This might be a good time to remind everyone that Jellyfin is open source, free (as in beer) and is, at this point, a better media streamer than Plex. No fees, no ads, no constant pushing of their streaming content, and still has the watch together feature that Plex went and removed.
TBH Plex is years ahead on maturity, their dev team is excellent, unfortunately it seems like enshittification has begun for them.
Support Jellyfin not because it’s better, but because it’s open source and it puts users and tech first. Don’t expect it to beat Plex’s performance, quality, or cross-platform availability yet, but expect it to become better as more people donate or get involved.
I switched years ago from Plex to Jellyfin, and while the UI wasn’t quite as nice, everything else is better.
And I don’t have to pay to use HW transcoding on my own hardware…
Honestly, I don’t really understand how people prefer the Plex UI to Jellyfin. No shade, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Plex is incredibly cluttered and busy. Jellyfin is simple and clean. I like the latter a lot more.
I had that problem when i first started using jellyfin- I would have to give my users some sort of default login which I couldn’t trust them to actually go and change within jellyfin. And then when someone forgot their password, they’d have to ask me to manually reset their password, and until then they couldn’t use their account.
My solution was to use the jellyfin LDAP auth plugin with an lldap docker container, so once I set up my users’ accounts, they have to do the password reset process themselves to initially set their password, and the only info I need from them is their preferred username and email address. Makes sure they’re familiar with the password reset process as well, and now if I get any questions/support requests related to passwords, I can simply direct them to the lldap password reset page.
It also makes it much easier to offer extra services such as mastodon and NextCloud which support LDAP, so users can manage their logins on all platforms from a central place.
The only thing Plex has on Jellyfin are client apps. Sever-side… Jellyfin hands down. I was super surprised to see av1 transcoding support… In Plex we JUST got HEVC.
I’m not hating on Plex by any means, but when I have an issue with Plex, Jellyfin picks up the slack. I’ll be using Jellyfin full time after the ATV app re-write.
I am curious, though, what is it that makes you think Jellyfin’s software is inferior? Since I’ve been following, Jellyfin has released new features long before Plex.
Not sure whether they are stripped browser versions, but I can use plex on ps4, xbox. I use my ps4 for all my streaming so jellyfin not being in there means more annoyance for me. I have Jellyfin setup side by side with plex, accessing the same content and Plex displays it all properly while jellyfish does funky shit like displaying multiple entries for a single show (it had nearly 50 entries until I manually reworked a ton of filename shit), or fucking up and showing box art and a title for a porn movie instead of the actual movie which was Princess Mononoke. There may be settings that help with this buried somewhere but for now it’s definitely more of a pain to use.
This might be a good time to remind everyone that Jellyfin is open source, free (as in beer) and is, at this point, a better media streamer than Plex. No fees, no ads, no constant pushing of their streaming content, and still has the watch together feature that Plex went and removed.
TBH Plex is years ahead on maturity, their dev team is excellent, unfortunately it seems like enshittification has begun for them.
Support Jellyfin not because it’s better, but because it’s open source and it puts users and tech first. Don’t expect it to beat Plex’s performance, quality, or cross-platform availability yet, but expect it to become better as more people donate or get involved.
What’s better, exactly?
I switched years ago from Plex to Jellyfin, and while the UI wasn’t quite as nice, everything else is better.
And I don’t have to pay to use HW transcoding on my own hardware…
Honestly, I don’t really understand how people prefer the Plex UI to Jellyfin. No shade, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Plex is incredibly cluttered and busy. Jellyfin is simple and clean. I like the latter a lot more.
The reason I’m not switching yet, is that there’s no federated auth. If they had that, I’d switch in a heartbeat.
Same here. I have it installed, but I’m resistant to managing other people’s passwords.
I had that problem when i first started using jellyfin- I would have to give my users some sort of default login which I couldn’t trust them to actually go and change within jellyfin. And then when someone forgot their password, they’d have to ask me to manually reset their password, and until then they couldn’t use their account.
My solution was to use the jellyfin LDAP auth plugin with an lldap docker container, so once I set up my users’ accounts, they have to do the password reset process themselves to initially set their password, and the only info I need from them is their preferred username and email address. Makes sure they’re familiar with the password reset process as well, and now if I get any questions/support requests related to passwords, I can simply direct them to the lldap password reset page.
It also makes it much easier to offer extra services such as mastodon and NextCloud which support LDAP, so users can manage their logins on all platforms from a central place.
The only thing Plex has on Jellyfin are client apps. Sever-side… Jellyfin hands down. I was super surprised to see av1 transcoding support… In Plex we JUST got HEVC.
I’m not hating on Plex by any means, but when I have an issue with Plex, Jellyfin picks up the slack. I’ll be using Jellyfin full time after the ATV app re-write.
I am curious, though, what is it that makes you think Jellyfin’s software is inferior? Since I’ve been following, Jellyfin has released new features long before Plex.
I need client side apps and easily sharing libraries with remote friends. Both are pretty hard to give up and not quite there yet.
Jellyfin has native apps for Android, Android TV and iOS.
Does Plex offer native apps (that aren’t just stripped down browsers) for more platforms?
Not sure whether they are stripped browser versions, but I can use plex on ps4, xbox. I use my ps4 for all my streaming so jellyfin not being in there means more annoyance for me. I have Jellyfin setup side by side with plex, accessing the same content and Plex displays it all properly while jellyfish does funky shit like displaying multiple entries for a single show (it had nearly 50 entries until I manually reworked a ton of filename shit), or fucking up and showing box art and a title for a porn movie instead of the actual movie which was Princess Mononoke. There may be settings that help with this buried somewhere but for now it’s definitely more of a pain to use.
Jellyfin works fine on PS4, I use it all the time. Just have to open it in the browser.
So you open the ps4 browser and use the controller to type in the address each time? Sounds like a pain in the dick honestly.
wut
There are 2 types of “free”. Liberty, and price. “Free as in beer” means they mean the price version of the word. It’s a really old saying now.