyfin for being a fantastic alternative for video.
| hart_russell wrote:
| Eh, I was happy to pay Plex a one time fee of ~$120 for a
| lifetime license. I'd rather just set up Plex in a docker
| container and expose that port than deal with a bunch of
| services constantly needing doctoring in my homelab.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I too have the lifetime pass. A group of us collectively
| manages >1PB of content via Plex. But we need an offramp to
| derisk enshittification, and Jellyfin is that readiness
| capability. If you have no option to switch to when the time
| comes, you are SOL. Even if I did not use Jellyfin today (I
| do for a music catalog, but it is not primary), I am willing
| to provide them recurring donations to make sure they are
| ready when I need them.
|
| (ymmv, I work in risk management, a component of which is
| vendor risk management, so the professional mental model gets
| applied to home systems when applicable; rug pull? not on my
| watch, and the rug pull _will happen_ eventually)
| azinman2 wrote:
| How in the world did you amass a petabyte of content?!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Over the lifetime of a group of people.
| DJBunnies wrote:
| I see both sides, I paid $5 in 2013, but each time I use it I
| feel like they keep pushing their own content to the home
| screen.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| I've run both and Jellyfin is actually easier to run IMO,
| since it is in package managers. Also has free android/iphone
| app. What do you think you have to do in Jellyfin you don't
| in Plex?
| harrall wrote:
| How easy is it to get family and friends to connect to your
| Jellyfin on like their Roku or Apple TV?
|
| Right now I just have them make a Plex account and they
| just login. Easy on my part since I don't have to be tech
| support.
| hamdingers wrote:
| I send them an email that contains a link to
| jellyfin.mydomain.tld with their new username and
| password, plus a few tips for how to get the most out of
| it (I wrote a template a few years ago).
|
| It's not any more work for me than giving a user library
| access on Plex, but it does require I have a reverse
| proxy and a domain.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Would you mind sharing your template?
| hamdingers wrote:
| Sure. I think this was originally written by GPT-3.5 but
| I've tweaked it a lot since then. I try to keep it short
| enough that people will actually read it all the way
| through while still answering some of the more common
| questions. Subject: Welcome to <my real
| name>'s Jellyfin Media Server Hi there,
| Welcome aboard! You now have access to my media server
| and can enjoy my library of Movies and TV Shows.
| Here are your login details: Link:
| https://{JELLYFIN_DOMAIN} (bookmark this!)
| Username: {USERNAME} Temporary Password:
| {PASSWORD} Please update your password as
| soon as you log in for your security: Log in
| with the information above. Click your profile icon (top-
| right corner, looks like a person). Choose "Profile"
| (same icon again). Enter the current password and your
| new chosen password, then click Save. Tips:
| Jellyfin works like any other streaming platform, you can
| browse, watch, and favorite. It always keeps your place
| and remembers what you were watching so it's easy to come
| back to. Jellyfin can be used in a web
| browser, or you can find apps for phones, tablets, and
| some TVs. Browse the full list of movies or
| shows available by clicking the boxes under "My Media" on
| the home page. You can request new media by
| visiting {REQUEST_DOMAIN} and logging in with your same
| Jellyfin username and password. Please only request
| things you are sure you will watch in the next month or
| two. Jellyfin and Ombi are software packages
| that I run on my own computer, but I did not build them.
| Please reply to this email if you have any issues.
| Enjoy!
| gf000 wrote:
| If you already have docker containers setup, then it is
| absolutely no different to run jellyfin compared to Plex.
| hart_russell wrote:
| reverse proxy and domain setup
| gf000 wrote:
| You need it for direct streaming in Plex as well.
| hamdingers wrote:
| I was happy to buy a lifetime pass many years ago, but as
| they've removed many of the features I cared about (offline
| auth, plugins, photo backup, watch together, etc.) I have
| come to realize that I directly funded enshittification. I
| wish I could've bought a lifetime pass to the version of the
| software at that time instead of a lifetime of downgrades.
|
| Jellyfin is also a single docker container, by the way. That
| would've been an easy thing to verify before making this
| comment.
| hart_russell wrote:
| it's not a single container if I want to be able to have
| friends/family access it. That would have been an easy
| thing to think about before making this comment.
| hamdingers wrote:
| You have to set up port forwarding either way. If you
| haven't yet, go do that now (ask chatgpt to help), it
| will dramatically improve your Plex remote streaming.
| Check settings -> remote access and it'll show green.
| LollipopYakuza wrote:
| I understand your reluctance, I was not very optimistic when
| I started installing Jellyfin.
|
| Turns out it is pretty straightforward and I never had to
| deal with the hassle of maintenance. The two non-mandatory
| configuration steps I had to make were: - the file permission
| to share Jellyfin's library with my torrent daemon. But IIRC
| this is the same with Plex. - the nginx reverse-proxy with
| WebSocket for the "watch together like" feature to work
| zamadatix wrote:
| I sort of went the opposite way. I had a giant homelab already
| and paid for Plex lifetime (just because I thought it was good
| software after years of use, not because I really needed the
| features or anything) but then I ended up consolidating all of
| my media to just being a bare metal Linux standard PC case
| running a plain NFS share (I guess that's still a NAS, but
| perhaps more spartan than the usual connotation) which clients
| like Infuse or a local media player app can just load directly.
| bombcar wrote:
| I used a SMB share with Infuse for awhile and it worked well,
| but adding Jellyfin in the middle made it much easier for the
| kids/wife to understand how to find things.
|
| (For awhile I was VLC off a ram SMB share but that was
| confusing even to me sometimes.)
| zamadatix wrote:
| Interesting, I'm curious how it helps. Maybe with non-video
| content or something? So far Infuse seems to do everything
| for shows/movies with the sorting, categorizing, posters,
| descriptions, actor info, search, release dates, etc
| already so long as you point it to where the video files
| are and name them based on the TVDB naming. I even set it
| up so my parents TV has access to it and they use it more
| than Netflix now. I don't have any non-video content
| though, so I'm not sure whether Infuse covers that part
| well (or at all).
| bombcar wrote:
| I seem to recall the main issue was it finding
| new/moved/renamed content without forcing a full rescan
| (which would take forever).
| zamadatix wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense. I only have just the media files
| (no metadata) stored flat in a single SSD based mount and
| the background autoscan seems to pick up
| changes/additions consistently for that snappy
| (especially since I only add new content but once a week
| or so) but if I were constantly adding things I wanted to
| watch on demand, used a more complicated directory
| structure, stored any metadata locally, had a bit more
| latency in the storage, or had multiple sources I'm sure
| that would turn into a bit of a sync mess real quick.
|
| I also found Infuse's scanning performance to be absolute
| dog shit over even clean 5 GHz Wi-Fi. I solved that with
| a wire, but it sounds like middleware would have skipped
| that problem as well.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| I would also like to thank Jellyfin and the other software
| packages in its orbit for motivating me to keep my homelab in
| good running order. That and Home Assistant.
|
| When compared to the current breed of streaming services it
| really shows the difference between something designed to drive
| up engagement and revenue while driving down cost vs something
| designed to actually be useful and pleasant.
|
| Also I hadn't heard of OCIS, but it looks like something I
| want. So thanks for that.
| phailhaus wrote:
| This is like the infamous Dropbox comment.
|
| - Plex
|
| or...
|
| - Jellyfin
|
| - Navidrome
|
| - Homelab
|
| - proxmox
|
| - OPNsense
|
| - Caddy
|
| - Tailscale
|
| Plex is not worried about people like you, because you just
| described an insane amount of effort just to avoid a one-time
| cost. Most will not.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| What does plex do? I installed jellyfin from its apt repo and
| it's running.
| chung8123 wrote:
| It is hard to beat the polish that Plex has. I setup Jellyfin
| to try it out and I couldn't find a client that was smooth or
| had the polish of the Plex apps. The AppleTV app was close
| but then I go down the rabbit hole of codec support. Wanted
| to like Jellyfin but without a nice looking front end it was
| a non-starter for me. Good news is you can have the side by
| side and if a time comes it gets parity with Plex I will be
| happy to change over.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Yes, my biggest current gripe is that infuse is a much
| better client than the first-party app. Otherwise, I'm very
| happy with it even if it lacks some polish of Plex.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| I think that Infuse has better codec support than any
| other Apple TV (and possible also macOS) app.
| crtasm wrote:
| Is the Plex app somehow able to play codecs on a AppleTV
| that Jellyfin's app can't?
| Tallain wrote:
| When I looked for a Plex alternative I settled on Emby. It
| still has some "premium" features but they're all just QOL,
| not necessary things. The base app is great and even has
| handy little features Plex doesn't, and so far, it runs on
| all the same devices with a much snappier UX on the client
| side.
| iceflinger wrote:
| The only two of those you actually need to have a Plex-like
| setup are Jellyfin and Tailscale, both are trivial to setup
| and will run on basically any hardware you can imagine
| wanting to use for this.
| samdk wrote:
| Most of that stuff isn't necessary just to replace Plex, the
| OP's saying them Jellyfin started them on a journey they're
| presumably enjoying, not that they needed everything there to
| replace it.
|
| I think you're right the bar is still too high for most
| folks, although I will note that I think it's _dramatically_
| lower than it used to be. A lot of the tools are all-around
| way easier to deal with, tailscale makes a lot of "personal
| cloud" use-cases much more feasible, and then coding agents
| (I'm using claude code) dramatically reduce the labor costs
| of getting this stuff all working and fixing it when
| something goes wrong.
| cheschire wrote:
| Yep you nailed it. That's all I was saying. None of those
| things were critical to Jellyfin working.
|
| But I will say for the size of my music library, Jellyfin
| was not quite as good as plex and was the impetus behind my
| switch to navidrome for audio.
|
| And navidrome isn't the best for audiobooks so I'm in the
| process of testing good audiobook hosting platforms.
|
| So the reply wasn't wrong either. Plex is just easier for a
| lot of folks, and that is why I don't have any ill will
| towards their changes. They just aren't for me.
| stavros wrote:
| It's not a one-time cost, it's a subscription now.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I just checked their website and they still sell the
| lifetime Plex pass. Currently the price is $250.
| stavros wrote:
| I bought the app and now it wants a subscription, so I
| both don't understand their pricing models and don't
| trust their lifetime pricing now.
| DANmode wrote:
| Why are we worried if they're worried?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I had a rough time with Jellyfin like 6-7 years ago, with media
| not populating/playing properly, and metadata being lost on
| upgrade, etc.
|
| Tried again a few months ago and couldn't be happier. The whole
| thing is very stable and reliable. I think my only annoyance is
| that the HW I have it running on isn't beefy enough for
| transcoding, and my LG C4 can't play some of the 4K codecs
| natively (particularly around DV). Obviously this isn't
| Jellyfin's fault, but this kind of thing is just one more item
| for the list of stuff to have randomly be a surprise when
| setting up this kind of thing.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Transcoding generally isnt about raw power and is really just
| a function of having hardware transcoding support. Minipcs
| with 'recentish' intel chips handle it with ease for a couple
| hundred dollars all in (pre-DRAM price increases at least)
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Yeah, it's on me for reusing an industrial Mini-ITX
| motherboard I had leftover. The i5-4570 / 16 GB DDR3 is no
| slouch and is perfectly adequate for everything else this
| machine needs to do (download torrents, serve media, handle
| some backups, run a few minecraft servers), but I'm a
| generation or two too early for the right transcoding
| support, and I can't even patch over it with the PCIe slot
| as I'm using _that_ to give this machine dual NVMe drives.
|
| Given the state of RAM pricing, it's probably cheaper at
| this point to just buy an Apple TV or the like to put on
| the TV end. Eventually the NAS can go to an AM4 build when
| I upgrade my workstation to AM5 and the CPU and RAM from
| that are freed up.
| jgauth wrote:
| Which app are you using on your TV? I've had success direct-
| playing 4K content with the jellyfin Android TV app. On
| AppleTV, Infuse works well. Infuse isn't free, but it is
| worth the money to me.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| This is using the native Jellyfin app available for LG's
| tvOS, so you're at the mercy of the codecs available on the
| TV. Last time I wanted to watch a movie affected by this, I
| just plugged in a laptop with an HDMI cable and played it
| that way.
| jszymborski wrote:
| > local OSM service with routing
|
| Woah cool! Does it work well? Google Maps is the only Google
| service I really rely on these days.
| cheschire wrote:
| Ehhh, it's a backup if, you know, the internet dies right
| when I need some routing. Seems to only be once every year or
| two. It's not a good primary tool though.
|
| There are a few approaches to tile generation, and the
| routing engine I used offers 2 alternate routes.
|
| Claude Code whipped up a new front end for me that switches
| between various tile sets and provides a turn by turn
| instruction overlay.
|
| It's a tool worth having for me at least.
| have_faith wrote:
| What does Navidrome add over streaming music via Jellyfin, is
| it just better more tailored client apps? The music client apps
| for JF are a bit bare bones, although the streaming itself I've
| found to work perfectly.
| biotinker wrote:
| The Subsonic API is pretty fantastic and the apps that
| support it are full-featured. The Jellyfin app, while
| completely capable of streaming music, is far far less
| feature-ful.
|
| Personally I use Gonic rather than Navidrome, because I don't
| care about a web UI, but if you go to the Navidrome website
| and look at the "Apps" page it lists every Subsonic API
| compatible app. There's a lot.
| jcurbo wrote:
| I also use gonic over navidrome (and formerly airsonic)
| because Navidrome doesn't support folder view (and
| apparently never will). As nice as Navidrome is, that's a
| dealbreaker for me. Gonic works great though.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| I too prefer folder view (tags are a complete unwieldy
| mess, and there's far too many artists to merely list by
| artist). I will look into this. What do you run it on?
| azinman2 wrote:
| None of the alternatives seem To have anything close to the
| radio/recommendation power of Spotify. I don't know how
| they ever could - they don't have the massive data Spotify
| has in listening history combined with playlists and their
| descriptions... on top of building world class ML audio
| analysis models.
|
| I'd love have my own local mp3s get this super power. I
| just don't see it happening. Plex has their own attempt but
| it's no where close.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Seems redundant to get recommendations from your _own_
| mp3s. And "radio" would just be playlists on shuffle.
|
| You can decouple discovery from offline music experience.
| Outside certain genres that I'm not deep into, there's
| almost nothing I get rec'd on Spotify that I didn't
| already know of from other sources.
| biotinker wrote:
| If you scrobble to a service like last.fm you get
| something approaching this functionality. This is
| something built into most of these services.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| The streaming works well, but I like the focus on audio and
| performance of Navidrome. I've cycled from Plex/Plexamp to
| Jellyfin and am happiest with Navidrome.
|
| I've written a client for Navidrome however, so I'm biased by
| the investment in time that required.
|
| I've also spent time working with several of its private APIs
| to track my own listening activity.
| throwoutway wrote:
| I haven't logged into Plex in a while but did decide that the
| next time I need it will just setup Jellyfin instead. Nice to
| see they support all my devices iOS AndroidTV FireTV
| gadders wrote:
| JFC just write a proper Samsung client.
|
| [I'm aware there is one I can muck around with and install via
| Samsung developer portal]
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| The second to last bullet point on the post is about the
| Samsung client, which (as you are aware) has been written but
| is currently held up in review Samsung. The first round of
| review took about 3 months(?!), and they are working through
| reproducing the vaguely stated issues found in the review.
|
| It is thankless work, but they are actually quite close!
| gadders wrote:
| Finally! I can't wait to uninstall Plex.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Ditch Samsung mate. Their consumer/appliance division products
| are trash
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Not the same person, but unfortunately one doesn't always
| have a choice. My wife is absolutely in love with the Samsung
| Frame TV, therefore we have one (much to my dismay).
| ZeroCool2u wrote:
| https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen/issues/222#issuec...
| mac-attack wrote:
| > We have been moving quickly to address these issues, delivering
| four additional point releases with over 100 changes since the
| initial 10.11.0 release. To date, most point releases have
| focused on resolving general and migration-related issues. The
| remaining migration issues are largely isolated, one-off cases
| and are unlikely to be resolved.
|
| I guess that's my cue to finally try and upgrade. I dragged my
| feet given how widespread the friction of the upgrade, but if
| this is as good as it's going to get, I might as well pull the
| bandaid off now.
| pathartl wrote:
| I've been having massive performance issues, specifically with
| the database locking. Disabling the Playback Reporting plugin
| resolved the issue.
| Mydayyy wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, still on the older version and monitoring
| the new updates. There's an issue list on github for the .11
| release, and while aaalot got resolved, theres still some big
| things open (#15045). But the jellyfin team is doing amazing
| work and I'm thankful.
|
| A few of my users already messaged me that with the next
| version, the android tv app will cease to work with the old
| jellyfin version, so I guess I have to upgrade soon
| grepex wrote:
| For anyone with a Radar/Sonarr/Jellyfin setup - do yourself a
| favor and set up Jellyseerr too. It's a request system for other
| to request library additions. Install moonfin on your
| firetv/androidtv and downloads can be initiated straight from
| your TV!
| veilrap wrote:
| The fact that Jellyfin lacks a AppleTV/tvOS app seems like it
| continues to make it a dealbreaker... at least for my setup.
|
| I hear people recommending clients like Infuse, but it feels odd
| to swap out Plex at this point if I can't go all in on the open
| source side of things.
|
| Am I missing something here wrt Jellyfin clients? I guess I could
| try running it side-by-side with Plex and see how it goes.
| Crisco wrote:
| Swiftfin is the tvOS app: https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin
| pathartl wrote:
| My parents and brother use Infuse. I would use it even over the
| official Plex app.
| CharlesW wrote:
| There Swiftfin, Jellyfin Mobile, and Streamyfin at least. My
| forthcoming iOS-only music player has first-class Jellyfin
| support (beta sign-up: https://forms.gle/AGLePh9RtaYEfDH6A) if
| you're looking for a dedicated, offline-capable music app.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I use Infuse on an appletv and simply point it at a samba
| share. Easiest setup ever. What am I missing out on by not
| using jellyfin or plex?
| bombcar wrote:
| Jellyfin offers tracking across devices and easy notification
| of "new" media - Infuse alone had to scan the share now and
| then which was cumbersome.
| blowfish721 wrote:
| I really like the infuse jellyfin setup. Only two things
| that bugs me are 1: Choosing a movie and then cast member
| wont show all shows/movies for that casr member, only the
| cached ones. No big deal but a bit of a petpeeve. 2: And I
| think this might not be solvable from Jellyfin but more
| than one version/quality of a tv show episode shows up as a
| seperate show episode and not version of the same episode.
| Might not be a Jellyfin issue since InFuse cant handle that
| in stand alone either. Havent tried the jellyfin clients to
| see the difference there.
| tedivm wrote:
| Jellyfin has three AppleTV apps!
|
| SwiftFin is what I use, and it is the free and open source
| option. Works great.
|
| Before that stabilized I used Infuse, but it wasn't great.
|
| MrMC is another one I haven't tried, but it definitely supports
| Jellyfin.
| veilrap wrote:
| Ah! I didn't realize that the official client's page was
| filtered by "recommended" by default.
|
| I wonder why the officially developed SwiftFin isn't shown as
| recommended? I guess maybe because it's still considered
| beta.
| turtletontine wrote:
| I have Kodi running on a raspberry pi plugged into my Google
| TV. The Jellyfin plugin for Kodi works flawlessly so far for
| me. It's just great! Sure if I could put Jellyfin directly on
| the TV, that would save me the RPi. But not a big deal for me.
| eisa01 wrote:
| It is in the pipeline at least:
| https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin/discussions/1294
|
| As my needs are quite simple, I currently just use VLC with a
| SMB share. Works quite well, VLC is able to play standard .mkvs
| just fine! http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-appletv.html
| eisa01 wrote:
| Oh, and this just dropped - a new open source Jellyfin
| client: https://github.com/ghobs91/mediora
|
| Even supports some of that *arr stuff
| jgauth wrote:
| > Am I missing something here wrt Jellyfin clients?
|
| Unfortunately, I don't think so. I had many issues with
| playback on ATV using Swiftfin. Infuse works very well, so it
| is worth the ~$15 yearly to me. I am hopeful that Swiftfin will
| improve over time, they have a few dedicated developers working
| on it.
| JimBlackwood wrote:
| Jellyfin has Swiftfin, I've been using it for a few years now.
|
| There are some small bugs that you can work around. The rework
| to the new version has been in progress for about two years but
| it works just fine right now.
| KolenCh wrote:
| Small bugs? May be. But there's a lot of lack of
| functionality and stability. I'd recommend InFuse if anyone
| is hitting those problems. If it has been running fine for
| you then there's no need to switch. The problem is related to
| source codec. Depending on that you'll have difference
| experience. So that's why the experience varies because
| there's vast differences in source formats. A good client not
| only handles well on some sources, but many if not all.
| glimshe wrote:
| Jellyfin is love.
|
| A game changing project that solved my streaming scenarios. It
| just works.
| keytarsolo wrote:
| I like Jellyfin, and run it alongside Plex.
|
| But they have a very long way to before they reach feature parity
| with even just the stuff I use. Let alone everything Plex can do.
|
| I think this year I'm going to try and find an issue or feature I
| can contribute on. I'd like to end up moving to Jellyfin based on
| it being good and not Plex being bad.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Jellyfin, and my current job doing enterprise API management,
| inspired me to build out a home lab around a custom built
| application that does server monitoring and launches servers and
| proxies for both HTTP and WebSockets in seconds.
| ninju wrote:
| > While nothing has been finalized yet, we are considering
| 'dropping' the major version 10, which would make the next
| release 12.0
|
| You mean to say dropping version _11_ (and moving straight to 12)
| gavinsyancey wrote:
| The previous release was 10.11 and the next would ordinarily be
| 10.12. They're considering dropping the leading "10" so the
| next is just 12 (from the minor version).
| ronsor wrote:
| The macOS (formerly Mac OS X) route
| wishJFWorked wrote:
| Can Jellyfin finally passthrough audio like Atmos? When I checked
| mid-2025 on my Nvidia Shield it _still_ didn't work properly.
| tylerflick wrote:
| If you're referencing the Android TV client, yes I have both
| Atmos and DTS:X streaming as passthrough to my receiver. One
| thing of note is that DTS:X only seems to work with MKV
| containers on Android.
| zenoprax wrote:
| I've been running a Jellyfin server for nearly four years now. I
| never tried Plex or Emby but JF has been an impressive bit of
| software.
|
| The availability of clients (Roku, Apple TV, Android, Xbox) is
| good enough that I have no problem inviting friends and family to
| join mine. I've learned so much about the tech bubble I live in
| simply from getting them onto the server.
|
| I think the biggest obstacle to adoption beyond simple home
| servers is the reliance on SQLlite. If it were possible to set it
| up with Postgres you could run a monster server on AWS with RDS,
| S3, a Kubernetes. Not sure about the business case for that...
| but I would enjoy setting it up and pushing it to its limits.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| I'm glad Swiftfin is getting some attention. Their Roku app is
| solid and Infuse is an excellent option for Apple's ecosystem.
| wackget wrote:
| Does anyone else not really "get" these media managers?
| Personally I still find it much easier to grab media from a
| torrent and watch it on a computer using VLC. It requires zero
| setup.
|
| I do have the benefit of a PC connected to my living room TV, but
| even if I didn't, most TVs these days can natively play media
| from a network share.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| The benefit of plex ( and jelly fin falls down here) is that
| anyone with any smart tv can access your media library just
| like Netflix . So family, friends etc can download the plex
| app, sign in and start watching your stuff.
|
| There's wide compatibility with all sort of devices and you
| dont need to firewall tunnel vpn or do _any_ setup. It's
| totally grandma friendly.
|
| Your approach works great for a single user with a tv connected
| PC. Lets say with your current system you want your parents,
| right now, to be able to view your movies files. How easy is
| that to do, and how much technical knowledge or assistance is
| required?
| barnabee wrote:
| It's mostly about the UI. Browsing a network share is pretty
| ugly (generic icons, filenames, etc.) and can be unintuitive.
| Basic things like quickly finding the latest file you've added
| can be quite difficult.
|
| Ultimately if you just want to browse a filesystem, network
| shares are fine, but if you want a nice looking front end for
| that with logos/artwork, descriptions or reviews from the
| internet, or features that require the files and metadata to be
| indexed in a DB of some kind, then these UIs come in handy.
|
| Plus they look nice are generally easier for other less tech.
| savvy members of the househould to use.
| nvarsj wrote:
| I went down the rabbithole when I started getting into seasonal
| Anime watching. Doing that manually is a huge PITA for every
| show/episode.
|
| Now I just get a pop-up on my phone that Plex has the latest
| episode. I sit on my couch, hit play on my nvidia shield, and
| watch on my giant OLED. It's great - and I've been doing this
| for years now.
|
| Once you go through the initial set up, the UX is fantastic.
| Far better than anything Netflix, or any commercial provider
| has ever built.
|
| And for music - Plexamp is an ode to Winamp and is worth it
| alone. It completely brought me back to the pre-Spotify world
| of music enjoyment.
| kevstev wrote:
| I kind of hear you on this- its not super necessary, but it can
| be convenient. I use Synology VideoStation which is a part of
| their NAS Suite. We keep a small library of often rewatched
| stuff- holiday movies, a few of the wifes favorites, etc... and
| the nice thing is I can play it on any TV in my house from an
| app on my phone. I can also stream to say my local laptop when
| I am away if I wanted to as well, though I think I have done
| that exactly once.
|
| What is a little nicer about it is that we can hear about
| something, have it downloaded to the folder that gets indexed,
| and have it available to play near instantaneously. My NAS also
| does transcoding if necessary, so that eliminates a lot of
| hassles around codecs and such as well.
|
| A lot of people take this a step further and avoid all paid
| services and just use tools like radarr and sonarr to get
| whatever content they are interested automatically off the high
| seas and play it when they want to.
|
| The network share is the hard part- well really having the
| always on server that hosts it- plex/jellyfin/emby etc are just
| a little bit of sugar on top that make it a nicer experience.
| And IME, you install once and you are done, there is no
| maintenance to deal with afterwards so there is little
| downside.
| worksonmine wrote:
| As a hoarder the *arrs makes adding content seamless. I just
| set my preferred quality and it will download it as soon as
| it's released from the trackers I've setup. Even for movie
| collections it adds sequels I wasn't aware was in the pipeline.
| It's more about the ecosystem than the individual tools.
|
| And my content is always available from my NAS no matter where
| I am or what device I have with me.
| HauntingPin wrote:
| I use Jellyfish so I can access my library from anywhere using
| any of my devices like my phone or laptoo. My partner can also
| easily access my library using her browser.
| flylikeabanana wrote:
| Beyond just playing the files from storage, I also get
| subtitles, metadata, play history / continue watching / next
| up, a nice 10-foot UI, and the ability to satisfy my ADHD
| curiousity by clicking around tags / actors / directors and
| seeing what else I have from them in my library.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Does anyone else not really "get" these media managers?
| Personally I still find it much easier to grab media from a
| torrent and watch it on a computer using VLC. It requires zero
| setup.
|
| I do both. But when watching with the family it's much easier
| to have them a media streaming server than to have to hook the
| PC to the TV (or projector) and use VLC.
|
| Now at times for whatever reason some media file won't play
| over the network: dunno why... Maybe it's a blue moon, maybe
| there's a space in the filename, maybe I didn't respect the
| directory naming scheme or the file permission or whatever
| freaking bullshit. When that happens, I put the file on a USB
| stick, then on to a laptop, then HDMI cable. And that always
| work. (just had to make sure the TV wasn't using interpolation
| to 60 Hz or whatever otherwise every movie looked like a soap
| opera).
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