Yeah, I’m not interested in setting all that up and maintaining it for every user I share with. For myself, this is exactly how I access Jellyfin remotely, but I am not explaining to my remote family members how to set up a VPN on their TV.
If you want to be on the hook for all IT requests from folks you share with, this is a fine approach. There are people out there who honestly don’t have a problem with that and more power to them. I doubt they are the majority, and a lot of selfhosters completely ignore this aspect of software. There is a reason non-free services exist beyond just “capitalism bad.” I mean, capitalism indeed bad, but your time is worth something.
This will affect any server that does not already have a Plex Pass/ Lifetime Plex Pass. If your server does not have one, your remote users will have to pay. The service Plex provides is still worth it though, it largely just works on dozens of platforms and that shit isn’t free to make.
Sharing a Jellyfin server with others remotely is still a lot more complicated than it needs to be to compete (no, it’s not as simple as opening a port, and if you think so then you’re either lucky or you aren’t sharing with lots of folks). I run both and I would never try to share Jellyfin with non-technical people. Honestly, I wish Jellyfin would start offering an optional paid relay service to fund their development. They could use the revenue to improve their app ecosystem and still produce mostly open-source software. Homeassistant does this with Nabu Casa and it’s great!
That being said, the new Plex Android app kinda sucks ass. If there was anything that would make me switch it wouldn’t be having to pay for software, or services it’d be a garbage experience on my most common platform.
There is zero reason to follow the formal rules of order in Congress anymore. They should start with refusing to yield time and go as far as simply not acknowledging the Republicans as valid members of the various subcommittees.
A whole lot of the congressional rules are completely made up traditions. Ignoring them has always been an option. Canings on the house floor are also an option.
Dems have been taking the high road and losing for over a decade. They need to get dirty.
So, first off: calling out someone for repeatedly doing the same thing that isn’t solving the problem doesn’t require having a better answer. If I was trying to solve global warming by duct-taping cats together, you could point out that it isn’t working without solving global warming yourself.
Second:
I think we all know they won’t do any of these things on their own, they need to be shamed into it. Without their supporters turning on them, the Democrats will continue doing nothing because it’s what their donors want.
Normally, I’d not be so blunt about this, so apologies but: you’re wrong. The majority of Americans picked fascism in 2024 knowing exactly what they’d get. Nothing anyone did to him mattered before he was given a clear mandate to burn everything down, there’s no reason to believe it will matter now.
The Democrats need to get dirty or we are all fucked.
They should stop doing the things they’ve been trying and failing at for ten years. 2024 was the end of the old ways, IMO; the Democrats lost so badly and so definitely that there’s no point in pretending there’s any going back.
I think the line is doing anything outside the clearly-nonfunctional system to stop the MAGA cult. All they’re doing is complaining and wasting time, Republicans will dox and threaten with violence. The people that were elected to fight this are almost literally bringing pens and paper to a gunfight.
It’s honestly pathetic to watch a curbstomping being responded to with, “well im gonna write such a scathing letter about this.” The Democrats are absolute trash and need to be shamed for being such cowards about this.
Why on earth would anyone think that would matter? At this point, impeachment is just a strongly-worded letter.
Even if they managed to get it to the Senate trial phase, he’d just ignore It. His people are in charge of every branch of government and the military, there is no formal process for removing him anymore.
You get that by suing you’re lodging a complaint with the same people that robbed you, right?
What’s 20% of a golden shower? A fun-size bottle of Sunny D?
I’m in the same boat, I use Jellyfin where I can but Plex is still so much better for sharing, especially with non-technical people so I run both. Really hoping the Jellyfin folks realize they can sell a relay service to make some money and fund their development to improve the app. Seems to be working well for Homeassistant!
Jellyfin has this, but it’s kinda busted: https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-syncplay. There was one guy working on it and he apparently vanished. It still does work for some use-cases but be prepared for some rough edges.
Maybe someone will pick up the torch now that Plex is axing it?
It shouldn’t be any faster or slower if you’re using the exact same transcoding settings
That’s sort of the point, both are based on ffmpeg but neither is using vanilla ffmpeg. Plex’s seems to work a lot better on the same hardware for me, but more importantly it’s not something you have to fiddle with. You just check the box and it figures out a decent setting. Jellyfin has some basic defaults for Intel/nVidia but there are a ton of tweakable settings that you have to go figure out.
There’s probably some way to fix the issue but it’d take a ton of fiddling, and that’s the jank I keep referring to. A lot of people on Lemmy just ignore the rough edges and act like it doesn’t matter just because they can get past it or because it’s FOSS and they refuse to use anything else. Not everyone on here is a full-time software engineer, though; IMO it’s better to be honest about shortcomings and set expectations well. More people self-hosting their media is a net positive IMO.
Plex has people they can pay to make their product better (and at least for the moment they’re still paying them), Jellyfin straight up doesn’t have those resources. I hope that changes because Plex is not on a good trajectory as a company. The Homeassistant model seems like a good one that gives people a good reason to contribute code and money, I really hope the Jellyfin guys do something along those lines.
The Plex app for some versions of Android TV is way too chunky for the resources available. I’ve noticed it performs really badly with smart TVs and it seems to do worse the more background apps you have open, so I’m guessing it’s memory related. It generally seems to work better on dedicated devices like Google TV, although it does still wig out sometimes and need to be restarted.
My big beef with the Jellyfin app on Android TV is that they don’t include the fast scroll alphabetical bar the web UI has and the title layout is just posters. Everyone I’ve ever had use it complained that it’s just too hard to read. Plus if you have a big library, that leaves you with 2 navigation options: scroll a bunch or type something in with the on screen keyboard. Both of those kind of stink.
I’ve also run into weird edges with plugins in Android TV. I could never get automatic subtitles to work consistently. The skip intro popup just doesn’t appear sometimes or doesn’t skip correctly when pressed. I suspect there’s some translation error between the Android interface and the plugin interface.
Intro skipping works pretty well once you set it up and give it time to scan. Functionally, it identifies common audio to determine likely intros, so it can get confused with shows that have different intro music between episodes of the same season.
Don’t have to change any folder structures unless you were storing optimized media alongside the original files in Plex. All the metadata for both Plex and Jellyfin lives in a SQLite database in your config dir.
You may wind up transcoding even if you think you really shouldn’t have to. Browsers are weird about supporting some encodings, and both Plex and Jellyfin will automatically transcode to satisfy the client.
Hardware transcoding is huge, don’t underestimate how impactful it can be. A single 4K CPU transcode could saturate my 72-core server, but one A380 can transcode 3-4 4K streams at the same time. This admittedly doesn’t matter much if you only have one user, but keep it in mind if you ever have to share. It’s so annoying to have a stream start hitching because 1-2 friends decided to start watching something at the same time as you…
I still don’t have a good replacement for Plexamp either. I think Jellyfin can play music too, but I haven’t tried it myself. I spent a lot of time getting the metadata right in Plex and just haven’t felt like trying to find a way to migrate yet.
You can look at some of my other comments for more specifics, but from your language alone I don’t think you’re being objective here. OP states that Plex is flatly better than Jellyfin, and a bunch of Lemmy users hype it up because of a clear bias for FOSS. A reality check is a good thing, IMO; you can prefer a solution and acknowledge its faults, but people talking on the Internet tend towards extremes instead and that will disillusion anyone who tries Jellyfin expecting all the good parts of Plex but better.
I prefer FOSS everywhere it’s reasonable, but I think a reality check is healthy here. Jellyfin is full of jank that you may run into because a bunch of independent devs are all doing their own thing to make it. Plex is a for-profit entity pulling in the same direction, so the experience is generally going to be more seamless and supported.
I run both Plex and Jellyfin simultaneously. I use Jellyfin on my devices, except on Android TV because the app is painful to navigate. Plex is way better for sharing, but I usually offer both. I’ve yet to have anyone prefer Jellyfin, Plex tends to just work on their platforms of choice so they go with it. Unless they’re a technical person, it’s unreasonable to expect them to muddle through the edges of Jellyfin.
The performance of hardware acceleration in Jellyfin is markedly worse in my experience. My A380 can handle 2-3x more streams in Plex than it can in Jellyfin. My theory is that it’s the jellyfin ffmpeg port slowing things down, but I admittedly don’t have much evidence to back that up beyond the fact that Plex’s transcoder is built on ffmpeg as well.
Plex Relays are a feature, but that’s sort of the point. You get that stability from Plex by default and it works on all clients. There is no realistic way you’re going to get all remote client devices on a VPN for Jellyfin. Maybe one day Jellyfin can offer that as a paid option, a la Nabu Casa for Homeassistant.
Media servers tend to get shared around with friends and family and these edges will start to drive you nuts if you have more than a handful of users. I do not want to try to walk a family member through setting up a VPN on their smart TV.
Yeah, that part about Plex has always bugged me. You can disable logins for your server with allow-listed networks, but most of the non-desktop apps have to log into the Plex platform to run.
All I can say is that is not at all like my experience with Jellyfin. Every person I’ve ever shared it with wanted to go back to Plex. Most complaints had to do with the jankiness of the various apps. Lots of issues with the UIs acting funny, a few connection drops, and some settings not getting respected. I do also recall an episode of Severance that would not stream in the correct color space in Jellyfin but worked perfectly in Plex.