Jellyfin is great but, to be fair, anything is better than Plex.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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Wait - what restrictions on Plex?
The only thing about jellyfin is the damn subtitles. Subtitle sync is horrible. They added a subtitle offset feature last year which was a good workaround and then removed it a few months ago on androidtv and android. Now the subtitle offset on the web player doesn't do anything anymore either
Even Subgen generated subtitles, which are pretty perfectly in sync in reality, are sometimes played back at an incorrect speed so it will progressively get more and more out of sync, but there is no way to tell what speed the subtitles are being played at.
Also it just ignores themes a lot of times or only displays themes on the admin console and nowhere else.
That said, jellyfin is still amazing!
subtitles offset works here even on latest version, both android tv, android and browser
if you don't have the option on android, check that the player used is the right one, you will find that in settings
Recently I tried it again because of Plex restriction on more than one user.
What do you mean by this? I don’t recall seeing anything about a change like this.
Unless therer was some major update in the last 6 months I've missed, I'd say no ... not even close.
I might have to check out Jellyfin. Can you run both at the same time?
I don't see any reason why you couldn't with default settings. Beware of enabling any setting that stores data next to the media like nfo metadata storage, as those could maybe cause conflicts.
anybody have a guide for an old laptop
Plex is unbelievably slow to start and navigate through my huge library on my TV. Jellyfin flies.
The search is also much better on Jellyfin on my TV, because I can use the system keyboard which supports voice to text via the remote. Plex on the other hand has no debouncing, so pressing each key just makes a new search and it's slow as sh—.
I also had it outperform Plex when Plex couldn't play an audio language track where Jellyfin could.
However, it doesn't seem like Jellyfin is as good at figuring out duplicates/versions of the same media? It shows up as two identical posters of the same thing without any discernible info until you step into the media page of the thing (movie/episode).
All in all, a very good complement to, if not replacement for, Plex. 8/10. I'm proud of them!
Out of curiosity, which Plex client are you using?
I use the one for WebOS on my LG TV.
The web client and Android client are lighting fast compared to the TV. Like normal apps loading normal content.
The TV app on the other hand takes like 20 seconds just to get past the splash screen, and then another maybe 10 seconds to show first content. And navigation is laggy af. Just absolutely brutal.
Someone once said this is intentional to get you to buy new TVs. I don't know. Not all apps do this. Jellyfin e.g.
Honestly ever since Plex started going the enshittification route and hocking their fucking bullshit instead of just being a home server it's been irritating the shit out of me. The only thing they aren't doing at this point is adverts live vids.
Been using Plex for a couple years now, and the experience is mostly unchanged for me, once you disable the online media sources.
Genuinely curious, what are some enshittified dealbreaker features for you that they've introduced?
The 'Plex suggestions', the constant return of rental prices when doing a search instead of just my media library. I had to remove a bunch of menu items they automatically added without my cosent during their last major update which seems to be when it all started. The search bit is especially angering because it's lagging load times as it's searching these online sources for rentals I don't want instead of just pulling up the returns on my local media server. If there's a setting disabling it I must have missed it because when they introduced the garbage I immediately scoured the settings to try and turn it off. Those are the main two off the top of my head.
Agree with the search load times, and the TV app is a little frustrating to navigate. But I don't see that as enshittification, just lacking polish.
As for the suggestions, I know you mentioned you don't Plex anymore, but leaving this here just in case it helps: Settings --> online media sources --> disable everything. You'll have to save each setting though, it's annoying design. But once I did this I didn't see any of that crap on my app.
Thanks! I appreciate it. I actually do still use it, my comment was just more toward the changes they've made and my perceived inability to remove or change it.
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.
There's a really strong bias on Lemmy for OSS projects. I'm glad they get so much love here, but everything people say here about Jellyfin has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. It works and you can use it. Depending on your needs, it may even work perfectly for you. There are tons of rough edges though.
Here's a few:
- A bunch of basic functionality most people are used to is missing by default. You can get things like intro detection and subtitle downloading to work with plugins, but you have to work at it.
- Hardware acceleration still kind of sucks. You can get it to work, but the Jellyfin port of ffmpeg doesn't work anywhere near as well as Plex's.
- The variety in app experience is bewildering sometimes. Apps look and feel very different between platforms.
- Android TV app support sucks. The app is difficult to navigate and has a bunch of weird edges, like subtitle defaults not working. I have no idea what OP is talking about here, it sounds like they're only judging the app on its animation speed.
- Public network support is finicky. This is hard to quantify, but I've been on several remote networks where my Jellyfin connection dropped in and out and Plex did not. I suspect this is due to the Plex Relay service making up for bad routes between my house and the network.
Jellyfin is improving all the time, and I hope the recent EFCore update improves performance and development velocity. I'm also holding out hope it will eventually lead to externally hosted databases and active-active servers.
Disclaimer: I run Plex and Jellyfin and regularly check in on the state of things in Jellyfin. I donate to Jellyfin. I want Jellyfin to be better than Plex. I don't think any objective measure bears this out yet.
Hardware acceleration still kind of sucks. You can get it to work, but the Jellyfin port of ffmpeg doesn’t work anywhere near as well as Plex’s.
pretty much just works for me on intel QSV. as long as you have drivers and hardware support it seems perfectly fine. Maybe plex has a cleaner implementation? Not sure, never used it.
Public network support is finicky. This is hard to quantify, but I’ve been on several remote networks where my Jellyfin connection dropped in and out and Plex did not. I suspect this is due to the Plex Relay service making up for bad routes between my house and the network.
depending on your network configuration, and routing of the network, this is most likely to be plex relays, this wouldn't be a jellyfin issue, it would be a plex feature. You could easily fix this with a relay VPN server or something like that. (you probably shouldn't publicly expose services these days anyway.)
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.
I have no idea what OP is talking about here, it sounds like they're only judging the app on its animation speed.
In the plex PLAYER, I constantly have to restart my tv, glitches, audio out of sync, black screen etc, stutters randomly. Incredibly annoying when I’m trying to watch something. I haven’t had a single playback issue yet with the jellyfin player. It just works
Edit: oh and how can I forget: in the plex player, sometimes “pause” just… didn’t fucking work?! Lmao. I had to exit the player and re enter. So annoying.
I have been looking at JellyFin as a replacement for my aging Emby install, but the over-the-air TV support is weak and mostly broken. I am a FOSS fanboy, but first and foremost TV has to work for my household, not just for me with glitches. I suppose the correct answer is to contribute to improving it, but like most folks, free time is not copious.
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i only wish jellyfin would add chapter titles and hover cards (maybe thats in the new thumbs now? I haven't yet migrated because lazy lmao)
and that they fix the weird UI shenanigans from it's emby days. Some QOL shit would be nice, auto sorting so that its not manually default to the stupidest setting ever. and the other usual shit.
I'm still having issues with my client freezing on playback of high bitrate video (like heavy 4K content) but transcoding down fixes that, im not sure what causes that, something gets caught up i guess, a refresh fixes it though.
My biggest complaint about jellyfish is any file upgraded with the arr stack is readded as a new media. 2nd is lack of smart collections and playlists.
Really from what I hear the only thing Jellyfin is missing is a Plex amp alternative!
I personally would never go the Plex route at this point.
there's finamp. and i think jellyfin is just running a sonic server? Not sure, but that's basically what it is under the hood, so.
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
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