Jellyfin is great :D
Does jellyfin have an easy way for remote streaming? I have a couple dozen people on my Plex server, most not very tech savvy, so setting up tailscale and running remote that way isn’t an option. I have a Plex pass so I haven’t been screwed by Plex yet, so I’m not rushing to get out, but I could see myself running both.
Yes-ish, it’s harder for you than the users. But you will have to secure a URL and they will have to remember that URL. Also there’s some security issues with some unsecured endpoints on Jellyfin. That said I have mine out there exposed to the net and am comfortable enough with it.
I have mine behind a caddy reverse proxy that forces https. I think that handles most sniffing concerns
no, tailscale is still the easiest option.
Bummer… unfortunately, that’s a deal breaker for me to completely drop Plex. Maybe someday.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
So I don’t get it, I have mine up with a domain without tsilscale… The clients are quite happy wherever. I don’t even see that much “crawling” traffic that goes to the domain, most just hit the server by ip and get a static 401 page that the “default” site is hard coded to give out.
I moved away from plex as well. I do have remote access but had to set up Tailscale on the accounts that access it. It’s a bit of a hassle initially but works well.
I set mine up with HAProxy for TLS offloading and ACME for the server cert. Restrict your access to just your country/region by GeoIP and you are pretty good to go.
I’d love Jellyfin if not for their incredibly infuriating seek behaviour. Why do I have to press play to start the video again?
In case this helps, for me when I use it on Android TV with said TV’s remote, the arrow buttons on the direction pad for anything require pressing play/OK button after. But if I use the fast forward buttons, it does seek and then just keeps playing.
For me I just want a fast forward button. They have something they call fast forward, but it seeks instead.
Agreed! I stayed with Plex for a long time because Jellyfin had a rough time with live TV (antenna) and I already had a PlexPass because of a sale a long time ago. Now Plex is only still running because I love Plexamp.
Dude, yeah. Plexamp had me keeping my server up far longer than I should have.
I struggled to find a decent plexamp replacement and ended up using symphonium, if you’re looking for any suggestions. Its been working out pretty well with jellyfin.
No, it’s not.
One reason: It’s not FOSS, and because of that, it’s not protected from the Capitalist profit motive that’s always pushing the creators/owners towards enshitification.
The same forces act upon FOSS too, but the difference is that FOSS has structural immunity built into it. If the software enshitifies, it can be forked and maintained by a community that values software freedom.
We’ve seen it happen time and again. Terraform, CentOS, RHEL, The Xen Hypervisor, etc. When companies try to take freedom away from FOSS, they fail, because their users and maintainers are empowered by FOSS licenses (especially restrictive ones like the GPL) and can fight back.
With proprietary software, the users are powerless, only the owners have control.
Don’t trust promises, good intentions, or corporate slogans. Trust free software and the open ecosystems they thrive in.
PS, Jellyfin is amazing ❤️
I just need Jellyfin to fix their subtitles issues on Apple TV and I’ll be all set. Swiftfin needs some work yet, though I’m told the fix is in the pipeline for release soon^™ (probably by Q1 next year?).
Playing devil’s advocate, I understand one point of pressure: Plex doesn’t want to be perceived as a “piracy app.”
See: Kodi. https://kodi.expert/kodi-news/mpaa-warns-increasing-kodi-abuse-poses-greater-video-piracy-risk/
To be blunt, that’s a huge chunk of their userbase. And they run the risk of being legally pounded to dust once that image takes hold.
So how do they avoid that? Add a bunch of other stuff, for plausible deniability. And it seems to have worked, as the anti-piracy gods haven’t singled them out like they have past software projects.
To be clear, I’m not excusing Plex. But I can sympathize.
It’s really nice of them to fight the good fight while I use Jellyfin instead.
You may (half) joke, but MPAA attention on Jellyfin would suck.
I’d like to call this “the Ubuntu buffer”.
Maybe a dumb question: What exactly could go wrong? Has the MPAA done anything to stifle Kodi?
https://www.comparitech.com/kodi/kodi-piracy-decline/
Based on our research, comparative search volume for “Kodi” has fallen around 85 percent from 2017 to 2022. Google Trends data reveals the dramatic decline started in Q2 of 2017 and has, for the most part, continued that trend up to this point. Consequently, the decline in people searching for Kodi directly relates to the appearance of the coordinated attack against piracy in the form of ACE.
And this is with Kodi furiously distancing itself from pirates at the time.
Attacks don’t have to be direct. Though they absolutely can be, too.
Which doesn’t have half the features and crap security compared to Plex/Emby.
There is that but it’s primarily that they’ve taken over 40 million dollars of venture capital. They are almost certainly under immense pressure to turn profitable asap and converting lifetime pass users into revenue streams somehow, converting new users into SaaS, etc are going to be things they pursue more aggressively.
Don’t take the devils money if you don’t want the devils stipulations
Sure, apart from charging for remote access.
That serves the purpose too. It’s harder to pin Plex as an “illegal distribution service” when you have to pay for access. Either the streamer or “distributor” can’t be very anonymous, which makes large scale sharing impractical.
On the other hand, the more money they squeeze out, the more they risk appearing as if they “make money from piracy,” which is exactly how you get the MPAA’s attention.
Dynamic DNS does cost money. But not $8 a month. Development also costs money which falls under the $8 a month, but really not my problem, which is why I use Jellyfin. I used to run Plex off of my Nvidia shield, which was a cool gateway drug to self hosting and I’m grateful to them for that, but I like handling the technical stuff myself.
I’m going to call it like I saw it, a very long time ago.
<rant>
You have a product that is basically purpose built to make data hoarding and piracy practical, yet it requires a login with a central service. I don’t care what justification anyone thinks makes that worthwhile or even a good compromise. Signaling to any corporate entity that you’re in possession of such a thing is a bad idea to begin with. They shouldn’t even know you exist. That information, along with anything else you do with the product is compromising to you and can be sold for money if aggregated with everyone else’s data.
If you find this rant out of place in our modern world, I’d like to point to the concept of shifting baselines. This didn’t used to be normal and nothing short of greed continues the behavior. The technology before this ran/runs without anyone knowing. Consider VLC, or XBMC.
Jellyfin is a complete replacement for Plex
The writing was on the wall when they started getting American VC money.
American VC culture is anthenema to truly user focused products.
Capitalism.
Stopped using Plex and moved to jellyfin around 12 months ago and have never looked back
I have both but Jellyfin is not good with duplicates. Having several versions of movies in different languages just puts multiple copies of the movies in Jellyfin, with no distinction between them until you click into the details. Plex does this well with “Play version”.
But Plex is worse for other reasons, on my LG TV. It’s painfully slow and doesn’t play the correct audio track that I select.
An mkv with multiple audio tracks would save you some storage space.
Yes, however sometimes it’s easier to manage language and subtitles in a single file if space is not an issue and you often are wanting a different version. Might also have pre-burned subtitles, for which you’ll need a separate video stream anyway.
This too, yes. 🎯
Not if I want/need to seed both versions. Then it’s a third version I need to keep on disk for a few weeks, instead of just two. Believe me, I’ve had this idea too, and have remuxed several movies to save space. 👍
Looking back at this thread. Jellyfin does let you select both versions and combine them into one. Then you can keep seeding to your heart’s content.
I don’t use that feature often, but have a couple movies that use it.
That’s simpler and better (nondestructive) than renaming files, for sure. Still an extra step I need to take vs not having to do so.
Fair enough, I’m mostly ripping my own discs so being a good torrent citizen isn’t always top of mind.
🫡🏴☠️
Haven’t really tried it but they have support for dupes.
You just need to name them correctly (too lazy to link the docs. Just look up versions in media library)That’s what I mean. You have to rename them. Plex handles this automatically, with the same shared library. I wish Jellyfin was better at this.
Jellyfin goes by file name, Plex goes by identified movie/show. Much better.
Welll…They state in their docs how it should be.
If you deviate from it, that’s on you.And yes it’d be nice if they did it automagically but we can’t have everything and I don’t expect it from them honestly as that is really a very niche requirement considering it already works.
If you deviate from it, that’s on you.
I don’t understand why we need to “pin it” on someone?
It just works differently, in a way that requires more hands-on work, as opposed to no hands-on work. So it’s objectively worse. That’s “on me”?
It being in the docs is irrelevant in this context. It could’ve been there or not. But the fact that I need to do extra work as opposed to not makes Plex more comfortable in this regard, and I don’t see how that’s up for debate.
If Jellyfin had done it’s duplication check on identified movie IDs instead of filesystem names, we would be in a different situation. But they don’t, and here we are.
I’m not ragging on Jellyfin, I’m just pointing out facts. Not even an opinion piece.
It just works differently, in a way that requires more hands-on work
That’s correct.
But you chose to ignore the instructions because you are used to a different way of doing it and them you get duplicate entries.
That’s it (shrug).Why are still trying to blame this on the user, lol?
If the user has to do more work for the same result, it’s a worse system. Period.
That’s it. 🤷♂️
To go into more detail:
How did I choose to ignore instructions when I didn’t read them in the first place? Neither system’s installation instructions has this in it. You’d have to deep dive when you realize it doesn’t work for one of them. Namely Jellyfin.
“Choosing” to ignore it is also a matter of definition. If I rename all my shit, I am a) duplicating lots of downloads on my system because I need to keep the original in order to seed, or b) not able to seed and lose my ability to gain more content in the first place.
Sometimes people’s circumstances are different from yours, my friend.
I understand Jellyfin is better in so many other aspects, I agree with that, but do not defend one single feature which works objectively worse and pin it on the user. Don’t be that person.
Same brother
There’s only one reason, money.
But it’s at least four $1.
If jellyfin was easier to use and had the same options as Plex, id switch over. But I’ll keep my Plex lifetime pass as long as I can until they make all lifetime passes null in the next 2 years and make us all pay monthly.
3 Things stop from using jellyfin 100% of the time.
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TV tuner is janky and loading a guide for local channels is garbage. I like watching the morning local news and jellyfin just does not cut it.
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I want sub accounts. They used to have something similar but took it out for security reasons. I want to log all my TVs into one account but then have each user select their profile. So I can easily have a restricted profile for say kids then another for my parents then one for me then one for SO under the same roof. It will track each persons watched profile so when someone watches ahead it doesn’t mess with someone else’s.
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On the same note, controller/ HTPC remote configs feel janky. I know its there but its not a smooth and easy as Plex. This goes along with above for anyone who says just make another account. You try entering half decent passwords with small HTPC remotes or controllers. Every time you go to watch TV.
If they could fix these things I would ditch Plex all the way. But as it stands I use Plex for my TV and jellyfin for my phones, tablets, PC.
You can already do number 2 (with some restrictions). You have to set up your networking tab correctly, use blank passwords, and uncheck “allow remote connections” for the “local” accounts. i have things set up so that external users are forced to log in and local users just pick a profile. If you also add your external users’ IP addresses to the LAN Networks box, they’ll be treated as an internal user too (though how you keep that up to date is a bit more challenging). It’s not precisely the Netflix experience but it works well enough for us
I’ll have to look into that. Last I remember they removed that and local simple pin. Because it could be used to bypass security even from outside network. You are running current version right?
Ya - or close enough (10.11.3). My LAN networks are my server and workstation subnets (both /24s) and my external NAT (my public ip). I also have my reverse proxy address (from jellyfin’s perspective) in my known proxies. From there, my external users are set to allow remote connections, have passwords set, and are set to “hide this user from login screens” and my internal users are set to NOT allow remote connections and to NOT hide from login screens. After that, i just use my public dns for every device whether it’s internal or external and call it a day
TV tuner is janky and loading a guide for local channels is garbage. I like watching the morning local news and jellyfin just does not cut it.
I DVR local stuff with Plex and play it back in Jellyfin.
I do that sometimes but I like the morning news and I feel it should be current so not a great solution for me. Jellyfin just needs a bit more polish. Its great I like it but also at the same rate the appear to fix some things like their security bugs I’m not going to hold my breath. I do hope they push through though like Immich.
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If they were going to get enshittified, they should’ve been smarter about it to gradually introduce lock-in. The switching cost of going to Jellyfin is almost zero. Did it in an afternoon about a year ago. Ya done goofed, Plex
I hate headlines like this. I’d love to hear the REASONS WHY Plex are doing all of this. But no, it’s just “4 ways in which Plex now sucks” which we all know already.
Before someone says “the reason is money” we need to ask: do the developers of Jellyfin not use money? Why won’t the same thing just happen to them too?
Before someone says “enshittification,” we need to ask: does this mean Jellyfin will soon have the same problems?
We all seem to love Jellyfin so I think we need to understand the actual reason why, or this will just continue happening.
I hate headlines like this. I’d love to hear the REASONS WHY Plex are doing all of this.
- Greed… do you really need 3 more?
Before someone says “the reason is money” we need to ask: do the developers of Jellyfin not use money? Why won’t the same thing just happen to them too?
Plex is a private company wanting money… Jellyfin is a voluteer-drive effort
Before someone says “enshittification,” we need to ask: does this mean Jellyfin will soon have the same problems?
Enshitification happens to privately develop products due to <checks notes> greed… Jellyfin is not a private company pushing a product for profit
We all seem to love Jellyfin so I think we need to understand the actual reason why, or this will just continue happening.
Back to “greed”
As predicted, a one-dimensional answer.
Let’s say they want more money: they do have a healthy software subscriptions business. How can they get more by becoming the world’s tiniest streaming service? And won’t that cannibalize their subscriptions business as the experience gets shittier and shittier?
Some actual “whys” within this would be things like (made up, but for example)
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the subscriptions business is dying - less than 1% of users ever buy a pass and efforts to increase that failed for (another reason here)
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streaming services are dumping cash into viewer acquisition because a war is on for dominance in that space and Pled is capitalizing on that
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Plex has high overlap with gamers and are making good money on midroll gaming ads during these streams
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Plex has legal concerns about facilitating piracy - this is the real reason why sync is shit and they killed watch together. They are desperately trying to pivot out of their old business before they get sued - OR all this streaming nonsense gives them a kind of fig leaf over that somehow
See, issues can be complex and interesting. Just calling them greedy is neither. How is this the greedy play, even?
Nobody outside Plex’s finance department is going to have what you’re looking for if those examples are anything to go by.
What it comes down to is they have $130M that investors are going to want back and all the decisions they’re making now are aimed at doing so. That doesn’t mean any of those decisions are good or are going to work. It didn’t even mean they won’t backfire and have the opposite effect.
Anyone who has knowledge of or works in any areas adjacent to any of these could provide some kind of insight. Fuck me for wanting some grownup conversation about why businesses do the things they do, instead of a circle jerk of hating on mustache-twirling villains.
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Plex is a private company…
Plex took a significant degree of other people’s money, to the tune of over 40 million dollars. The people who gave said money were not kickstarter funders, donators, subscribers, etc but investors, who have an expectation that plex will move the company in a direction that makes them profitable enough to not only repay the 40+ million investment, but to then earn profits for a lengthy period (possibly in perpetuity) as they are stakeholders. This is the same thing that happened to Reddit (though Reddits scale and timeline was FAR more vast), openai, Google, literally every company ever basically. Plex now has an obligation to not just continue development but to continue it in a way that maximizes growth and revenue, even if that is anti consumer.
Jellyfin on the other hand has language on their contributions page that almost discourages financial support. This is because the only financial support they accept is donations, which are clearly explained are to support the free software and give no ownership stake. The software does not generate profit and donation does not equate to any kind of investment, other than supporting continued development. Expecting any kind of return on your part (again, other than the project continuing to move forward) is foolish. Lemmy is similar, as are many other FOSS projects. Jellyfin can remain ideologically stable to its goals, and because it is free if its users feel the lead developers are straying from this they can fork it and make “new ideologically pure jellyfin” (see xmbc to plex to emby to jellyfin, or lemmys 938 forks, many of which are tweaks and some of which are because people got beef with the main devs)
Further to this, I heard Cory Doctorow talk about open source licensing being a Ulysses Pact. Basically Ulysses wanted to hear the sirens song. Normally, hearing it would drive you mad and you would wreck upon the rocks. Ulysses ordered his men to bind their ears with wax so they would not be affected by the sirens song. He also ordered them to tie him to the mast.
In the moment, he knew he would not be strong enough to resist the sirens song and because he was bound to the mast, he could not jump overboard. In the same way, people that use open source licenses on their projects are binding themselves to the open source license so that if a large temptation was to present itself (such as investors wanting to give them life changing money in exchange for mistreating their customers) they are already bound by that license and cannot break that bond.
Or they’ll do what plex did. Reminder that plex started life as a fork of xbmc/kodi for macos. When their fork showed some popularity they shifted development to various names (plex home theater). While this still contained a lot of GPL code they then spent a good deal of dev time rewriting said code to be fully closed source.
This is less discussed but also why plex is one of the most insidious and disgusting pieces of unethical software one can use. The writing is on the wall and the company is led by scumbags, sure, but people don’t talk as much about how they forked xbmc, built a huge product based on everything learned from it, and then closed everything off once they did the minimum required cover your ass moves.
What they did is legal but is it ethical? If they did it to a company like apple or Microsoft they’d get sued, that’s for damn sure. And ethically speaking I would say it’s really fucked to take all this stuff from the community: architecture, ideas, ui/ux, approaches to plugin design, data modeling, etc and build a whole company off of it, then basically give nothing back. They closed it off so they could get their bag, fuck the community that taught them so much and helped build their MVP.
What you describe is similar to the creation of jellyfin from emby though; where embys dev team suddenly decided to close source the GPL server code (a violation) and add monetization. the community rejected this, and forked the last version prior to the nonsense into what is now jellyfin.
Yeah, Jellyfin could go closed source and enshitify but up until that point, the source would be available to fork. I hope that Jellyfin doesn’t go that way but if it does, I think someone would fork the project and continue developing and supporting the software.
Clearly, given Plex and Emby’s history, it is a threat to Jellyfin as well.
Here you can see, what they do with the money:
https://opencollective.com/jellyfin
laughs in Jellyfin
I want to like jellyfin, but it’s authentication sucks
So does a lot of the rest of it.
it is proprietary software behind a paywall… need i say more?
Yeah, their survey is missing the “never used Plex because I saw this coming a mile away” option.
There is only one reason. Greed.
