this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Jellyfin: The Free Software Media System

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I have only used Plex very briefly before I moved to try Emby then Jellyfin. Granted I am not a heavy user of a media server - basically no one else in my household uses it, and I don’t have a lot of content, but I do use sonarr / radarr with it.

The moment Plex put me off was when I realized a Plex Pass was needed to add transcoding capability. What are some of the reasons people like Plex better than Jellyfin, other than those who have been using Plex forever and are just too lazy to explore other options?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I use both in my home but I have friends and family that use only Plex. Plex currently is much more user friendly as it has apps everywhere and is simpler to use. Having to enter an URL is already a non-starter for many non-techies.

I personally love Jellyfin even with its drawbacks and quirks. But usability and ease are what's more important to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I use Jellyfin on different platforms (Sony TV, Set top box with Kodi, phone, PC) - basically all I need are the Jellyfin clients for these different platforms namely

  • Jellyfin media player for Windows
  • Jellyfin for Android
  • Jellycon for Kodi

For me there is no need to enter any URL on these clients (except the initial setup that is). Is Plex much simpler even for the initial setup? Sorry like I said I haven't really used Plex.

For normal daily usage I haven't really run into any problem with Jellyfin... just click and watch.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

IIRC, once you install the plex server software, it sends you to the server's login page to complete the setup where you link the server to your account, so you actually never have to enter an ip anywhere. Following that, you can log in to the plex.tv website from anywhere and get access to your media (as long as your router allows upnp), no need to set up reverse proxies or get your ip or anything. Then if you want to share your library with friends, all they need to do is make a plex account and you can give them access via invite links.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Same here. If anything I found Jellyfin far simpler to set up than Plex (used to use Plex, transitioned to Jellyfin).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Hey quit reading my mind. This is exactly what I was gonna say

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

External access is much easier to get with Plex. Not everyone can setup a reverse proxy and the process gets even harder when your ISP assigns you a new public IP address every 24 hours (like mine does)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah I think this would be one of the areas where Plex has an advantage over Jellyfin. Thanks for letting me know.

I managed to set my Jellyfin server up behind a reverse proxy, but yes that took a while to do.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would suggest using a Tunnel; I personally use a TailScale funnel to reverse proxy my Jellyfin setup. No need to worry about IP address changes then. If you already reverse proxy things, use one of the other ports TS Funnel allows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From TailScales docs: "Traffic over Funnel is subject to bandwidth limits. They are not currently configurable.". This is the same problem the CloudFlare proxy has, have you ran into any performance issues or throttling using funnel?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I haven't, no. But not many are using it currently. I would assume that bandwidth limits are more for large, terabytes of data, rather than a few hundred gigs. Could be mistaken though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Plex has a client app on just about every single media player out there and they have a simple single sign on solution.

So I personally run both Plex and Jellyfin, Jellyfin for myself as I’m willing to put up with some of the hoops I have to jump through and Plex for everyone else who just gets an invite email, creates an account and suddenly has access to all of my content on every single device they own.

Once jellyfin has reliable apps on every App Store and a simple way of getting non-tech savvy users onboarded I’ll move everyone over to jellyfin. Until then, it’s just for me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I personally haveb't used Plex, but one feature they have that I've heard is hard to give up is automatic intro and credit skipping.

[–] Toylerrr 1 points 1 year ago

This is why I won't switch, also syncing to phones/laptops

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

We started with Plex because the Jellyfin desktop client did not play nice with the remote that I have. I switched to Jellyfin when I set up an Android TV client, and I chose Jellyfin because of the immediate access to hardware transcoding and use on mobile devices.

But honestly, I prefer Plex's UI (though sometimes it stutters), on the spot downloading of subtitles, and subtitle offset features. But as I start to update our library with more 4k titles, hardware transcoding is clutch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There doesn’t seem to be a straight forward way to set up a tv tuner.

[–] zacher_glachl 1 points 1 year ago

Downloading subtitles on the fly is way more comfortable with Plex since there's AFAIK no limited number of downloads as with Jellyfin's opensubtitles.com plugin. Also "secure" remote access is vastly easier. I personally enjoy the tinkering aspect and was thus happy to have the challenge of setting up a reverse proxy and scripting an automatically rotating set of opensubtitles.com API keys, but I think most people kinda just want to watch stuff.

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