Ahoy mateys, it’s time to setup Jellyfin if you prefer not to pay for the privilege of self-hosting your own content.
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/27204525
We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
Just gonna… Drop this here…
In my experience Jellyfin doesn’t find or handle subtitles nearly as well, and I can’t watch modern movies without subtitles.
I have never had an issue with subtitles on Jellyfin, and my wife has turned our household into an always-on subtitles household. Are you making use of the Open Subtitles plugin?
Yet again, FOSS showing why it’s always the way to go vs proprietary tech. So glad I started my self-hosting journey with Jellyfin!
I’m starting mine this weekend, what timing!
Right on!
They would charge you to watch your own DVDs if they could
… A fee for adding content to each media, capped libraries? What is next?
Let’s brainstorm guys ;D
nice try Plex
Fuck around with proprietary software and find out.
I really don’t see how anyone in their hierarchy thought this was a good idea.
There are at least 3 other competitors that moreorless work better than plex already does, without even having a subscription.
I’m amazed they decided to go this route, especially when migrating is as simple as uninstall plex, install competitor of choice(like jellyfin), and then just specify media locations.
the only real annoying part is remaking user accounts and losing watch progress/history, but there is usually a migration tool for that
The key difference is client app support for various platforms. Jellyfin is far behind Plex on that front, and I say this as a user and advocate for Jellyfin. That’s a huge hurdle for migrating even just family and friends users.
I haven’t actually experienced this. I use my JF server on my roku, my Samsung tv (ok that was a pain because you have to side load it which requires a PC for TizenOs), all my families systems, and my tablet. The only systems I’ve found that seem to lack support of a jellyfin app is my ps5 and my xbox. It’s either been on native or been able to be side loaded on every smart tv I’ve used, and every mobile device has had an app in the app store allowing me to use it. I don’t understand the people saying there are no clients for it.
Sure, every use case is different, and I didn’t say there’s “no clients for it”, just that, objectively, there’s a gap in client support for Jellyfin in the context of migrating from Plex.
The gap also exists in maturity of available clients. In my case on tvOS/iOS, I’m using a third party client (Infuse) because Swiftfin is beta software and Jellyfin for iOS is a web view. I would have better feature coverage on Plex, if I could stomach that.
Still don’t get why people use Plex over Jellyfin
In my own house, or just myself. Jellyfin is fine. I haven’t spent as much time on it though compared to Plex.
Plex has its own user auth, I don’t need to manage that. My friends and family don’t have to hit me up for password resets.
It has apps on pretty much every device.
Users can just log in. They don’t need to know what server to type in.
TIL that jellyfin doesn’t support an actual password reset. I’ve never had to actually try. That’s somewhat disappointing.
Yer it’s clear people who go on about not understanding either have small circles of users, or don’t actually support people…
You aren’t getting Pop and Nan to understand how to troubleshoot or setup Jellyfin access on their old TV compared to just throwing in a Chromecast or fire stick and having Plex auto logon with an account you setup for them if the couldn’t. Makes life a ton easier, even at the cost of other liberties.
They just want to watch Zulu or Are you being Served again, nothing more.
Just gonna drop this link here for anyone who’s interested in a 3rd party Jellyfin user management application. This fixes the issues related to inviting users and allowing them to reset their own passwords. Would obviously prefer all of this built into jellyfin, but solutions do exist for those determined enough.
I am a lifetime Plex Pass User… I am not affected by their BS… Yet (watch together is going though).
Inertia, mostly.
Of course Plex then takes advantage of that with the slow erosion of the free edition.
I paid Plex Pass Lifetime for peanuts (maybe $50 or $75) a decade ago, not using it would mean wasting that so yeah…
Because some of us bought the lifetime Plex Pass for cheap many years ago and it’s what our family is used to. Plex also passes the “wife test”, and my kids use Plexamp on their phones for music.
Not gonna stop me from ditching Plex in the not-too-distant future though, once I figure out Jellyfin and another local music streaming app that doesn’t have an interface stuck in 1997.
It’s a lot easier to setup and get non-techy family to join. Setting up Jellyfin is easy until you want access outside your LAN. Setting up TLS or a VPN is a hassle I don’t want unless there is no other option. Plex has features I (and my family) use that jellyfin doesn’t support by default yet. Last I checked syncing of files for offline viewing in the official app wasn’t very good yet. Plex has a bunch of ad supported live streams baked in that aren’t too bad. There is a “How It’s Made” channel, a Mythbusters channel, and Top Gear channel. PlexAmp isn’t perfect, but it’s better than any of the Jellyfin options I’ve seen.
I will make the switch once they revoke my lifetime pass, but in the meantime I’m really hoping that Jellyfin gets a face lift. I’ve tested Jellyfin a good bit and it mostly has feature parity for everything I care about, but it’s UI is objectively uglier than Plex’s
It syncs all movie covers and metadata automatically. When I used jellyfin last, this was a struggle.
Definitely not an issue anymore
It’s only an issue if the files aren’t properly named. If you’re using *arr this won’t be an issue. E.g. “Title (Year) - TMBD/TVDB ID” works flawlessly.
That’s good to hear. I’ve got an arr setup so this is promising whenever plex becomes unusable to me.
For me?
- Remote Play (I’ve never been able to get it to consistently work on every device with Jellyfin)
- PlexAmp is awesome
- LiveTV
- IPTV
- Way better clients
- Numerous small little issues.
There’s FinAmp for jellyfin. There’s also support for LiveTV and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was at least a plugin for IPTV.
LiveTV refers to a PlutoTV like service for Plex. There are a lot of amazing channels, but the big gain for me is having broadcast news networks.
FinAmp really isnt up to PlexAmp yet. PlexAmps “guestdj” mode is really awesome and it still doesn’t have a Carplay App which kills it right there for me.
Glad I moved to JellyFin years ago.
I’m probably gonna set up Jellyfin this weekend. Any tips for a first timer?
Take it slow.
Don’t ditch Plex just yet but slowly transition the move.
Test it with your usual browser. If playback doesnt work, test with another browser or the phone app.Set up docker. I ran an installation on Linux and on Windows for a few years but having it running from docker using external drives for library is a game changer. Always up to date. User files and settings Safed on a seperate folder so you can transfer it to a different os any time. Fantastic.
This, also a recurring thing I keep hearing from people moving from Plex to Jellyfin is that not all media get recognised correctly.
Which is probably because Jellyfin is less forgiving on file structure, file names. So check their site first for what Jellyfin needs: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows
It’s not unreasonable requirements just seems somehow Plex didn’t care about structure as much.
Just use the arrs correctly and there will be no issue except for weird stuff.
If setting up official docker container looks hard, check out linuxserver.io’s docker container for Jellyfin. Even HWA is very easy.
You can’t even fucking bring yourself to write hardware acceleration for the newbie asking for help?
🤡
I set up tail scale with mine so I can easily access it anywhere.
It’s pleasantly surprising that they aren’t deep sixing the lifetime pass.
Yet.
Yeah this is definitely coming at some point. What are we gonna do? Stop paying?
Was a little worried from the headline that it was being moved to another subscription tier.
I’ve owned a Plex Pass Lifetime subscription since it’s basically been available. I’ve honestly forgotten Remote Streaming was a free service at this point.
Thus to all proprietary software!
Lol, OK Plex, cya.
They’re honestly lucky I was willing to pay the $2.99 or whatever it was to be able to access MY server, using MY internet and cell data, to access MY media files from MY phone. Plenty fair a price for a nice app, might’ve paid a few bucks more but they can screw off trying to charge a monthly fee for… nothing in particular in my usage case.
Literally just set up Jellyfin w/ Tailscale which took all of 10 minutes and works just as well. GG no re 🖕
I deleted Plex from my barely functional home server.
I’ll give Jellyfin a try. I just want to be able to access my music away from home
Use Finamp for offline Music from Jellyfin
Correction. Use the finamp beta version, unless that recently made it out of beta.
I prefer Symfonium
As in, symfonium.app? If so, seems questionable, given its proprietary nature and unavailability outside the play store. Although, the feature set is interesting.
Edit: yeeeah, no
From their FAQ:
licences checks requires a call to the verification server from time to time
The license is tied to your Google account
I want to switch to jellyfin, I selfhost but I don’t want to open a port directly to my server. I don’t understand how everyone else figures this out and I’m apparently an idiot.
Also do people expect all who use my server to start a VPN each time? What if they leave it on and their other streaming services are using my bandwidth.
I don’t understand and I have looked it up but I don’t see a consensus.
I just use Tailscale when remote streaming.
From their docs:
By default, Tailscale acts as an overlay network: it only routes traffic between devices running Tailscale, but doesn’t touch your public internet traffic, such as when you visit Google or Twitter. The overlay network configuration is ideal for most people who need secure communication between sensitive devices (such as company servers or home computers), but don’t need extra layers of encryption or latency for their public internet connection.
Opening a port isn’t really bad if you have your firewall configured properly. You will have to open a port either way with jellyfin or wireguard. If you have a TLS/SSL certificate then just doing jellyfin is fine (but have good passwords since it’s public facing), otherwise a VPN like wireguard will handle encryption for you.
As for managing traffic on the VPN you can follow this advice: https://serverfault.com/questions/1075973/wireguard-how-to-only-tunnel-some-of-the-traffic
Basically setup your firewall to stop extra traffic on your end, and change accessible IPs in wireguard to your service(s) so the peer knows not to talk on that interface for unrelated things.
It isn’t bad until an exploit is discovered on jellyfin. Then it can get really bad.
It already happened on Plex. Just a matter of time until it happens to Jellyfin.
Do you have a recommended way of remote accessing a server?
you can do a thing called UDP hole punching for NAT traversal, buuuuuut afaik these days a lot of consumer routers consider it a security risk and attempt to block it
I was about to get a Plex Pass, but I saw this news today.
If you were going to get the lifetime pass before the price increase then I’d say to still go for it. Personal opinion
My brother doesn’t have Plex pass but I do, so he will still be able to watch stuff from my library for free.
Might have to pull the trigger. I’m really enjoying plex. I’ve used Jellyfin in the past, but it’s not as polished as Plex. However, the plug-and-play remote access feature on Plex is a big plus. I’ll still use Jellyfin alongside Plex.
