Need context …what’s happening here?
Plex did an update that took the perfectly good UI and fucked it hard, removed features, and generally is shit
Ig they’re rolling it out in waves, they decided to overhaul their app UI…for the worse IMO
My wife likes the new UI, personally I’m indifferent
Like many others, I switched to Jellyfin years ago. It is way, way better for me. It does what it says on the tin, sometimes more, but not less.
You mean you don’t like recommendations by default of the media you downloaded because you know exactly what you want to watch?
I really never understood that.
My assumption is that it’s a bridge to some sort of legitimacy like a movie rental deal or something. Like inserting ads into your self hosted media.
That’s the thing - we just can’t know. Sometimes a feature is just a feature, but with commercial software there’s always more risk it’s going to change under you for the wrong reasons when they find some way to monetise it.
100%, why I love my open source.
This is why I have Plex, emby, and jellyfin running in tandem. Plex still makes my life easier than the other two in a lot of ways, but it’s been slipping for years. Once I’ve finally had enough, jellyfin all the way.
I’m running jellyfin, can’t recommend it enough. It’s been catching up quite steadily to Plex and I still control everything. Can’t complain about that.
I also love Jellyfin, but it needs more contributors.
Too many features need improvement, for example the watch party, or the native apps.
Yeah I use plexamp a lot too and finamp is rough and reminds me of Android apps from 2012.
I also had weird quirks in the past where shows would crash and stop streaming or it would forget my position I stopped watching at, among other things.
And the hardest one is the manual labour I put in to make lists and fetch missing metadata that was actually accurate.
I switched to Jellyfin and then to Kodi. Jellyfin was nice but I wanted Kodi’s PVR, Youtube, Video Games, etc. It’s been a project to setup everything but it’s been pretty awesome.
I spent alot of time messing with the flatpak and apt versions before compiling from source. I recommend source because you get the lastest version and it’s easier to install patches, etc.
It’s now no longer possible to manually refresh libraries from the app. Amazing. Less functionality.
They’ve “streamlined” your experience.
If jellyfin could correctly sort my media with thumbnails I would switch in a second.
Welcome to Jellyfin friend
I bailed on Plex a while ago, went to Emby, now Jellyfin.
I forgot what happened to Emby, but I do recall some enshittification, and bounced. Jellyfin seems pretty solid.
Jellyfin forked from Emby when it went partially paywall.
I’m so glad that I changed to Jellyfin. So much better.
Lol that’s pretty much how it went for me. One day it pissed me off for the last time. Switched to Jellyfin and never looked back. Should have done it so much sooner.
Jellyfin simply doesn’t work as well as Plex unfortunately.
How so? I have way less issues with jellyfin than I did with Plex. I think with jellyfin you just need to RTFM and find some plugins to expand the functionality if you need it
In what way?
The apps don’t work well at all. If you’re just desktop based, its fine. But Nvidia Shield app, firestick app, mobile app, all have issues with hardware transcoding, and also somehow doesn’t handle subtitles properly. I have had both Plex and Jfin set up side by side multiple times, trying to test if I can make the swap. But JF just has too many bugs on their apps, which is what I use primarily, as do my users.
Sounds more like you had transcoding issues.
Using the Jellyfin Android app and the Android TV app on my Chromecast.Besides .ssa subtitles I usually never need to transcode. And usually the transcoding reason is me using an incomptaible audio/video source (TrueHD audio and HDR)
Oh so it’s my fault somehow? Sorry but if I use the same library on Plex vs. JF and one works fine, the other doesn’t. That’s not my fault lol. It was set up to hardware transcode, and still didn’t work for many files. Plex did. Same with subtitles. I watched the same file with Plex and JF side by side. Same directory. Subtitles worked with Plex, all fucked up with JF. JF also crashed all the time on my Nvidia Shield.
Listen…
Some weeks ago I had trouble transcoding some anime files. Didnt really work amd had a low processing framerate using VAAPI. Switched to Intel hardware transcodig and suddenly it worked.I don’t know your setup or when exactly you tried out JF, but theres absolutely no need to be offended.
I had intel hardware transcoding turned on for both JF and Plex. Many files did not work on JF. I am offended and annoyed because people keep telling me it’s my problem - when it’s not. It’s JF issues that are not solveable by me. I even went to the discord and talked to the devs, and they literally said “oh yea we don’t have tons of focus on the mobile apps unfortunately”, and acknowledged that my issue was a bug. Yet people continue to tell me “IT WORKS FOR ME SO YOU’RE DUMB.”
Sharing and remote streaming, plain and simple. I have no problem setting up accounts for friends, but choosing your server is a pain for some. But the bigger problem is that the first thing anyone will say is: Don’t expose Jellyfin to the Internet. That’s a bit of a problem.
And they’ll then say, “Oh it’s not so bad just set up wireguard and…” This is the ramblings of a lunatic. I’ve been working with tech a long time. Tech is my job. It is my hobby. I do all of it from repairing my own hardware to administering servers to running my own home lab to doing open source development. Wireguard is not friendly. It is not something I’m going to set up at every friend and family member’s house so I can share my library.
I’ve got a more secure but imperfect setup in sticking Jellyfin on the Internet behind a proxy that requires login. But this is not something most people are going to want to deal with. They want to stand up their server and then share it with people.
Realistically what could the jellyfin devs do to make this easier?
One thing is prioritizing security. There’s a number of known flaws, of varying severity, which is why most people would recommend not exposing Jellyfin to the Internet.
Perhaps they could set up a second project, a Jellyfin meta-library, whose whole goal is to be exposed to the Internet. You stand that up, give it access to other Jellyfin servers, and it handles the work similar to STUN of connecting you to media on those servers. This would make it so people could share easier.
Interesting. It would still be complex I guess but mean that it’s less risky to expose.
I’m still a bit out of my depth on networking I just use jellyfin locally. Ive set up websites and stuff but never had to play with reverse proxies.
I would have done this, but set up ‘meshnet’ to make the remote computers look like they’re all on the same network, but nordvpn just pulled the plug on meshnet and are decommissioning it in December. Goodbye
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Very Give a Mouse a Cookie vibes when talking to someone explaining how Jellyfin is a drop in replacement for Plex when they’re on step 6 of setting up remote access
I recently tested Jellyfin again and still miss a lot of features I like with Plex. I am a former Emby user and I don’t see why Jellyfin got so popular. I really want it to succeed, though
Like?
A Netflix-like login screen, where you can see all the users and they are just protected by a simple PIN.
You have a login screen with all users showing with their profile picture. For a while now. You can even make it look Netflix-like with Skin Manager plugin. And there’s Quick Connect but it’s for people already connected on another device.
Jellyfin is 100% free and open-source, it may miss some features but nothing behind a paywall. We made the choice of open-source over features (I can understand people going with plex, but I’m happy with jf)
All good and if you are one of the contributors, you earn all the respect. By now, Emby will have a hard time to keep up with the development speed of Jellyfin. I just miss a few very important QoL features. I truly believe it is only a matter of time until they are added.
Seriously, why are we still even mentioning Plex at this point?
Because it’s easier, in a lot of people’s experience better, and has more users. Why wouldn’t people mention it?
I was in a previous update wave, and it made me switch to Jellyfin too. I cast from my phone to my TV, and they did something that made subtitles basically impossible to load via Chromecast. Even trying to automatically burn in subtitles didn’t work for this mode.
Also, while a “minor” nitpick, Chromecast used to show random movie/TV show posters when you connected and also show the media details when you selected something, now it just shows a big PLEX logo all the time unless playing something.
I’m not sure I can switch. I have too many friends linked to my server and a decade-ish of watched data.
I know many people watch from TV apps and Chromecasts and I don’t know if there’s an app for every TV brand for jellyfin or emby or whatever.
People watch from all sorts of weird devices. I got push back when I forced SSL because at least one person had a TV so old that it didn’t support doing SSL for Plex. It took me a week to drill it into their brain that I’m not going to change it back and to go buy literally anything to make it work (Chromecast type thing). I think their ended up buying a Roku.
This is just the brainpower that most of the people I share with, have. They just want easy. I do all the hard work in the background and their life is easy.
I can’t imagine how many would have a fit if I forced them off Plex. Jellyfin looks cool and all, but it’s unlikely I’ll be able to move anytime soon.
You can run Jellyfin side by side and slowly migrate everyone, starting from the most intelligent users (so you can catch anything that might be wrongly configured, etc.).
In the meantime, I hope that so many users are switching that we’re going to get better native apps.
I understand that it’s not so bad, but you made it sound like a hellish landscape
Why do you let other people dictate how you run your media server?
I don’t. There’s just a nontrivial number of people I care about that use Plex that don’t know enough about technology to handle something like jellyfin.
Losing years of watched data isn’t great, but ultimately it’s small potatoes.
A big part of the reason I wanted to set up Plex to begin with, was so that my friends and family didn’t have to waste their time downloading the stuff that all of us want to watch.
They don’t demand anything, I want them to be able to use it because I care about those people. If switching to jellyfin is too difficult for the non-techs I care about, then I’ll keep rolling with Plex.
What did I miss?
They like completely overhauled the UI lol
So?
It’s very bad
Please help me understand why. Why is it very bad?
Much less intuitive organization, more focus on Plex provided content rather than self hosted, features were removed, pretty much if you are thinking of a possible downgrade then they downgraded
That overhauled UI is buggy as shit, slow to do anything and is objectively worse as features that were already present were removed.
Feature removal might e been excused if the UI was simplified and fast and responsive. But slow and buggy UI to replace relatively well functioning UI angered almost all users. I’m had to force install an old version of plex client exactly to avoid the non-sense.
seconded?
Why the fuck are you not using Jellyfin?
Seriously, the setup is really easy and it just fucking works.
Setup is not really easy. Plex takes 5 minutes.
Does it work out the box with Chromecast yet? I gave it a go a while ago and it seemed incredibly convoluted, where as Plex just works.
It failed the spouse test when I last tried last year
I wonder how? Plex is actually worse to navigate and filled with ads and shit.
The issue I had: Jellyfin experience is a better on Firestick and Chromecast than it is on Roku, but the difference has been shrinking fast due to contributions from someone named 1hitsong on GitHub. That person has absolutely hammered patches out over the past few months.
Besides the removable highlights page, never seen an ad on Plex.
…yet ;)
Lol wut? I’ve never seen an ad on Plex. And it’s very easy to navigate, wtf you talking about.
Most likely they’re not logged in with a paid Plex account. When I head to the web version of the Plex app it’s a shitshow until I login. Then I have all that shit disabled server side.
Genuine question - what aspect of it didn’t work for them?
I have it set up right along Plex but find it nearly unusable because the search is atrociously slow. Like 1+ min to query my library. The day that gets fixed is the day I’ll start using it.
That shouldn’t be. I run mine side by side with Plex and Jellyfin is much faster.
How big is your library? 1min is excessive but I also noticed jellyfins search getting slower with an increasing amount of shows and movies. There’s projects like jellysearch which improve search noticeably.
My library is roughly 40TB in size. I think the main issue is just the shear amount of files to parse when it comes to my music library.
I did add a meilisearch and that did help a lot, but still slow enough to find it cumbersome
Yeah, music slowing down jellyfin search was the reason I moved to navidrome.
Yeah, I have that set up too and searching on that is very quick and responsive. I still end up just using Plexamp because I like the automatic playlists and radios. I’m sure there are ways to add those into navidrome, but haven’t explored it very far
Because it fucks up subtitles on their Nvidia Shield and firestick apps, and has issues with transcoding too. If you’re purely using the desktop app, or browser then it’s better. But Plex just works in every aspect. Subtitles, transcoding, sharing libraries. Have had no issues or weird bugs. Anytime I try JF I have to dive deep into resolving bugs, some of which are unsolvable by me.
I’ve been using Jellyfin on both the Fire Stick and Sheild for over 2 years and haven’t encountered any issues with transcoding, subtitles, or anything else. You just launch the app and everything just works. And I’ve got a couple of very non technical remote users who have been using it flawlessly.
Lucky you, I did the exact same thing and had plenty of issues. Switched back to Plex, with the exact same library, and had none of those issues.
moved to jellyfin after plex was an absolute nightmare to setup on linux.
jellyfin is just so easy to use and like you said, just works
BTW, what’s your opinion on Kodi & Emby ?
ive never used Emby, and Kodi i havent used for quite some time, maybe almost 15 years. aside from it probably being quite different from when i used it it worked well at the time.
I’ve been using Emby for a few weeks now, and the only thing I dislike is having to pay to get subs. Not a dealbreaker though, just slightly anoying that I have to find them myself.
I’m using Kodi and I love it. But it’s a project if you want to setup lots of stuff. I recommend compiling from source for latest version, easier patching, etc.
I wouldn’t recommend Kodi to people who aren’t comfortable with tech stuff. Jellyfin is more basic and easy for people who only want movies/tv.
I’ve tried to use Jellyfin every year or two for the past six years to replace Plex, but it sadly just isn’t there. It’s not good in a lot of aspects, especially when it comes to full bitrate 4K HDR movies (100GB movie files), HDR tone mapping, and especially subtitles (which I always have on).
Also, I’m pretty sure on their GitHub page there’s like a huge list of some significant or moderate security vulnerabilities that have been known for many years and are never going to get fixed due to breaking compatibility with some old devices if their fixed.
Wait, Jellyfin had HDR tone mapping before Plex didn’t it?
In my case running them both side by side, Jellyfin is as least reliable and fast, which is a lot more important when I am thousands of miles away and just want to watch something.
Set up ease is highly variable. I spent hours of videos and guides and fiddling and couldn’t get it running on anything except the desktop it was installed on.
For me it was that it didn’t like how the NAS shares are mounted by default so it didn’t recognise their paths as valid.
Devil’s advocate, it’s missing a lot of features that aren’t available unless you want to spend 12 hours playing with add-ons.
Plex amp is still better than finamp for now. But it’s catching up that’s for sure.
The thing about the redesign that irks me the most is that browsing your own personal library is unnecessarily convoluted the way it’s now organized. It’s a big step backwards in terms of navigation.
I switched off like 2 years ago because of how many clicks it took to get to my things.
Cant imagine how bad it is now.
this is because your own personal library does not make them money.
Oh dude this pisses me off SO MUCH!!! MY DAMN content should be front and center, not your stupid ads.
And now we are on jellyfin and scrapped plex. Fuck them.
Man it’s a real shame that Kevin Spacey being Kevin Spacey ruined that great show for me
He’s a great actor and he’s a piece of shit person.
He is so good of an actor he can act like he’s not so fucked up.
I switched to Emby. Which I now access via SenPlayer. Am I doing this right?!?!
Am I doing this right
Well if you ask me, not really, I disavowed emby years ago and afaic its just Plex and Jellyfin in this space to me
Ok, you’re gonna have to unpack that one for me! Plex was always messing things up with transcoding, and I hate the Jellyfin UI and always had trouble getting it working and keeping it working.
How was Plex messing up transcoding?
Here’s a comment I wrote on it about a year ago
Tldr; they are an early example of open source enshittification before enshittification was even coined (iirc)
This is going to go back quite a ways, and much of my knowledge is old at this point so some details might be off.
~15 years ago Plex as we know it started out as an OSX fork of the 0G Xbox homebrew software XBMC (Later renamed Kodi (For those who don’t know, XBMC was XBox Media Center and would turn the 0g Xbox into the cheapest Home Theater PC you could get at the time, man those were the days lol))
Plex was only briefly open source and then was quickly closed when they incorporated a year or so after they had something functional. They never made any promises about not charging or being open source or anything, so that’s why I’m generally fine with Plex
Sometime around 2012ish Emby came along as THE open source alternative to Plex and things were good. MOST of it was supposed to stay open source as was promised. From the beginning they kept build scripts n such closed source, probably should have caught on them, but heh ya know hindsight and all that.
Then around 2014/5 they took it all closed source, relicensed it and introduced their paywall including locking away already existing features. This is what pissed me and many others off and this is when and why Jellyfin split off promising to be truly fully open source forever. (There was a ton of drama about it at the time, but it looks like Embys Q&A thing a bit back doesn’t even bother to mention it, imagine that lol)
I don’t have a problem with subscriptions on open source software myself, but the way they went about it…yea. fuck em
Fair. And I agree with your stance. But I don’t feel like setting something else up again, especially if it’s a thing that has caused me problems in the past, like Jellyfin. I miss XBMC.
Kodi (formerly XBMC) is still there as far as I’ve seen. So if you liked XBMC give it a try maybe.
I have Jellyfin in parallel now and I had to face the family during summer with questions like “why I can do this with the app anymore “ “ why did you change it” sigh 😔 so I started to put energy on jelly because that was unacceptable way to rollout a botched change.
