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Can someone clue me in on the reason why anyone would prefer Plex instead of Jellyfin?
There are a LOT of pros and cons.
Pros:
Cons:
edit: * a word ** forgot to shout out for the tuner support *** replaced media with audio for clarity
I am a die-hard Jellyfin user, but I still haven't found a proper way to index and stream my music library with it. As far as i know, Plex is still better at that.
Navidrome and Airsonic advanced provide a better music experience than jellyfin for me anyway and both are free.
I dropped my library in, Jellyfin indexed it and streamed first try. What didn't work for you?
I dropped my music library into Jellyfin just as an extra. I've built up quite a collection over the years of CDs and always rip and tag them as I acquire new CDs, so while the collection is a little messy it's sizable and mostly correctly tagged
Jellyfin's music playback has been buggy but getting better with updates. At the current rate of improvement it'll probably be really good in a 2-4 years, but right now it's kinda meh. It exists but it's buggy enough that I don't use it much
I've recently had really good luck with Finamp on Android at least. With the recent support of time lyrics in Jellyfin and Finamp's redesign I've been using that to stream my Flac audio files. Works quite well with separate collections as well. Though, to this day I still have to force close it more times than I like to get the UI to refresh after closing it. Plexamp was tough to lose when I swapped many years ago, but the third party space has slowly been closing that gap over the years.
I think it mostly comes down to sharing stuff with others.
There's a lot of stuff in Jellyfin you wouldn't want to expose to the internet.
No idea if Jellyfin even has a client for my dad's shonky old 4K TV, but I certainly wouldn't be able to set up Wireguard or anything on it.
I wouldn't expose Plex to the internet either
Years ago, I tried out Jellyfin (Emby at the time) and it couldn't do chromecasting with subtitles (probably fixed by now, this was a long time ago). Since I wanted to watch anime, I bought a Plex lifetime subscription instead, and I'm too lazy to switch.
It is a matter of time before they will get to you
I am in the same boat but jellyfin ain't there yet for my use case
It can Chromecast these days
People commonly cite more polished clients and clients available on obscure platforms like legacy smart TVs and such
TV apps.
What is wrong with Jellyfin's TV app? I use it on my Android TV and I don't have any problems
Not available for my Samsung or the kid's Visio TVs
End user management.
Essentially, accounts and passwords are not my problem.
They're going to sell the data to movie companies so they can find out what is being pirated
I fuckin guarantee it.
Trakt did the same thing I bet
It's not hard to find out what's being pirated, BitTorrent isn't private.
It is when you use a private tracker and disable DHT, Local Peer Discovery and Peer Exchange.
The lack of a PS5 app makes Jellyfin useless to me. We have a dumb TV with no casting ability so the PlayStation is out media box.
Have you even tried the web UI?
Chromecast. Regular is cheap, and grab the 4K one if you wanna stream higher quality movies. Cost you less than $100.
$30 Android box solves this
I generally agree with you and its what I did, but why do i need yet another device plugged in, draining power all the time? I dont want to leave an even larger co2 footprint and software support on existing hardware could aid in that. The android box is a workaround, not a green enough solution in my opinion.
Because of proprietary garbage, copyright law and enshittification. Sony wants you to use the software its bribers pay it to support, another symptom of our dystopian, profiteering world.
I sometimes think Jellyfin gets on Roku devices because none of the little snots at Roku's corporate office have taken notice, fallen through the cracks and forgotten about.
If it's any benefit to you, the Android box being Android allows it to sip power at an LED bulb's level of efficiency when it's idle.
It just works and has a native app for basically everything.
Sunk cost. It took me loosing my Plex watch history to say fuck it I'm going to Jellyfin.
I saw several solutions on Github that could migrate it.
Assuming you use/-d trakt you could use that to re-import the watch history
Because Plex used to be good but new it's just pure enshitification.
User sharing without opening my Plex server to the public internet. For Jellyfin I would have to become a VPN provider and allow people into my private network to share it safely, since you wouldn't want to have Jellyfin available to the internet with their stance on security
Jellyfin is not as easy as Plex to use. Many of us are not that technically advanced
I use samba (file sharing) and vlc.
Because Jellyfin et al are all still very much "open source projects" in terms of UI/UX and it is still "missing" so many features.
For me? The big reasons why I just use plex boil down to:
My personal opinion? For something that only "tech savvy" people are using more or less locally, Jellyfin is fine. For something that "just works"? There is no competition with Plex. And considering how many of the Jellyfin workarounds end up being "just download a copy of the file locally and watch it in VLC"... why would I use Jellyfin at all in that case when I could otherwise just mount a samba share or use Kodi (that is the latest incarnation of XBMC or whatever the samba share frontend we all used to watch porn on our playstations was, right?).
To be clear. I check in on Jellyfin probably every other year at this point? I WANT an alternative to Plex. But... Jellyfin ain't it.
I feel exactly the same as you, but i'd like to add a number 4 point: Plex has an offical app for every system/SO
I’ve been a Plex user. Honestly it was mostly because I chose Plex years ago before a lot of the recent controversy. Plex always seemed like it had a nicer interface, though I never really gave Jellyfin a try. As of late, Plex has started to add a lot of bloat to their interface, so at this point Jellyfin’s UI might actually be a pro.
I've tried Jellyfin and the Live TV / tuner interface sucked so bad I didn't want to bother with it any further. Maybe I could have found plugins or some shit to make it more usable but I've had a lifetime Plex pass for almost a decade and it still works great
Yes, they've made a number of decisions that truly suck in that time but it's still better than the experience I had with Jellyfin or Emby, even recently.
It works pretty well for me personally. What was the problem?
The guide (or lack thereof) and UX was severely lacking.
Have you used a tuner on Plex?
Can I ask why nobody recommends Emby? I've been using it for years with zero issues. The only thing I can think of is that Jellyfin exists and is free. Emby is sort of a middleground between Plex and Jellyfin; it has a paid license (lifetime option exists), but it's closer to Jellyfin than Plex on the whole.
Emby rugpulled their users, that's why jellyfin exists at all.
Do you mind elaborating on that? It sounds like I got in on Emby after the rugpull. It works fine for me and I use it without the Connect (online account) feature.