Technology

I used to curse and scream at my jellyfin software and apps, now I swear by them.

I took a day out of my life, not even a full day lol, and just watched countless YouTube videos on how to set it up and how to customize it how I like.

Now it's my absolute favorite. I'm learning about building a home server and all that jazz now and I feel nostalgic, like a kid building his first computer lol!

Yeah this is why I don't use Plex.

At one point I installed it on my NAS. It goes through the setup, and then says I need to make a cloud account. Wtf? I am running locally hosted software on locally hosted hardware to access locally hosted files. Why do I need any cloud for this?

I don't. I uninstalled it.

That's enshittification for ya.

Meanwhile, all "lifetime pass" holders are encouraging this, while they have no skin in the game.

I paid for a lifetime Plex Pass years and years ago now, I've definitely gotten my money's worth.

That being said, I fully expect more bullshit like this, up to and including ending my "lifetime" pass.

When that comes to pass, I'm so glad Jellyfin will be available for me to use.

Honestly I've tried jellyfin and I have a hard time agreeing with this for a few reasons:

• UI generally more unresponsive than Plex;
• changes to correct a show/movie being assigned the wrong show/movie metadata very slow to propagate if at all, same for changing other library options like title language preference;
• generally slower to buffer and get into videos;
• very rough android lollipop UI;
• not as easy to set up tech illiterate friends for play together.

I'll give you that morally jellyfin is less customer-adverse than Plex management is at the moment and it is more open in some ways so you can have more plugins and add-ons that Plex lacks, and sure it's a free product so it should be given some leeway.

... but if I just listened to all of the people saying jellyfin is just so much better I'd think it was an objectively better offering, but it's not. When it comes to what I care about, it fell short, so just giving my 2 cents. Still worth trying, considering you can just point it to the same media folders, and maybe there's a good proposition if you don't already have a Plex pass, but if you do and you're looking to migrate it's a tougher sell.

It's just not the same. If all you need is local access or tailscale to your instance it's fine, sure you can cancel Plex. If you're sharing with friends or family or like the easy access to it that doesn't require being part of the private network. Also I like subtitles and Plex handles this way better than Jellyfin. At least last time I played with it

TBH Plex is years ahead on maturity, their dev team is excellent, unfortunately it seems like enshittification has begun for them.

Support Jellyfin not because it’s better, but because it’s open source and it puts users and tech first. Don’t expect it to beat Plex’s performance, quality, or cross-platform availability yet, but expect it to become better as more people donate or get involved.

you can disable authentication on your local network.

I like how no one is mentioning that they removed the one time fees for their mobile apps to be able to play media at all. Also, only the server owner needs Plex Pass and anyone they share with can stream for free.

That's the word of this decade.

And on that terrible disappointment, back to piracy.

Until they remove or add something that this tier doesn't get.

Jellyfin is the future.