The corporate creep was already felt when years ago they released the PlexAmp audio player.
Good player but to display lyrics you have to open the menu and select “Show Lyrics”, two clicks every time. Every time, for every track. When the next track is playing lyrics display is automatically turned off. It is not remembered either, you go back to previous track and have to click click them menu gain.
This is because they have to pay a licence and rather save $100 per month by inconveniencing their user base. you see, it’s extra work to click the menu every time so you won’t be viewing lyrics. Profit!
And no, if your file already has lyrics that doesn’t matter, you still have to open to view it every time, for each track.
For foolproof matching, adding Plex metadata in the style of "{tmdb-12345}" to the directory name would cause problems for Jellyfin, as they used to demand different formatting, for instance square brackets.
It has taken a years to convince the maintainers that this change is a good idea and not "letting Plex determine the future course of Jellyfin."
Silo is a new up and coming competitor, also completely open source and written in go, and has full Postgres support from the get-go, along with proper architecture decisions to allow transcoding across multiple hosts.
The vision of Silo appears to be much more clear, and has quite a few great devs behind it. It also has features to run side by side and has full JF api support. I have no involvement in the project, just excited for a new player in the space.
Then I went on siloserver's website and I was even more confused.
What made the success of Plex is how easy it is to setup, how nice it looks and how easy it is to use.
Siloserver's marketing miss all those points because they focus on the tech stack, don't show a single picture of the UI and don't demonstrate the UX.
Even as someone who understands the tech written on the website, I don't see the point. So I can easily imagine how someone without the technical knowledge would feel about this...
First time I've seen a mention of Silo out on the open internet. This thing is really designed for large scale piracy networks that choke on massive libraries.
* Accelerated TV support - Jellyfin sometimes struggles to play media that plex has no problem with. This is across an old Apple TV and an oldish LG tv.
* general Tv support - no Jellyfin app on Samsung TVs (at least older ones)
* General challenges to get things to start - it never worked for me out-of-the-box
* slightly weird sign in flows because it’s all self-hosted (have to first install a mobile app to make signing in on TV app smoother unless you happen to have your computer and TV side by side)
* weird issues with things suddenly stopping to work: DLNA was working but without any changes I can think of on my end it no longer works
* weird dlna support - at least with iOS VLC it didn’t work smoothly - like VLC sometimes wouldn’t see the announcement or something and I’d have to reset. Could be a VLC issue but don’t recall similar problems with Plex
So basically Plex is a smoother, easier to use experience that typically “just works” without issues.
These are the pain points I experienced moving from Plex to Jellyfin a while ago:
- Jellyfin forced me to organize my files into Show/Season folders, whereas Plex just handled my original flat mess of scattered files.
- When playing video on Plex, I generally have to wait some time before subtitles show up, whereas the subtitles in Plex just show up immediately
- Plex has built in search for openly available subtitles matching your video that you can use if your video lacks subtitles (not sure if Jellyfin has it too)
That said, I still prefer Jellyfin for numerous other reasons, and I don't regret my migration.
> Jellyfin forced me to organize my files into Show/Season folders, whereas Plex just handled my original flat mess of scattered files.
You keep all your shows in a single directory? or just sorted into folders per show?
I haven't had any issues with files just sorted into show folders for shorter series, but even in general it's very un-particular about filenames as long as you have `<show name> (<year>) S<Season #>E<Episode #>` (and it accepts a decent number of formats for season/episode number, and year is usually only needed if you need to differentiate shows with the same name).
No don't, sonarr is definitely worse if you have a unstructured media folder. I currently use it and its good, but I remember when first starting out with pile of files in semi random folders it being a mess to start up. Like some of the restrictions of the bulk importer made very little sense. Also, sonarr is tied to a single metadata provider which sometimes makes very unpopular decisions about the naming of series and episodes. When pluribus was initally released, they insisted on naming the series "plur1bus" even though no other source, imdb or even AppleTV used that as the official name. This broke auto downloading for the season.
I'd say the biggest difference is Plex had years to get polish and mature. (After you turn off all the annoying features ...). So Jellyfin is missing little things, or has apparent bugs (especially on android tv). For example no way to remove a series from Continue Watching, or quickly reload metadata for one series.
I think that's put it maybe a bit better than I did. I moved from running XBMC then a bit of Kodi to Plex but was really stubborn about it. Once I made the move over because my new Smart TV had the Plex app I was sold. Jellyfin hits that sweet spot of being what Plex was but I hope they manage to weather the storm of losing a lot of their core team from the beginning.
Not only does it acknowledges that Plex is still far better than Jellyfin with its whole ecosystem, but it also depict pretty nicely the entitlement of the users overall.
On one side, they paid $75 more than five years ago for a piece of software for which they still receive weekly updates.
On the other, they talk about how leadership at Jellyfin decided to throw the blanket after a burning themselves out for free.
Up till now, Plex kept their promise regarding the Lifetime pass: we still receive updates, we still have all the features.
So, unless they change that, they haven't broken their promise.
It seems only fair from them to try to run a sustainable business, which you can do without renewed income.
They have to find money.
They raise subscription price: no impact on existing Lifetime pass owners.
They add ad-supported features: no impact on existing Lifetime pass owners. I don't see a single add wherever I access my Plex library, I have hidden their "free" library. I still have 100% of the features I had when I bought the Lifetime pass. Except that I have now access to more features.
Sure, nobody forced them to say "Lifetime", but I don't see how I could be mad if they decided to release a completely new version that is out of the Lifetime scope.
I would still have access to the old one, but if I was interested in the new one, I would have to move to one of their new plans, that looks more sustainable in the long run.
Plex is still the easiest one to use for regular user or for the people, like me, that act as IT support for their family and friends, and don't want to spend their evenings and weekends tweaking their aunt's TV just for the sake of using Open Source software.
OP here. Thank you for reading and it was something that's been brewing in my mind for a while. I agree with you and didn't really know how to approach it becuase I've got a lot of really good things to say about Plex and sure as hell have benefitted from the lifetime license.
Recently, I've been asked more and more by friends and family to set up Plex for them as it's "free" and "easy". I do the basic setup or walk them through it. Then they want to share to their libraries to others or just watch off their connection and hit the wall of having to have a subscription.
Then they bring me Jellyfin as the alternative from something they saw on XDA. I'm not too quick to help them set that up just because of the current state of it and having to find them players on their various devices. As you mentioned, I've been spending pretty much be spending all my free time helping them set it up but I think Plex being so cost prohibitive now so Jellyfin will start to become the defacto option as what we'll be tweaking for those of us that act as IT support.
I can see how scary the price increase on the Lifetime pass looks, and I see it as a deterrent to push people to something like the 5 years plan which looks like a good deal to me
The pricing around Remote Watch Pass is a bit weird to me because I haven't got any complaint from people access my server, and I know they don't have any kind of pass, so I'm not sure why it should be needed?
But having to pay 30/year to access someone else's server, who's already paying a regular Pass and the infra, sure seems abusive
No problem at all and thanks for giving me your point of view on it. The 5 year plan seems a bit strange, again I understand that Plex and it's not too bad of a deal but I think the changes being so quick have really taken a lot of folks by surprise me included.
The Remote Watch Pass explanation was just a bit confusing when it first got announced. I was helping someone build their first one and they are now having trouble with accessing from off their network to do some automation with their Watchlist. I ended up just telling them to buy it for the month and see how it went as it seemed like it was just a paywall issue. Turns out it was something to do with their Windows setup in the end but something that just worked now being so obfuscated takes away the ease of setup and really confuses more than informs.
If you have the Plex Pass then anyone connecting to they shouldn't need the Remote Pass it so that's probably why you haven't had any complaints from people accessing yours as long as you have it. It's more for people who are sharing their library without it so if you have a few people accessing then I don't think it's unfair to ask them to chip in a bit to future proof you but I think we'll be having similar questions in 5 years time when this one expires for people who picked it up.
I'm still a really big fan of Plex but it's getting harder these days to actually recommend it while the pricing is really all over the place. My advice these days is just get it now and assume the price for things will go up and not down.
Looks and feels like an Android app from 10 years ago and all this hides whatever setup and management went into getting this going. Plex Just Works, and is very easy on the eyes.
OP here. Thank you for posting this I didn't really think about that for the article. This looks like a great way to see it for those on the fence.
If you don't mind me asking what client are you using and server setup are you using. Any tips from someone who has been using it for a decent chunk of time?
I've been a paying Emby user for close to ten years, ever since plex tried to launch a VR player or some shit, while there were still critical bugs in the player for web and other devices.
Emby just works, it's players are great, and issues actually get fixed. I know it's a closed source fork of XBMC, I know that's controversial, but the product itself is just so good.
Jellyfin is a highly modified fork of Emby from Emby's last open source release (3.5.2). They're diverged since, but there's still a lot of similarities left.
I started with XBMC, with the media library on the same machine as XBMC. Then I developed a need to have acces to my library on different devices. After faffing about with samba shares and whatnot I discovered Plex. I started using that as a free user, and was very impressed and happy. 3-4 years into that journey I was considering buying a lifetime pass.
At some point their web client felt like it was abandoned, because they kept on releasing apps for a bunch of niche devices and for VR. I was unsure if my subscription was going to make my experience any better.
Eventually I discovered Emby, trialled it for a couple of months alongside Plex (same XBMC core, so the same library naming convention and folder structure). After that I decided to get the subscription for Emby. Their server is solid, the web client is solid, and their android clients are solid. Happy camper since then!
I have found Emby to be a nice middle ground between Plex and Jellyfin.
It has more polish and refinement than Jellyfin but doesn't have the obtrusive ads and whatnot that Plex offers. Client support is also great. Jellyfin is still quickly gaining ground but Emby is still my media server of choice for now.
>Jellyfin but doesn't have the obtrusive ads and whatnot that Plex offers
I'm a Plex user who's been thinking about trying Jellyfin out, largely in response to some recent UI changes I dislike but... what Plex ads? I don't have any on my android apps, on Roku installs, or on my parent's SmartTV, and none of my other users have ever mentioned any ads to me. (If I was seeing ads, Jellyfin would become "take some time off work and get it working now".)
I know I've disabled everything except my own libraries, so it's possible there's a setting somewhere that allows them, but if so, I disabled it so long ago I honestly don't remember ever seeing any. Are other Plex users seeing ads? Was it after a recent update that I may have skipped, maybe?
The homescreen on the Xbox app is now full of "Apple TV", Trailers, free TV and the like. Enough of it that you can't see you own stuff on the homescreen.
Last time I searched I couldn't turn it off. But maybe I missed that setting.
Not until Emby starts to enshitify our jellyfin ui gets alot better. I made the switch around 2 years ago from Plex and tried out both extensively. Jellyfin just doesnt have the polish I was looking for.
I use Kodi. I never used Plex or Jellyfin. I'm not even sure what they are. They look like media players, but... over the network? I don't really understand how that works. In a web browser? Why whould anyone run a media player in a browser? Can anyone explain?
Essentially, think of it as Netflix for which you provide the media yourself. A browser is one possible way to connect, but clients exist too (e.g. a Roku app and so on). Having the ability to connect with a client running on something connected to your TV is nice, as is the ability to connect remotely (if you open up the ports on your firewall of course). It also gives you things like remembering what shows you were watching and giving a shortcut to the next episode, intro skipping, transcoding, and so on.
Nope. I still don't get it. (Maybe because I'm too old for this stuff?)
> think of it as Netflix for which you provide the media yourself.
Netflix is a provider of content. If I have the content, why do I need a provider for?
> Having the ability to connect with a client running on something connected to your TV is nice
(???) But that's what I'm doing now with Kodi.
> as is the ability to connect remotely (if you open up the ports on your firewall of course).
Wireguard (only one port), and all home LAN is accessible, not just one service.
> It also gives you things like remembering what shows you were watching and giving a shortcut to the next episode
Kodi does that too. Or maybe you mean it remembers between player devices? See ep.1 on player A and it shows up as seen when I start player B too? That's nice. I think I read somewhere that Kodi can use a remote MySQL/MariaDB for it's library too. I could probably set up a shared DB.
> intro skipping
How does it know where the intro is and how long?
> transcoding
If I were to install Plex/Jellyfin it would be where the storage is - on a router that also serves as a NAS. It doesn't have the power to transcode anything, not even audio. Meanwhile, the lowest spec phone can play everything. So, why would anyone transcode in 2026?
> Netflix is a provider of content. If I have the content, why do I need a provider for?
I have never used Kodi. Does it organize your content? Does it download summaries for every episode? Does it create thumbnails and posters for you? Create mobile transcodes and allow you to cache downloads on your clients?
Does it allow you to create a home with managed accounts? Can your friends and family access it without setting up wireguard, dynamic dns or other manual access methods?
From what I see, Kodi is a media player but I don’t see what else it really brings to the table if you really want a streaming service experience.
I have used XBMC, Boxxee, mythTV and a bunch of other OSS media platforms over the years and Plex is just the most polished and feature rich that I haven’t had a need to look at anything else for a long time.
I tried to evaluate Jellyfin recently but dropped it pretty quick. Live (OTA) television is barely a thought (seems to be acknowledged that no dev uses it), and you have to figure out a source for guide data. I have complaints with Plex's implementation, but it's a lot smoother than Jellyfin.
TV manufactures are known to slurp up all this data while also providing these apps on underpowered systems. Many techie's recommend hooking up an external media box to your TV and not providing internet directly to the tv.
Huh? I find Infuse to be a very solid tvOS/iOS client, and they added built-in support for Jellyfin over 6 years ago [0]. It's right there at the bottom with other media servers they support (Emby & Plex). What's your issue with it?
I'd argue that raising a bunch of venture capital is what stopped them from being able to be a sustainable business.
I paid for Plex for a long time but I no longer use it because I got fed up of fighting it. (I now use Jellyfin + Tailscale instead.) I think the problem with Plex is they aren't happy with what they are: a service for people viewing their own (yes, pirated) media library. They always wanted to be something more. Netflix envy.
But all anyone I know ever wanted Plex to do was handle their media library, perhaps offer a paid tunnelling system but otherwise get out of the way.
We live in the age of Wireguard (and Nebula and Tailscale etc). Not being home is not an issue for accessing stuff at home in the slightest, no other public service port exposure required either. In the context of someone considering hosting a media server of their own at all in the first place vs just using cloud subscription options, remote access is a pretty minimal lift. Assuming they aren't already doing it actually, if anything I could see a lot of selfhosters doing that first for other reasons before adding video later.
I assume they mean how easy Plex makes it to share content across the internet. I setup a server, you download a client. No port forwarding, VPN shenanigans, etc
It’s not about tech literacy to setup, it’s about sharing my content with friends and family - there is no easy way to do it, even if everybody is tech savvy it’s still high friction.
The dream would be: anybody with a jellyfin install can add your library to theirs, anybody with the jellyfin client can be invited to browse your library.
I do this with friends and family. I'm not sure whether my solution is considered high friction. I gave them a router with openwrt installed, and a wireguard tunnel I set up, with a route to my jellyfin server. So they can point their jellyfin app on their TV to my server.
I would absolutely love to cut to jellyfin, but for the TV integration.
Last time i looked samsung TV's (which most of my fam use) dont have a decent client. Has that changed?
Yeah, unfortunately the TV app (Xbox for me) offering is really poor.
I've been playing with Kodi with the Jellyfin plug-in but it requires such brittle tower of themes and plug-ins to look like Plex that I've yet to make the switch.
This is exactly the core reason why I can't consider changing. The Plex app for Samsung has worked great for me for many years. It has its quirks, but it works!...
The corporate creep was already felt when years ago they released the PlexAmp audio player. Good player but to display lyrics you have to open the menu and select “Show Lyrics”, two clicks every time. Every time, for every track. When the next track is playing lyrics display is automatically turned off. It is not remembered either, you go back to previous track and have to click click them menu gain. This is because they have to pay a licence and rather save $100 per month by inconveniencing their user base. you see, it’s extra work to click the menu every time so you won’t be viewing lyrics. Profit! And no, if your file already has lyrics that doesn’t matter, you still have to open to view it every time, for each track.
Jellyfin 12 should be able to use a Plex media library using Plex naming conventions, no renaming required.
This will reduce the switching workload, and you can run both services at the same time whilst trying out Jellyfin.
Huh. I was able to run Plex alongside Jellyfin on my library no issues.
Just depends on what naming conventions you use.
For foolproof matching, adding Plex metadata in the style of "{tmdb-12345}" to the directory name would cause problems for Jellyfin, as they used to demand different formatting, for instance square brackets.
It has taken a years to convince the maintainers that this change is a good idea and not "letting Plex determine the future course of Jellyfin."
Silo is a new up and coming competitor, also completely open source and written in go, and has full Postgres support from the get-go, along with proper architecture decisions to allow transcoding across multiple hosts.
The vision of Silo appears to be much more clear, and has quite a few great devs behind it. It also has features to run side by side and has full JF api support. I have no involvement in the project, just excited for a new player in the space.
Something to keep an eye on!
Then I went on siloserver's website and I was even more confused.
What made the success of Plex is how easy it is to setup, how nice it looks and how easy it is to use.
Siloserver's marketing miss all those points because they focus on the tech stack, don't show a single picture of the UI and don't demonstrate the UX.
Even as someone who understands the tech written on the website, I don't see the point. So I can easily imagine how someone without the technical knowledge would feel about this...
You'll understand when/if your Plex media library grows so large that every rescan takes a week.
dear lord, what kinda size are you talking about? in terms of TB/# of shows/files?
Agreed, the only UI demo I could find was in https://github.com/Silo-Server/silo-apple
I'm thinking of trying it out though to see if there's any noticeable differences in performance etc.
As I mentioned it’s pretty new and the server doesn’t even have a tagged or release version yet. Take a look at the repo activity: https://github.com/Silo-Server/silo-server/graphs/commit-act...
Marketing is not really the important bit at the moment when they’re working on building things from the ground up.
I was just mentioning it because it’s a new contender to the space, changing the status quo. Always a good thing in the OSS world.
It's much easier to run for profit media servers with proper big db support
First time I've seen a mention of Silo out on the open internet. This thing is really designed for large scale piracy networks that choke on massive libraries.
https://siloserver.org
As someone who was late to the game, I never even considered Plex and have been totally satisfied with Jellyfin. Is there anything better about Plex?
* Accelerated TV support - Jellyfin sometimes struggles to play media that plex has no problem with. This is across an old Apple TV and an oldish LG tv.
* general Tv support - no Jellyfin app on Samsung TVs (at least older ones)
* General challenges to get things to start - it never worked for me out-of-the-box
* slightly weird sign in flows because it’s all self-hosted (have to first install a mobile app to make signing in on TV app smoother unless you happen to have your computer and TV side by side)
* weird issues with things suddenly stopping to work: DLNA was working but without any changes I can think of on my end it no longer works
* weird dlna support - at least with iOS VLC it didn’t work smoothly - like VLC sometimes wouldn’t see the announcement or something and I’d have to reset. Could be a VLC issue but don’t recall similar problems with Plex
So basically Plex is a smoother, easier to use experience that typically “just works” without issues.
These are the pain points I experienced moving from Plex to Jellyfin a while ago:
- Jellyfin forced me to organize my files into Show/Season folders, whereas Plex just handled my original flat mess of scattered files.
- When playing video on Plex, I generally have to wait some time before subtitles show up, whereas the subtitles in Plex just show up immediately
- Plex has built in search for openly available subtitles matching your video that you can use if your video lacks subtitles (not sure if Jellyfin has it too)
That said, I still prefer Jellyfin for numerous other reasons, and I don't regret my migration.
> Jellyfin forced me to organize my files into Show/Season folders, whereas Plex just handled my original flat mess of scattered files.
You keep all your shows in a single directory? or just sorted into folders per show?
I haven't had any issues with files just sorted into show folders for shorter series, but even in general it's very un-particular about filenames as long as you have `<show name> (<year>) S<Season #>E<Episode #>` (and it accepts a decent number of formats for season/episode number, and year is usually only needed if you need to differentiate shows with the same name).
> Jellyfin forced me to organize my files into Show/Season folders
Regarding this, try out sonarr/radarr with hard links.
No don't, sonarr is definitely worse if you have a unstructured media folder. I currently use it and its good, but I remember when first starting out with pile of files in semi random folders it being a mess to start up. Like some of the restrictions of the bulk importer made very little sense. Also, sonarr is tied to a single metadata provider which sometimes makes very unpopular decisions about the naming of series and episodes. When pluribus was initally released, they insisted on naming the series "plur1bus" even though no other source, imdb or even AppleTV used that as the official name. This broke auto downloading for the season.
Does sonarr/radarr fix not having to use Show/Season structure?
yes it does, you can use the opensubtitles plugin
I'd say the biggest difference is Plex had years to get polish and mature. (After you turn off all the annoying features ...). So Jellyfin is missing little things, or has apparent bugs (especially on android tv). For example no way to remove a series from Continue Watching, or quickly reload metadata for one series.
Plex has better client support. But Jellyfin being open source client support is catching up quickly.
Not really.
Plex was the jellyfin of the 2010’s. Pirate-centric (or at least agnostic), hobbyist focused, a bit hard to use and ugly but super valuable.
Then they went corporate and yeah it’s weird and in decline.
I think that's put it maybe a bit better than I did. I moved from running XBMC then a bit of Kodi to Plex but was really stubborn about it. Once I made the move over because my new Smart TV had the Plex app I was sold. Jellyfin hits that sweet spot of being what Plex was but I hope they manage to weather the storm of losing a lot of their core team from the beginning.
[dead]
Weird article.
Not only does it acknowledges that Plex is still far better than Jellyfin with its whole ecosystem, but it also depict pretty nicely the entitlement of the users overall.
On one side, they paid $75 more than five years ago for a piece of software for which they still receive weekly updates. On the other, they talk about how leadership at Jellyfin decided to throw the blanket after a burning themselves out for free.
Up till now, Plex kept their promise regarding the Lifetime pass: we still receive updates, we still have all the features. So, unless they change that, they haven't broken their promise. It seems only fair from them to try to run a sustainable business, which you can do without renewed income. They have to find money. They raise subscription price: no impact on existing Lifetime pass owners. They add ad-supported features: no impact on existing Lifetime pass owners. I don't see a single add wherever I access my Plex library, I have hidden their "free" library. I still have 100% of the features I had when I bought the Lifetime pass. Except that I have now access to more features.
Sure, nobody forced them to say "Lifetime", but I don't see how I could be mad if they decided to release a completely new version that is out of the Lifetime scope. I would still have access to the old one, but if I was interested in the new one, I would have to move to one of their new plans, that looks more sustainable in the long run.
Plex is still the easiest one to use for regular user or for the people, like me, that act as IT support for their family and friends, and don't want to spend their evenings and weekends tweaking their aunt's TV just for the sake of using Open Source software.
OP here. Thank you for reading and it was something that's been brewing in my mind for a while. I agree with you and didn't really know how to approach it becuase I've got a lot of really good things to say about Plex and sure as hell have benefitted from the lifetime license.
Recently, I've been asked more and more by friends and family to set up Plex for them as it's "free" and "easy". I do the basic setup or walk them through it. Then they want to share to their libraries to others or just watch off their connection and hit the wall of having to have a subscription.
Then they bring me Jellyfin as the alternative from something they saw on XDA. I'm not too quick to help them set that up just because of the current state of it and having to find them players on their various devices. As you mentioned, I've been spending pretty much be spending all my free time helping them set it up but I think Plex being so cost prohibitive now so Jellyfin will start to become the defacto option as what we'll be tweaking for those of us that act as IT support.
Hi, Since you're here, I just wanted to alert you to the fact that the link you posted w.r.t donating to Jellyfin doesn't work. https://jellyfin.org/donate gives a 404 and the correct link for donating is at: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/contributing/direct-donati...
Thanks for the heads-up I'll get that changed now
I've updated that now and done a quick check so it's actually linked to the devs properly. Much appreciated and thanks for reading the article
Thank you for your reply
I can see how scary the price increase on the Lifetime pass looks, and I see it as a deterrent to push people to something like the 5 years plan which looks like a good deal to me
The pricing around Remote Watch Pass is a bit weird to me because I haven't got any complaint from people access my server, and I know they don't have any kind of pass, so I'm not sure why it should be needed?
But having to pay 30/year to access someone else's server, who's already paying a regular Pass and the infra, sure seems abusive
No problem at all and thanks for giving me your point of view on it. The 5 year plan seems a bit strange, again I understand that Plex and it's not too bad of a deal but I think the changes being so quick have really taken a lot of folks by surprise me included.
The Remote Watch Pass explanation was just a bit confusing when it first got announced. I was helping someone build their first one and they are now having trouble with accessing from off their network to do some automation with their Watchlist. I ended up just telling them to buy it for the month and see how it went as it seemed like it was just a paywall issue. Turns out it was something to do with their Windows setup in the end but something that just worked now being so obfuscated takes away the ease of setup and really confuses more than informs.
If you have the Plex Pass then anyone connecting to they shouldn't need the Remote Pass it so that's probably why you haven't had any complaints from people accessing yours as long as you have it. It's more for people who are sharing their library without it so if you have a few people accessing then I don't think it's unfair to ask them to chip in a bit to future proof you but I think we'll be having similar questions in 5 years time when this one expires for people who picked it up.
I'm still a really big fan of Plex but it's getting harder these days to actually recommend it while the pricing is really all over the place. My advice these days is just get it now and assume the price for things will go up and not down.
> leadership at Jellyfin decided to throw the blanket after a burning themselves out for free.
What does this mean?
I think that they meant “throw in the towel”? Not positive though.
It means that I haven't slept enough to not make mistakes!
For those curious to see Jellyfin in action
https://demo.jellyfin.org/stable/web/#/home
Username is demo, PW is blank
Also, I've been running jellyfin for many years, I've had no issues
Looks and feels like an Android app from 10 years ago and all this hides whatever setup and management went into getting this going. Plex Just Works, and is very easy on the eyes.
OP here. Thank you for posting this I didn't really think about that for the article. This looks like a great way to see it for those on the fence.
If you don't mind me asking what client are you using and server setup are you using. Any tips from someone who has been using it for a decent chunk of time?
I've been a paying Emby user for close to ten years, ever since plex tried to launch a VR player or some shit, while there were still critical bugs in the player for web and other devices.
Emby just works, it's players are great, and issues actually get fixed. I know it's a closed source fork of XBMC, I know that's controversial, but the product itself is just so good.
Jellyfin is a highly modified fork of Emby from Emby's last open source release (3.5.2). They're diverged since, but there's still a lot of similarities left.
I'm definitely curious about those that moved over to Emby from the XBMC days.
Did you try anything else before hand or just go straight to Emby? I have to say I never really gave it a proper chance
I started with XBMC, with the media library on the same machine as XBMC. Then I developed a need to have acces to my library on different devices. After faffing about with samba shares and whatnot I discovered Plex. I started using that as a free user, and was very impressed and happy. 3-4 years into that journey I was considering buying a lifetime pass.
At some point their web client felt like it was abandoned, because they kept on releasing apps for a bunch of niche devices and for VR. I was unsure if my subscription was going to make my experience any better.
Eventually I discovered Emby, trialled it for a couple of months alongside Plex (same XBMC core, so the same library naming convention and folder structure). After that I decided to get the subscription for Emby. Their server is solid, the web client is solid, and their android clients are solid. Happy camper since then!
I use jellyfin with Infuse, Kodi, mpv-shim and a couple of mobile clients as well. No major issues so far, even my parents use it via Kodi.
Should an Emby premiere user consider moving to Jellyfin?
I have found Emby to be a nice middle ground between Plex and Jellyfin.
It has more polish and refinement than Jellyfin but doesn't have the obtrusive ads and whatnot that Plex offers. Client support is also great. Jellyfin is still quickly gaining ground but Emby is still my media server of choice for now.
>Jellyfin but doesn't have the obtrusive ads and whatnot that Plex offers
I'm a Plex user who's been thinking about trying Jellyfin out, largely in response to some recent UI changes I dislike but... what Plex ads? I don't have any on my android apps, on Roku installs, or on my parent's SmartTV, and none of my other users have ever mentioned any ads to me. (If I was seeing ads, Jellyfin would become "take some time off work and get it working now".)
I know I've disabled everything except my own libraries, so it's possible there's a setting somewhere that allows them, but if so, I disabled it so long ago I honestly don't remember ever seeing any. Are other Plex users seeing ads? Was it after a recent update that I may have skipped, maybe?
The homescreen on the Xbox app is now full of "Apple TV", Trailers, free TV and the like. Enough of it that you can't see you own stuff on the homescreen.
Last time I searched I couldn't turn it off. But maybe I missed that setting.
Not until Emby starts to enshitify our jellyfin ui gets alot better. I made the switch around 2 years ago from Plex and tried out both extensively. Jellyfin just doesnt have the polish I was looking for.
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Jellyfin works great. Supports my 7.1 Atmos setup with the right media even, very slick, no issues
Does jellyfin offer intro/outro skipping like plex pass does? And hardware accelerated transcoding?
The only thing keeping me on plex is my lifetime plex pass, and family inertia.
yes (through a plugin), and yes (if you set it up)
I last used Jellyfin about 2 years ago, and the chromecast functionality on Android needed some work. Has the Android client been improved?
I use Kodi. I never used Plex or Jellyfin. I'm not even sure what they are. They look like media players, but... over the network? I don't really understand how that works. In a web browser? Why whould anyone run a media player in a browser? Can anyone explain?
Essentially, think of it as Netflix for which you provide the media yourself. A browser is one possible way to connect, but clients exist too (e.g. a Roku app and so on). Having the ability to connect with a client running on something connected to your TV is nice, as is the ability to connect remotely (if you open up the ports on your firewall of course). It also gives you things like remembering what shows you were watching and giving a shortcut to the next episode, intro skipping, transcoding, and so on.
Nope. I still don't get it. (Maybe because I'm too old for this stuff?)
> think of it as Netflix for which you provide the media yourself.
Netflix is a provider of content. If I have the content, why do I need a provider for?
> Having the ability to connect with a client running on something connected to your TV is nice
(???) But that's what I'm doing now with Kodi.
> as is the ability to connect remotely (if you open up the ports on your firewall of course).
Wireguard (only one port), and all home LAN is accessible, not just one service.
> It also gives you things like remembering what shows you were watching and giving a shortcut to the next episode
Kodi does that too. Or maybe you mean it remembers between player devices? See ep.1 on player A and it shows up as seen when I start player B too? That's nice. I think I read somewhere that Kodi can use a remote MySQL/MariaDB for it's library too. I could probably set up a shared DB.
> intro skipping
How does it know where the intro is and how long?
> transcoding
If I were to install Plex/Jellyfin it would be where the storage is - on a router that also serves as a NAS. It doesn't have the power to transcode anything, not even audio. Meanwhile, the lowest spec phone can play everything. So, why would anyone transcode in 2026?
> Netflix is a provider of content. If I have the content, why do I need a provider for?
I have never used Kodi. Does it organize your content? Does it download summaries for every episode? Does it create thumbnails and posters for you? Create mobile transcodes and allow you to cache downloads on your clients?
Does it allow you to create a home with managed accounts? Can your friends and family access it without setting up wireguard, dynamic dns or other manual access methods?
From what I see, Kodi is a media player but I don’t see what else it really brings to the table if you really want a streaming service experience.
I have used XBMC, Boxxee, mythTV and a bunch of other OSS media platforms over the years and Plex is just the most polished and feature rich that I haven’t had a need to look at anything else for a long time.
I tried to evaluate Jellyfin recently but dropped it pretty quick. Live (OTA) television is barely a thought (seems to be acknowledged that no dev uses it), and you have to figure out a source for guide data. I have complaints with Plex's implementation, but it's a lot smoother than Jellyfin.
The main drawback of anything other than plex is that you can’t simply install it on some major TV brands.
Why on gods green earth would you connect your tv to the internet, let alone install anything on it??
What a weird comment. I use my TV to watch YouTube, Twitch, my Plex instance, and some local TV channels replays (M6, TF1, Arte…).
I connect it to the internet to use the internet, not sure what you’re expecting?
TV manufactures are known to slurp up all this data while also providing these apps on underpowered systems. Many techie's recommend hooking up an external media box to your TV and not providing internet directly to the tv.
Jellyfin doesn't even have a tvOS client.
>Jellyfin doesn't even have a tvOS client.
Huh? I find Infuse to be a very solid tvOS/iOS client, and they added built-in support for Jellyfin over 6 years ago [0]. It's right there at the bottom with other media servers they support (Emby & Plex). What's your issue with it?
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0: https://jellyfin.org/posts/client-infuse/
The cost isnt ideal. Especially for a jellyfin user.
It does. Swiftfin: https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin
a) It's not official, or even recommended at https://jellyfin.org/downloads/clients
b) I would never use an app that used VLC for playback.
It’s there. jellyfin.org/downloads/clients/all/
And it’s in their repo.
It seems to be status “official beta” and closing in on a new release with a considerable amount of rework done.
I’m running a local build deployed to my appletv and it’s working fine.
This was always going to be the fate of Plex. You can’t build a sustainable business off the back of most of your users viewing pirated content.
I say that without judgement, it’s just a reality. Open source was always going to be the path.
I'd argue that raising a bunch of venture capital is what stopped them from being able to be a sustainable business.
I paid for Plex for a long time but I no longer use it because I got fed up of fighting it. (I now use Jellyfin + Tailscale instead.) I think the problem with Plex is they aren't happy with what they are: a service for people viewing their own (yes, pirated) media library. They always wanted to be something more. Netflix envy.
But all anyone I know ever wanted Plex to do was handle their media library, perhaps offer a paid tunnelling system but otherwise get out of the way.
I’ve always figured recurring costs require recurring revenue.
That killer remote user connection brokering can’t be free, right?
Weirdest downvote I've seen. This isn't like, painfully obvious to everyone?
Maybe I'm old, but it feels like everyone has a little too much "business-brain."
Been using jellyfin for like 2ish years, no complain.
Jellyfin-mpv-shim is great.
At one point I realized I don’t need plex or jellyfin. All I need is network samba and infuse. It’s supported on all apple devices and works well.
And when you are not home?
We live in the age of Wireguard (and Nebula and Tailscale etc). Not being home is not an issue for accessing stuff at home in the slightest, no other public service port exposure required either. In the context of someone considering hosting a media server of their own at all in the first place vs just using cloud subscription options, remote access is a pretty minimal lift. Assuming they aren't already doing it actually, if anything I could see a lot of selfhosters doing that first for other reasons before adding video later.
Didn’t the Jellyfin project lead and some other core founders quit this week?
Yes, but it was amicable. The mentioned burn out
Jellyfin is great. For me, the only thing missing is sharing libraries.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by sharing libraries?
I assume they mean how easy Plex makes it to share content across the internet. I setup a server, you download a client. No port forwarding, VPN shenanigans, etc
yes I agree, it does need some tech literacy to setup properly.
It’s not about tech literacy to setup, it’s about sharing my content with friends and family - there is no easy way to do it, even if everybody is tech savvy it’s still high friction.
The dream would be: anybody with a jellyfin install can add your library to theirs, anybody with the jellyfin client can be invited to browse your library.
I do this with friends and family. I'm not sure whether my solution is considered high friction. I gave them a router with openwrt installed, and a wireguard tunnel I set up, with a route to my jellyfin server. So they can point their jellyfin app on their TV to my server.
I have to say if Jellyfin could nail the library sharing then they would definitely be a much bigger alternative to Plex users on the fence imho
I would absolutely love to cut to jellyfin, but for the TV integration. Last time i looked samsung TV's (which most of my fam use) dont have a decent client. Has that changed?
Check here: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen/issues/222#issuec...
hmmm looks like its heading in the right direction.. very promising.
Yeah, unfortunately the TV app (Xbox for me) offering is really poor.
I've been playing with Kodi with the Jellyfin plug-in but it requires such brittle tower of themes and plug-ins to look like Plex that I've yet to make the switch.
This is exactly the core reason why I can't consider changing. The Plex app for Samsung has worked great for me for many years. It has its quirks, but it works!...
Not having that is an absolute deal breaker.