Well I already have jellyfin running in a container, just have to figure out how to get mum’s TV to work with it I guess
<edit> log in on a local IP and not the network name and it’s working again. but I’ll be moving to jellyfin from now
Something that’s getting glossed over in these comments is the ability to easily watch or listen to friends’ media.
I have my own library with about 1k movies, a bunch of anime and TV, and 10k albums. But I have like 6 or 7 friends with libraries even larger. My one friend has 37k albums, they all have thousands of movies I never even heard of, etc. It really makes it like my own mini streaming service, and I love throwing on a huge music library on shuffle via plexamp while driving to/from work.
I paid like $70 for a lifetime pass years ago, so I’m along for the ride I guess. I really rely on the music aspect of it, I haven’t had a spotify subscription in like 7 years.
I know they changed a lot lately, and particularly what pisses me off is how vague and how they intentionally obfuscate how their model works now. I have friends that for years used my library, and recently have been like “I saw Plex started charging now so I stopped using it” and I have to be like “no it’s still free because I have a lifetime pass”. It’s definitely just to trick people into getting monthly subscriptions.
I got the Plex lifetime pass over 10 years ago for pretty cheap and Plex has served me well over the years. But it’s just so damn bloated now and the biggest recent change to their android app is atrocious. The app is so laggy and slow now. And downloading movies to watch locally on a tablet is just painful.
So I decided to start experimenting with Jellyfin this month and I am blown away at how fast and snappy everything is. It still isn’t as refined as Plex but there’s something to be said about privacy and using FOSS apps.
I’ll be using Jellyfin going forward now.
I jumped ship early on. They didn’t include skipping intros (or removed the plugin or the capability to use plugins, I don’t remember).
Went to Jellyfin, took like 2 hours to figure out what’s different. I don’t even remember, are there any features worth it staying on Plex? At least I’m not missing anything.
Also for watch together you start a watch group and can watch a show episode for episode. Instead of having to open each episode separately and having everyone join again (but maybe Plex fixed this already, I wouldn’t know).
my main issues
- jellyfin has known security vulnerabilities and shouldn’t be run on a public network. that means everyone using your server remotely needs to be on a VPN… and then you may as well use plex because it’s “local” so the remote streaming thing doesn’t apply
- swiftfin (which i need for apple tv) doesn’t support media segments
Just as an FYI, Jellyfin doesn’t charge money for… well, anything.
Genuinely Plex has become so obtrusive about NEW FEATURES, NOW WE HAVE THIS, USE THIS THUS WAY!!! and then also my libraries have somehow become even slower to load. I’ve been using jellyfin way more often
Longtime lifetime Plex Pass holder here.
FOSS is important. Having control over how you use your own hardware and files is important.
But even if none of that mattered, once I actually used Jellyfin for a few days the snappy bloat-free feel of it won me over. Switching between Plex and Jellyfin felt like switching between windows and linux.
what is FOSS
I’ve also got lifetime plex pass. I might take more of an interest in Jellyfin if there was an easy way to transfer all of my server settings, playlists, metadata, etc. over. But it just seems like such a hastle to make the switch and I really don’t have any big issues with plex aside from needing to change the settings so they don’t sell my data.
FOSS is free and open source software. And the word “free” does a lot of heavy lifting there because it refers to much more than it typically not costing anything. It means that you have the freedom to do what you want with your stuff, basically. You (or others on your behalf) can see the source code for what the software is doing, and you can even change and improve it.
You’ll see the word “libre” thrown around in this context too, for that reason. For many people the liberty side of free matters a lot more than the no-cost side. But they do go hand in hand, because not needing to protect a revenue stream makes it a lot easier to not enshittify software. You’ll see names like LibreOffice and FLOSS instead of FOSS.
So it’s basically the whole Linux world that is very well represented on Lemmy and the fediverse. :)
Sent using FOSS Voyager web client …in FOSS browser LibreWolf (a fork of FireFox) …on FOSS operating system Linux.
I use Mint btw.
(This is an inside joke for the other Linux people – a play off of “I use Arch btw” where Arch Linux is a hardcore distro where you kind of build your operating system piece by piece, but with excellent documentation. Valve switched SteamOS to be based on Arch a while back)
I have a lot of custom artwork, covers, playlists, etc. How easy did that data migrate? I’ve got 6,500 movies
I can’t imagine moving over would be difficult. Just point Jellyfin to the same folder containing your content. When I first setup my home lab, I was going to use Plex, but I could not get it to recognize media. The naming format wasn’t right or something. Jellyfin just worked immediately
man, I’ve manually setup tons of huge playlists, and entered in a hell of a lot of TV show information by hand so episodes play in an order I like. Getting that working in plex probably constitutes days of work. I don’t want to even think about re-doing that in jelly fin. If there were a way to automate the process though, I’d probably be more interested.
My problem too.
Very new to using Jellyfin but I also feel the difference in loading and such. Feels so much cleaner! Already uninstalled Plex :)
Remember when Plex tried to sell you a subscription to use outdated versions of open source game console emulators?
Plex wants to be a profit-driven company, but their business model is piracy. They’ll squeeze you for subscriptions, while making your experience worse to try and broker a peace deal with content owners.
idk I find $2/month to be very reasonable. I don’t feel squeezed.
EDIT: Just to be clear there is no amount of condescending replies form trilby wearing neckbeard keyboard warriors that will change my opinion.
I’m more just agitated that they paywalled free functions that don’t have to rely on their services.
To stream remotely from your own server?
If I chose to use Plex’s
plex.tvservices to expose my server to the internet, that’s one thing. But I have my Plex server exposed through my own infrastructure (NPM + Let’s Encrypt), so fuck that shit.The $2/mo is for the Plex relay service. If you access the server directly it should be free.
It’s not. Now you need to pay any time you want to connect to your server from outside of your LAN.
Would a VPN be a solution to that?
Yes, a VPN can resolve it. Depending on how you do it you may need to add a subnet or list of IPs to the local allow list like so. This also, for me, fixes my wifi subnet being treated as remote.
Yes. You only need to pay if you’re connecting via their relay or trying to use the remote hosting functionality. But since a VPN would land you inside of the network, you’d be fine. You’d probably need to dig into the plex settings to specify that the VPN subnet is LAN traffic. But after that, you should be good.
You can use ZeroTier to connect from anywhere. It only makes you pay to use the plex router/relay.
Sorry to have annoyed you.
Unforgivable, have a wretched hour and a half.
I much prefer jellyfin + tailscale
I’m switching to Jellyfin myself.
Setting up ddns takes 15 minutes for a professional (mostly setting a 1-line script to reload a simple url every ten minutes)
and poking a hole in the firewall takes maybe half an hour (since every router puts the relevant page in a different spot)
And for this you think it’s reasonable to pay ~$25/year for the rest of your life? You’re not wrong in the sense that you’re welcome to choose your own values, but I … disagree with you on the value position.
I mean, you just listed the most insecure way to host Jellyfin. Poking a hole in your firewall will technically work, but that doesn’t mean it’s the correct way to do things. A good setup would use a reverse proxy, and some sort of authentication wall like Authentik or Authelia.
All of that would only take about 15 minutes for someone who knows what they’re doing. But the vast majority of people setting up Jellyfin for the first time won’t know what they’re doing. And seeing the inevitable “lol just open your firewall” comments only serves to scare them away, because even the noobs have heads that’s the wrong way to do things.
I’d be fine paying $25 a year to not maintain that shit myself. Plus the money should contribute to development efforts.
It should. I agree, but speaking as someone in the industry - usually it doesn’t. Just lines some rich guy’s pockets.
Fair in the instance of Plex, but I’m happy to pay for the feature with Home Assistant.
Good call! 100% (at least for now 😅)
I would be ashamed of myself and be tempted to leave the industry in disgrace if setting up DDNS and allowing a single port through a firewall took me 45 minutes.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. I want the newbs to feel accomplished when it only takes them 2 hours to figure it out. 😉
But seriously, you and I have it on reflex, but there’s merit to the notion that we also have our mise en place - we’ve read the manual, we’ve saved or memorized the script, already know our local equipment passwords, etc - all things we took the time to do before and now have at the ready.
ok
👌 ok!
So glad I installed jellyfin years ago and never bothered to set up Plex.
Imagine wanting to charge to stream your own media with your own hardware and resources… Hey wait, we don’t have to imagine it anymore, Plex already did it.
I forgot as I am a Plex Pass Lifetime user, and oh boy I’ll be sure to milk that out (actually after all these years I think I have already done that) just to keep being an annoying stat for Plex and nothing else 🤣
Aren’t they charging because it passes through their servers so you don’t have to expose your server directly to the public Internet?
Like, I pay $5 a month to access my Home Assistant setup remotely, although I could do it cheaper with my own AWS setup. But the money goes to development, so I’m happy to contribute.
Yeah… That only applies for non CGNATED networks, and as we are in 2025 I’d say most users worldwide are CGNATED or don’t have an IPv6 address… Or worse, both.
If you are CGNATED Plex approach is useless, as their relay sucks as it only lets you play up to 2 (or 4 can’t remember) mbps 720p files lol (server will transcode to meet those requirements), if they wanted to charge for remote streaming they should at least increase the minimum Mbps allowed in their relay, that way I understand they fall into server costs by proxying our media… But until that happens, charging for remote streaming is a completely joke (much more if we have free alternatives to keep doing so in a plethora of devices thanks to Tailscale and Zerotier, the true GOATS with a CGNAT environment).
Fellow jellyfin user 😍
For a perfect pairing, Jellyfin + Tailscale.
Oh, this is so true. I set it up and now can watch things anywhere. Even my kids who live 6 hours away can just jump on and watch that stuff. Jellyfin is what plex wanted to be, like 10+ years ago. I remember how stupid it was when they first started charging people to watch their own local media, it was funny at first because it was only on iphones that you had to pay. Then it was everywhere. They will continue to take features away until you pay.
Can you do it from someone’s roku TV easily? Im worried about having too much networking trouble getting my mom’s TV hooked up to my jellyfin but don’t really want to open a port to the raw internet.
Be prepared for a barrage of “Jellyfin” in your comments.
But yea seriously, use Jellyfin.
Is there something better than jellyfin? I’ve been using it for a little over a year, and it works for the most part, but clients are often pretty buggy (especially on apple apple devices)
The web interface is fantastic. I just use a spare laptop with a wireless keyboard and mouse
Have you tried the third party ones? I’ve seen recommendations for Swiftfin
Yeah that’s the one I’m using on our appleTV, it’s buggy as hell. “Continue” show often doesn’t work and picks an episode that I’ve watched long ago and not the next in line, often never updating it despite watching several episode over several weeks. Aftee Pausing a show or movie and closing the app, if you want to continue from where you left off, well that doesn’t work consistently either, usually it will just restart from the beginning. Switching language on shows pretty much doesn’t work at all, it will either never change from default audio language, or use an entirely different language than the one picked from the list.
All these things work perfectly fine from a browser or official app on android.
Plex will do the exact same thing if you have an episode earlier in your history that didnt get marked as “watched”. But plex lets you manually tag episodes as watched which usually fixes it. Maybe there’s a similar option in jellyfin?
Jeælyfin also has this, is just doesn’t work on appleTV
Was I supposed to read that with a Scottish accent?
I mostly use Infuse on the Apple TV and Streamyfin on the iPhone.
I’d be happy to pay for Infuse if the lifetime wasn’t AU$150, and I just outright reject paying a subscription for an app for using something FOSS, even if it’s only AU$20/year. A lifetime license that’s 3-5yrs of a yearly sub is much more reasonable.
I’m no fan of software subscriptions. I have only one and it’s Infuse. Took the plunge mainly for Apple TV playback a few years ago and I’m glad I did.
It’s not just relying on FOSS through JF, but allows connection to Plex and Emby servers. And just as importantly direct NAS playback (side note - I honestly think a lot people go through the hassle of setting up a full JF/Emby/Plex server when this option would work just as well for them for single client playback). They also update regularly, and generally adhere to native OS design standards so it feels at home - https://firecore.com/releases
Back to the point, I pay the cost of a McDonald’s meal a year and I’m happy. IMHO it’s fantastic value. And I’ll continue to wait patiently for the official Jellyfin Apple TV client rework (Swiftfin). If it’s great and ticks the boxes I need I’ll cancel the Infuse subscription, if not we get enough value for £8.99 a year to make it a no brainer decision to continue.
I use Emby and it’s flawless, might be worth swimming upstream?
Same, though I can’t get remote access working while running a vpn on my machine and it’s driving me nuts
Yeah, the way things at going I feel like I should protect myself further with a VPN, but it does break some of my services’ access. Just another hurdle in the track to net independence that will be overcome! Heaven knows we’ve overcome many to get where we each are.
No need to bust your brain trying too hard - you’ll find an answer eventually!
I had it working on Windows, just can’t remember how haha. I’ve moved to Linux and I don’t know if I’m missing something to get it going, or if it’s because ProtonVPN isn’t nearly as devloped on Linux as it is on Windows. Appreciate the positivity though!
Infuse is so good on Apple TV it’s worth the money
I refuse to support companies with subscription based business models.
Is there something better than jellyfin?
Plex.
What if you want to own your server?
You can absolutely run plex in a local only mode. You don’t sign it in to an account and then set your subnets in the local networks section like so. Or leave it blank if you have a standard flat home network.
I do own my server. It’s in my living room.
Then you signed it over to Plex. Smdh
For remote streaming access, sure. But I don’t see a problem otherwise.
I can’t say I’ve given Jellyfin a proper try (as in using it and the clients exclusively for a long period) but we have been using Emby for quite a while before I knew it existed.
If I’m not mistaken Jellyfin is actually a fork of Emby so they’re pretty similar, but one is a bit older.
If I’m not mistaken Jellyfin is actually a fork of Emby so they’re pretty similar, but one is a bit older.
Jellyfin forked from Emby in 2018 when Emby chose to switch to a closed-source model. Because of this, there are many similarities, but the projects continue to become increasingly different from one another as time goes on.
I was probably using Emby already by then, had bought a lifetime license since it didn’t require bouncing things off and outside server like Plex did (or was it that Plex was a renewing subscription, I forget) , so it just stayed out of inertia.
I’m pretty happy with Emby, but it’s not open source.
What’s an “apple apple” device? 😁
Yea, Jellyfin on iOS hsed to be buggy. Seems much better these days, and there’s also Finamp for music
infuse is a good jellyfin client. there’s a free tier but im not sure of the limitations.
The free tier limitation is that it doesn’t work with jellyfin
What sort of bugs are you experiencing? I’m using the official Jellyfin app and it’s been extremely stable on all my Apple devices. But I noticed a while ago that videos that were not MPEG were problematic so I converted all the AVI and WMV and WEBM to MP4 and it has been much more reliable. Scrubbing and previews have worked much better also
“Continue show” often doesn’t work and picks an episode that I’ve watched long ago and not the next in line, often never updating it despite watching several episode over several weeks, even if they’re marked as “seen”. After pausing a show or movie and closing the app, if I want to continue from where I left off, well that doesn’t work consistently either, usually it will just restart from the beginning. Switching language pretty much just doesn’t work at all, it will either never change from default audio language, or use an entirely different language than the one picked from the list.
I mean, with a post like this, I’d call it baiting
btw i use jellyfin
lol crap, it’s the new arch!
We need a name for lemmy users running arch on their pc that they’re using to watch stuff on their Jellyfin server
I did try and preempt that in my comment - but it’s hard to switch from plex when there are 5 other people with everything all configured and history etc
but it’s hard to switch from plex when there are 5 other people with everything all configured and history etc
That’s exactly what Plex wants you to say
How to migrate your watch history, apparently: https://www.florianjensen.com/2024/08/21/how-to-migrate-from-plex-to-jellyfin/
No it’s not. Tell them to learn to switch or lose access. It’s your server, do what you want.
I wanted to move to Jellyfin, but there isn’t an app for it on the LG WebOS library like there is for Plex, so I wouldn’t be able to watch stuff on my TV, which sadly makes it useless for me :-(
I don’t have the money to be going out and buying extra add-ons for my TV to watch stuff either, sadly. So, Plex it is for now!
Root your TV and install the homebrew channel on it.
Yes, this is real.
The Homebrew Channel for LG WebOS is got three pieces of absolutely essential software:
A YouTube app modified with built in ad blocking and sponsor blocking. The Jellyfin app. The Moonlight app.
With these three plus the toggle to block system updates your TV gets 1000% better for free.
now I need to find a Wiimote, damnit
You can use the Smart remote which is basically the fusion of a wiimote, a tv remote and a computer mouse
I tried googling some of this but I must be misunderstanding the thread, mind ELI5 for the rest of us? ^_^’
OK.
So, you know of android rooting?
(I'm assuming no)
Android rooting is the action of getting superuser prileveges on an android device, which lets you do literally anything. From removing bloat, to overclocking, it gives you full power over the device.
Keep in mind that “with great power comes great responsibility.” -the
sudocommand on first useWell, it’s that, but for TVs.
As for the remote, how you move the cursor is wii-like, and you can click the [OK] button to click stuff. You can also scroll, because the [OK] button is also a scroll wheel.
What I meant is I tried to Google homebrew smart remote and found nothing. I do have understanding of the concepts and was looking for the specifics :)
15 years ago a pirate decided to name the main channel on the Nintendo Wii for homebrew the “Homebrew Channel”, as it has been for 15 years.
That was my reference. If you found a hacked Wii right now and turned it on, it would be one of the channels available.
When was the last time you checked? A client was added to the WebOS store maybe 2 or 3 years ago for recent models, and support for older models (like my C9) came months later.
Yes there is, I literally have it installed on my two LG WebOS TVs. Plus there’s a web browser app that you can create shortcuts for, which works for Dropout so I would assume it works for Jellyfin as well.
Yes there is. I have it on my tv.
Can you try using DLNA to connect to jellyfin? You need to install the plugin first.
More effort, but there’s also this https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos
USE JELLYF-
Be prepared for a barrage of “Jellyfin” in your comments.
Oh.
Jel-ly-fin, jel-ly-fin, je-ly-fin!
Watching people realize this toejam eating weirdo was right about everything makes my day everytime.
context
I was searching for a fitting response and found this, took me long enough to realise it was not a meme, so I decided it kinda fits ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know it’s fashionable to shit on Plex here, but OP either has his server misconfigured or is just trying to stir the pot:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202526943-plex-free-vs-paid/
Free to Use: Video (movies & TV) streaming of personal content on the same local network as the Plex Media Server
except not via mobile devices. you have to pay for the app to work.
Right, the $2 is to use the relay service, which costs Plex bandwidth. They can’t just do it free for everyone forever, bandwidth costs money.
They charge for remote access whether it’s through their relay service or not, and you can’t opt out of fallback to their relay service.
If you connect with the IP address it doesn’t charge you. You can use ZeroTier to connect from anywhere.
That’s not quite the same - that gives you the appearance of being a local device, which is enough to fool the restriction.
Their policy and technology enforcement is to charge for remote access, not relaying.
Can you give me an example of remote direct access that would be blocked? You can use nginx to forward your public IP to your Plex and it’s fine, you can forward ports directly on your router and connect to your public IP, you can use a VPN to connect from a different network; what are they limiting? It’s the same hurdle you have to overcome with Jellyfin. Relays are convenient, but they also cost money.
Yes, however using the relay is not a prerequisite to being required to pay for a Plex subscription. That is what he is trying to say.
I can run Plex on the open internet and not use their relay at all, however if the IP of the viewer is not an interal IP on the same subnet as Plex (I assume the same subnet is required) then you’ll be greeted with the Plex paywall.
You are absolutely correct that it costs money to run a relay, but the relay has nothing to directly do with the paywall.
That isn’t how it used to work.
Why would they care what subnet the request is coming from? That’s wack.
Thank you! That is exactly my point.
But there are dozens of people in this very thread who if I am understanding correctly are willing to offer the same service for free to prove their point that Plex is evil.
People are free to take some rando on the Internet up on their offer.
Yes, but they’re still sending emails to people even when it doesn’t apply. I had a Plex pass and still all of my users received emails and freaked out. They’re trying to trick people into thinking they need to pay, that’s the asshole move here.
It means the same specific subnet. If you have multiple subnets (one for wired, one for wireless for example) it will also trigger that limitation unless you go in and manually tell it hey these are local.
I have always connected via a FQDN, for some reason last night it decided to shit it’s self. Resolved by accessing via local IP, then the FQDN worked again
I’ll shit on Plex as much as anyone, but I wouldn’t rule out some kind of DNS nonsense here.
Think they worked out that using the IP instead of the hostname solved it.
I have always connected via a FQDN, for some reason last night it decided to shit it’s self. Resolved by accessing via local IP, then the FQDN worked again
Jellyfin or Emby.
What’s plex better at?
If I’m not mistaken Emby started to do some sketchy stuff which birthed Jellyfin.
Getting people to pay to watch their locally stored media?
It literally says ‘remote access’
I think the GUI is more refined and the initial setup a bit easier for casual users. I’m a Jellyfin user, because my online entertainment budget is exactly $0.
Yeah it took me a few hours of research and plugin setup to get feature parity with Plex, and then even so I don’t have anything to replace plexamp yet
Not sure how features compare, but finamp exists for jellyfin if you’re looking for a jellyfin-music-player-thingy
Aaaand that’s one of the reasons why I got rid of Plex. “Bought” it, then they found some other feature to paywall. Bought that, then another feature. Then it stopped playing files of certain extensions through chromecast. Fuck that. Put together Jellyfin and moved my collection over. Zero trouble since.
