Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com

1w ago

I knew I should have turned off auto-update ugh

144 comments

Welcome to Jellyfin friend
- I'm so glad that I changed to Jellyfin. So much better.
- Lol that's pretty much how it went for me. One day it pissed me off for the last time. Switched to Jellyfin and never looked back. Should have done it so much sooner.
- Jellyfin simply doesn’t work as well as Plex unfortunately.
  
  In what way?
  
  How so? I have way less issues with jellyfin than I did with Plex. I think with jellyfin you just need to RTFM and find some plugins to expand the functionality if you need it
- I bailed on Plex a while ago, went to Emby, now Jellyfin.
  I forgot what happened to Emby, but I do recall some enshittification, and bounced. Jellyfin seems pretty solid.
  
  Jellyfin forked from Emby when it went partially paywall.
- I recently tested Jellyfin again and still miss a lot of features I like with Plex. I am a former Emby user and I don’t see why Jellyfin got so popular. I really want it to succeed, though
  
  Jellyfin is 100% free and open-source, it may miss some features but nothing behind a paywall. We made the choice of open-source over features (I can understand people going with plex, but I'm happy with jf)
  
  Like?
- I have a server but it's still a bit rough around the edges
- Seriously, why are we still even mentioning Plex at this point?
  
  Because it's easier, in a lot of people's experience better, and has more users. Why wouldn't people mention it?

Why the fuck are you not using Jellyfin?
Seriously, the setup is really easy and it just fucking works.
- It failed the spouse test when I last tried last year
  
  Genuine question - what aspect of it didn't work for them?
  
  I wonder how? Plex is actually worse to navigate and filled with ads and shit.
  The issue I had: Jellyfin experience is a better on Firestick and Chromecast than it is on Roku, but the difference has been shrinking fast due to contributions from someone named 1hitsong on GitHub. That person has absolutely hammered patches out over the past few months.
- Because it fucks up subtitles on their Nvidia Shield and firestick apps, and has issues with transcoding too. If you're purely using the desktop app, or browser then it's better. But Plex just works in every aspect. Subtitles, transcoding, sharing libraries. Have had no issues or weird bugs. Anytime I try JF I have to dive deep into resolving bugs, some of which are unsolvable by me.
  
  I've been using Jellyfin on both the Fire Stick and Sheild for over 2 years and haven't encountered any issues with transcoding, subtitles, or anything else. You just launch the app and everything just works. And I've got a couple of very non technical remote users who have been using it flawlessly.
- moved to jellyfin after plex was an absolute nightmare to setup on linux.
  jellyfin is just so easy to use and like you said, just works
  
  BTW, what's your opinion on Kodi & Emby ?
- I've tried to use Jellyfin every year or two for the past six years to replace Plex, but it sadly just isn't there. It's not good in a lot of aspects, especially when it comes to full bitrate 4K HDR movies (100GB movie files), HDR tone mapping, and especially subtitles (which I always have on).
  Also, I'm pretty sure on their GitHub page there's like a huge list of some significant or moderate security vulnerabilities that have been known for many years and are never going to get fixed due to breaking compatibility with some old devices if their fixed.
  
  Wait, Jellyfin had HDR tone mapping before Plex didn't it?
  In my case running them both side by side, Jellyfin is as least reliable and fast, which is a lot more important when I am thousands of miles away and just want to watch something.
- Devil's advocate, it's missing a lot of features that aren't available unless you want to spend 12 hours playing with add-ons.
- Set up ease is highly variable. I spent hours of videos and guides and fiddling and couldn't get it running on anything except the desktop it was installed on.
  
  For me it was that it didn't like how the NAS shares are mounted by default so it didn't recognise their paths as valid.
- Setup is easy, but sometimes an episode I got plays with no subtitles even though they are there on the video when I watch it on my PC, already tried the subtitle extractor extension but it didn't seem to work.
- I have it set up right along Plex but find it nearly unusable because the search is atrociously slow. Like 1+ min to query my library. The day that gets fixed is the day I’ll start using it.
  
  That shouldn't be. I run mine side by side with Plex and Jellyfin is much faster.
- Does it work out the box with Chromecast yet? I gave it a go a while ago and it seemed incredibly convoluted, where as Plex just works.
  
  I've had absolutely zero issues on Chromecast, Roku and iOS/Android apps. Multiple of my friends who don't do tech stuff use my Jellyfin as a streaming service as well
- Setup is not really easy. Plex takes 5 minutes.
- I started using NixOS and it has been ridiculously easy.
  In your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix:
  undefined
  
  services.jellyfin.enable = true;
  If you need more options, just search.

The thing about the redesign that irks me the most is that browsing your own personal library is unnecessarily convoluted the way it’s now organized. It’s a big step backwards in terms of navigation.
- this is because your own personal library does not make them money.
- Oh dude this pisses me off SO MUCH!!! MY DAMN content should be front and center, not your stupid ads.
  And now we are on jellyfin and scrapped plex. Fuck them.
- I switched off like 2 years ago because of how many clicks it took to get to my things.
  Cant imagine how bad it is now.

What did I miss?
- They like completely overhauled the UI lol
  
  So?
- seconded?

Like many others, I switched to Jellyfin years ago. It is way, way better for me. It does what it says on the tin, sometimes more, but not less.
- You mean you don't like recommendations by default of the media you downloaded because you know exactly what you want to watch?
  I really never understood that.
  My assumption is that it's a bridge to some sort of legitimacy like a movie rental deal or something. Like inserting ads into your self hosted media.
  
  That's the thing - we just can't know. Sometimes a feature is just a feature, but with commercial software there's always more risk it's going to change under you for the wrong reasons when they find some way to monetise it.

I have Jellyfin in parallel now and I had to face the family during summer with questions like “why I cant do this with the app anymore “ “ why did you change it” sigh 😔 so I started to put energy on jelly because that was unacceptable way to rollout a botched change.

It’s now no longer possible to manually refresh libraries from the app. Amazing. Less functionality.
- They've "streamlined" your experience.
  
  If jellyfin could correctly sort my media with thumbnails I would switch in a second.
- What, thats crazy. I am always updating libraries from the app after getting subs or whatever

This is why I have Plex, emby, and jellyfin running in tandem. Plex still makes my life easier than the other two in a lot of ways, but it's been slipping for years. Once I've finally had enough, jellyfin all the way.
- I'm running jellyfin, can't recommend it enough. It's been catching up quite steadily to Plex and I still control everything. Can't complain about that.
  
  I also love Jellyfin, but it needs more contributors.
  Too many features need improvement, for example the watch party, or the native apps.

Man it's a real shame that Kevin Spacey being Kevin Spacey ruined that great show for me
- He’s a great actor and he’s a piece of shit person.
  
  He is so good of an actor he can act like he's not so fucked up.

Need context ..what's happening here?
- Ig they're rolling it out in waves, they decided to overhaul their app UI...for the worse IMO
  
  My wife likes the new UI, personally I'm indifferent
  
  Do you have any links? Plex Blog has nothing about this and all my stuff looks the same as it has for months now. (Although to be fair I use the Plex Preview app on Roku, so maybe I’ve just had what you’re all seeing now?)
- Plex did an update that took the perfectly good UI and fucked it hard, removed features, and generally is shit
  
  What did they remove??

Plex amp is still better than finamp for now. But it's catching up that's for sure.

I was in a previous update wave, and it made me switch to Jellyfin too. I cast from my phone to my TV, and they did something that made subtitles basically impossible to load via Chromecast. Even trying to automatically burn in subtitles didn't work for this mode.
Also, while a "minor" nitpick, Chromecast used to show random movie/TV show posters when you connected and also show the media details when you selected something, now it just shows a big PLEX logo all the time unless playing something.

Crap, I still haven't logged ba k in since they asked me to log out because of the security compromise. I'm gonna have to lose a day and figure out this whole jellyfin thing I guess.
- For what it's worth jellyfin is really not that hard to set up
  
  I spent hours and couldn't get it to show up on any device except the desktop it was installed on so I think your mileage may vary.
  
  +1 to that. I’m not very tech savvy and I could figure it out with a couple YouTube tutorials.
- Credit where due, how they handled the breach was appropriate.

I'm not sure I can switch. I have too many friends linked to my server and a decade-ish of watched data.
I know many people watch from TV apps and Chromecasts and I don't know if there's an app for every TV brand for jellyfin or emby or whatever.
People watch from all sorts of weird devices. I got push back when I forced SSL because at least one person had a TV so old that it didn't support doing SSL for Plex. It took me a week to drill it into their brain that I'm not going to change it back and to go buy literally anything to make it work (Chromecast type thing). I think their ended up buying a Roku.
This is just the brainpower that most of the people I share with, have. They just want easy. I do all the hard work in the background and their life is easy.
I can't imagine how many would have a fit if I forced them off Plex. Jellyfin looks cool and all, but it's unlikely I'll be able to move anytime soon.
- Why do you let other people dictate how you run your media server?
  
  I don't. There's just a nontrivial number of people I care about that use Plex that don't know enough about technology to handle something like jellyfin.
  Losing years of watched data isn't great, but ultimately it's small potatoes.
  A big part of the reason I wanted to set up Plex to begin with, was so that my friends and family didn't have to waste their time downloading the stuff that all of us want to watch.
  They don't demand anything, I want them to be able to use it because I care about those people. If switching to jellyfin is too difficult for the non-techs I care about, then I'll keep rolling with Plex.
  
  It didn’t sound like they do. Just that at least one person complained but bought a Roku to fix.
- You can run Jellyfin side by side and slowly migrate everyone, starting from the most intelligent users (so you can catch anything that might be wrongly configured, etc.).
  In the meantime, I hope that so many users are switching that we're going to get better native apps.
- I understand that it's not so bad, but you made it sound like a hellish landscape

Probably like 2–3 years ago I switched from Plex to Emby because the Plex app on my TV was becoming bloated and slow.
Even back then my TV was hitting 5 years old and still working great. Why the hell should I be forced to scrap a perfectly good television just because some corpo wants to ship overly bloated apps with too many animations?

I switched to Emby. Which I now access via SenPlayer. Am I doing this right?!?!
- Am I doing this right
  Well if you ask me, not really, I disavowed emby years ago and afaic its just Plex and Jellyfin in this space to me
  
  Ok, you’re gonna have to unpack that one for me! Plex was always messing things up with transcoding, and I hate the Jellyfin UI and always had trouble getting it working and keeping it working.

I switched to Jellyfin and then to Kodi. Jellyfin was nice but I wanted Kodi's PVR, Youtube, Video Games, etc. It's been a project to setup everything but it's been pretty awesome.
I spent alot of time messing with the flatpak and apt versions before compiling from source. I recommend source because you get the lastest version and it's easier to install patches, etc.

I've only ever used jellyfin and I've loved the experience. For me it was easy to set up and put media on, simple to put on TV, has been utterly reliable and stress free to manage.
The only issues I've had has been tailscale sometimes being wonky or I personally did something dozy on the server machine that I had to fix.
That said, I get why people stick with Plex. Not everyone wants to or are capable of setting things up. For those that have been saying it's really easy, you don't know the other person or their confidence/skill sets, don't just assume, it makes you sound like a Linux bro.

144 comments

Why the fuck are you not using Jellyfin?