I’ve feel like I’ve used Plex forever. I also feel like every couple years I try Jellyfin to see how it’s going. Recently I tried it again because of Plex restriction on more than one user.
Well, I just tried it again and it’s substantially improved! This time it actually properly detected most of my library!
Also the Android TV app is AWESOME! No more glitches, lagging, and freezing trying to play my stuff like Plex did. It is butter smooth.
Wow! I’m impressed and I just deleted Plex. Good riddance.
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I’ve been considering switching to Jellyfin for a while due to concerns about Plex either becoming worse or them peering into my library. Any idea how the apps work on Fire TV Stick? I have one for home and one I take away with me and it all works seamlessly with Plex
Works great. I use VLC as a player (personal preference).
Not sure how the internal player works.
Jellyfin has an app for fire stick, it works flawlessly
It’s not proprietary, so it could be shit on a shingle and still beat plex. I’m not installing anything proprietrary on anything I own.
I tried to switch from plex to jellyfin 2 months ago, running both at the same time in containers, but I removed jellyfin after a week
The main issue was the CPU usage, on idle Jellyfin was using about 1vcore while plex used only 0.3, no background tasks seemed to be running and after a week my 4tb of media should have been indexed
Also a feature that I use regularly with plexamp, starting a radio from a song, was not giving me good results on finamp
Although I have my issues with plex, jellyfin has its own problems:
- STILL can’t clear out the TS transcoded files automatically. So if you watch a bunch of TV episodes on a weekend, your jellyfin container will run out of space and break.
- STILL can’t handle subtitles properly. I swear, this must be jellyfin’s Waterloo.
- jellyfin cannot demux 5.1 and present stereo sound on certain streams. I think this is a tooling issue. But it’s low level enough that I can handle it manually with mkvtoolnix myself on the few cases it happens.
This last one is why I have to use Plex instead of jellyfin on my tv. The jellyfin roku app fuckin sucks and refuses to demux anything.
- I’ll have to check but I haven’t had an issue with the transcoded files filling up.
- Subtitles work as expected for me but all of my file names are in English, are the ones you’re having problems with file names in another language perchance?
- That last one I fixed myself by wrapping ffmpeg around a script I wrote that forces 5.1 to transcode to AC3 so it goes to my speakers properly.
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I was replying to maybe share the wrapper script I wrote, but if you’re going to be a jerk about it…
So other people who might be considering Jellyfin vs Plex know that your problems aren’t universal?
I’m in the same boat as the other person. Ive had Jellyfin running for years, watch something on it daily, and have never had the container break due to transcodes not being removed.
Maybe its just you and your setup?
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I think the music experience with Plex + Plexamp is still far better. That’s the main thing I use Plex for.
It’s still terrible for music. There’s not even user-based star rating…
Wrong tool for the job ! Use Navidrome with your music library. There’s even a new scanner rewrite in the working which will even further improve how good it is !
I used to use it. But I had so many services running it was a pain to maintain. It didn’t have a TV app aswell. And Navidrome looked kind of abandoned at the time. Maybe I should go back though. Is there a way to migrate my playlists? I think that’s the one thing holding me back.
It really depends on your metadata/ directory structure. Even though navidrome doesn’t care of your directory structure it’s better to have everything neatly separated !
You can spin a docker compose (if you’re a bit acquainted with it) and simply point to your external drive containing your media, just to give it a try and see how it performs with your media files.
Just give it a try and see how it works, however I would wait for the new scanner update before upgrading fully to navidrome which would give some new long awaited functionalities like VA list of all artist.
But I had so many services running it was a pain to maintain.
Are you talking about docker containers? You should take a look at what’s up docker to maintain and keep track of your containers. I have approximately 20 containers and It was easier to keep track this way. If you’re more in the 50/100 range… Yeah this sounds a lot ! :o
Plexamp being behind a paywall stopped me from using Plex for music. Went with Navidrome and it works great.
True, also no support for cue sheets, search is bad and no lyrics.
Lyrics work :)
It always says there is no lyrics, do I need to do something for it to work?
if there are none locally, you can use the lrclib plugin to find lyrics
Doesn’t seem to work, maybe I’m doing something wrong.
I’ve found the opposite to be the case unfortunately. Plex “just works” while my jellyfin server had almost constant issues with subtitles (two of my frequent users need these because of hearing problems) and would frequently crash requiring docker restarts.
I adopted jellyfin very early, used it for many (maybe 6?) years and these problems only got worse over time.
I always prefer open source (often to a fault) but I am glad I switched to Plex a few months ago. I got the lifetime pass for cheap for black Friday. I still leave jellyfin running for a few users, but everyone else has already switched over.
What are the issues you’re having with Jellyfin’s subtitles? Do you know if there is an open bug report or feature request that is tracking the same?
I had the opposite. Jellyfin just works. Plex kept losing my movie folders, refused to play videos, wouldn’t screen cast, had problems with audio tracks, there always seemed to be a disconnect between app and server, they refused to connect despite both being the correct versions. It worked great initially, but got steadily more and more problematic over time. I gave up, even though I’d paid for it, and made a jellyfin server and have had zero trouble since.
Don’t know why two programs should have such radically different experiences, they should just do what they’re supposed to.
I use Jellyfin for music mostly and it struggles with metadata. For example, if a song has two artists on it and I edit to correct it, it won’t update correctly and I’ll edit up with the artist “Artist A; Artist B”.
Finamp keeps creeping towards Plex amp and functionality. I don’t love how Plex treats music either but the client seems to bridge the gap.
Idk PlexAmp is the killer app that I can’t stop using. Does jellyfin have something similar?
I’ve been using both for ages.
For remote access to friends plex is easier and cleaner.
For offline viewing in Android plex is cleaner
I’m running tailscale with jellyfin for personal use and it’s wonderful, But I wouldn’t ask my relatives to do that and I don’t trust to surface the port. Plex has a dedicated security team and 2FA.
The Roku client for jellyfin is also a futureless husk of a client.
I have lifetime Plex so I’m in no hurry to do a full conversion. I would love to drop plex all together though
The Roku client for jellyfin is also a futureless husk of a client.
How so? What do you see as missing?
Should be able to * on a “watching” item and remove from from front page watching, you have to go all the way to it’s location in the share, find the move/episode and unset it from the sub,submenu. Should be able to see the file names and location of the items on the front page through submenus. None of the items on the front page can have their options viewed, they all just play on click.
I miss plex opensubtitles integration
Unable to unset watched/watching from any grid, it’s one item at a time.
Lack of Playlists.
No listing anywhere for filename or bitrate. Would love to see deeper info about the codec for a file hidden away on a submenu.
(which complicates:) If you have two copies of the same thing with different versions, you can’t tell which is which. (which complicates:) If you have a bad meta match on something, it’s REALLY hard to even tell what it really is. I really miss Plex: Play Version.
Usecase, I have futurama in both widebox and 4:3, they all just show up twice. In plex they all show up once with a 2 in the corner letting you know there are multiple versions. you can then context->playversion->4.3mbps
No folder view for unmatched content. When I was putting 1963 Doctor Who up, I could hardly tell what was what without having the meta 100% sorted. In Plex I could just hit folder view and navigate.
🤘 Right on! Thanks for posting these.
Several of these have never been brought up to the devs, so this is the first time seeing anyone ask for them.
Neat, I just figured Roku clients were just going to get just enough attention to work.
I run everything parallel and have the same shares. Unless I set up the video, the wife and kids always go back to Plex.
I get it, But at the same time, Samsung is trying to sell what I’m watching, plex is trying to sell what I’m watching, roku is trying to sell what I’m watching. I just want to watch some damn videos without being someone else’s payday.
I just want to watch some damn videos without being someone else’s payday.
Amen!
Neat, I just figured Roku clients were just going to get just enough attention to work.
Nope. We have a team dedicated to working on the Roku client. They’re constantly working on not only bug fixes, but also improvements and new functionality.
Futureless or featureless?
both, probably.
Yeah, first one, then the other.
In a side note, Google dictation is really getting bad these days :)
Jellyfin seems solid.
The only issues I’ve had are with dodgy media files. Obviously better player hardware gets you better performance, but transcoding eliminates some of those issues.
Yep same. I got an Intel Arc card for transcoding and it plays on anything perfectly now.
btw intel QSV on iGPUs is actually crazy, you can put a little intel cpu from like 12th gen and it’ll decode and encode most content for you perfectly fine, unless you’re extremely picky about tone mapping and color space (idk in that case, i don’t have super strenuous content requirements lol)
the arc cards are even better, but not needing an entire GPU for decoding/encoding is SO nice for smaller homelabs.
I never used Plex. Up until my kids were born I used to just watch my videos on my desktop, but now I find myself watching on my phone and TV more often. My Jellyfin server has been super stable for the last 6 months or so running on a super low powered machine and external hard drive. The only issues I have is with movies with Dolby digital, they tend to get out of sync when scrubbing the timeline. I am assuming that is due to the lower power of the machine. But, I have a 400watt desktop with a 7th gen i7 and a pascal Quadro P1000 that I am planning on migrating to. Then adding a 20tb internal drive for storage. Hopefully that will resolve the small issues I have seen with it.
Yeah! It’s been great for me. No detection issues or weird bugs. The mobile and TV apps are also great!
If you’re on mobile, the app Streamyfin for Android and iOS is fantastic. Handles downloads, transcoding, great UI, and it even integrates with additional third-party tools that enhance it further, like Jellyseer.
Yeah, I’m really glad I found out about Jellyfin. I switched to Jellyfin because Plex doesn’t let you disable Passout Protection (automatically stopping playback after something like 3hrs) without Plex Pass. I was just about to fork over $95 for a lifetime license when I looked into Jellyfin and discovered continuous playback was the default. I switched that very day and never looked back.
That’s so weird. I’ve been using Plex for years and had never heard of “Passout Protection” until looking it up just now, nor does it ever stop playback on its own for me unless it reaches the end of the queue. I’m using the free version via web browser on my computer. Maybe it’s a setting that only affects apps? Continuous playback on Plex is one of the reasons why I’ve always preferred it over Netflix, etc.
Yeah, I don’t think it effects browsers.
