The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

kennywinker

Jellyfin is great. For me, the only thing missing is sharing libraries.

skullone

Jellyfin works great. Supports my 7.1 Atmos setup with the right media even, very slick, no issues

el_io

Been using jellyfin for like 2ish years, no complain. Jellyfin-mpv-shim is great.

smilespray

Jellyfin 12 should be able to use a Plex media library using Plex naming conventions, no renaming required. This will reduce the switching workload, and you can run both services at the same time whilst trying out Jellyfin.

xnx

As someone who was late to the game, I never even considered Plex and have been totally satisfied with Jellyfin. Is there anything better about Plex?

znkynz

Should an Emby premiere user consider moving to Jellyfin?

deejaaymac

For those curious to see Jellyfin in action https://demo.jellyfin.org/stable/web/#/home Username is demo, PW is blank Also, I've been running jellyfin for many years, I've had no issues

senectus1

I would absolutely love to cut to jellyfin, but for the TV integration. Last time i looked samsung TV's (which most of my fam use) dont have a decent client. Has that changed?

afavour

This was always going to be the fate of Plex. You can’t build a sustainable business off the back of most of your users viewing pirated content. I say that without judgement, it’s just a reality. Open source was always going to be the path.

jbird99

I last used Jellyfin about 2 years ago, and the chromecast functionality on Android needed some work. Has the Android client been improved?

sithadmin

Didn’t the Jellyfin project lead and some other core founders quit this week?

radcod3

I use jellyfin with Infuse, Kodi, mpv-shim and a couple of mobile clients as well. No major issues so far, even my parents use it via Kodi.

evulhotdog

Silo is a new up and coming competitor, also completely open source and written in go, and has full Postgres support from the get-go, along with proper architecture decisions to allow transcoding across multiple hosts. The vision of Silo appears to be much more clear, and has quite a few great devs behind it. It also has features to run side by side and has full JF api support. I have no involvement in the project, just excited for a new player in the space. Something to keep an eye on!

dostick

The corporate creep was already felt when years ago they released the PlexAmp audio player. Good player but to display lyrics you have to open the menu and select “Show Lyrics”, two clicks every time. Every time, for every track. When the next track is playing lyrics display is automatically turned off. It is not remembered either, you go back to previous track and have to click click them menu gain. This is because they have to pay a licence and rather save $100 per month by inconveniencing their user base. you see, it’s extra work to click the menu every time so you won’t be viewing lyrics. Profit! And no, if your file already has lyrics that doesn’t matter, you still have to open to view it every time, for each track.

monkpit

Does jellyfin offer intro/outro skipping like plex pass does? And hardware accelerated transcoding? The only thing keeping me on plex is my lifetime plex pass, and family inertia.

gbil

The main drawback of anything other than plex is that you can’t simply install it on some major TV brands.

zargon

I tried to evaluate Jellyfin recently but dropped it pretty quick. Live (OTA) television is barely a thought (seems to be acknowledged that no dev uses it), and you have to figure out a source for guide data. I have complaints with Plex's implementation, but it's a lot smoother than Jellyfin.

para_parolu

At one point I realized I don’t need plex or jellyfin. All I need is network samba and infuse. It’s supported on all apple devices and works well.

wiether

Weird article. Not only does it acknowledges that Plex is still far better than Jellyfin with its whole ecosystem, but it also depict pretty nicely the entitlement of the users overall. On one side, they paid $75 more than five years ago for a piece of software for which they still receive weekly updates. On the other, they talk about how leadership at Jellyfin decided to throw the blanket after a burning themselves out for free. Up till now, Plex kept their promise regarding the Lifetime pass: we still receive updates, we still have all the features. So, unless they change that, they haven't broken their promise. It seems only fair from them to try to run a sustainable business, which you can do without renewed income. They have to find money. They raise subscription price: no impact on existing Lifetime pass owners. They add ad-supported features: no impact on existing Lifetime pass owners. I don't see a single add wherever I access my Plex library, I have hidden their "free" library. I still have 100% of the features I had when I bought the Lifetime pass. Except that I have now access to more features. Sure, nobody forced them to say "Lifetime", but I don't see how I could be mad if they decided to release a completely new version that is out of the Lifetime scope. I would still have access to the old one, but if I was interested in the new one, I would have to move to one of their new plans, that looks more sustainable in the long run. Plex is still the easiest one to use for regular user or for the people, like me, that act as IT support for their family and friends, and don't want to spend their evenings and weekends tweaking their aunt's TV just for the sake of using Open Source software.

beAbU

I've been a paying Emby user for close to ten years, ever since plex tried to launch a VR player or some shit, while there were still critical bugs in the player for web and other devices. Emby just works, it's players are great, and issues actually get fixed. I know it's a closed source fork of XBMC, I know that's controversial, but the product itself is just so good.