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Jellyfin is not just good... but better than Plex now?! (vger.social)
submitted 1 day ago by aeharding@vger.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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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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[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 58 minutes ago)

Plex is unbelievably slow to start and navigate through my huge library on my TV. Jellyfin flies.

The search is also much better 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!

[–] Bosht@lemmy.world 7 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Varaug@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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?

[–] Bosht@lemmy.world 1 points 58 minutes ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Varaug@lemmy.world 2 points 46 minutes ago

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.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 hours ago

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.

[–] olympus5737@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] thundermoose@lemmy.world 14 points 6 hours ago (5 children)

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.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.)

[–] thundermoose@lemmy.world 1 points 55 minutes ago

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.

[–] aeharding@vger.social 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

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.

[–] chetwisniewski@lemmy.securitycafe.ca 3 points 5 hours ago

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.

[–] MorningThunder@lemm.ee 2 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

One thing Jellyfin is way better at is offline viewing. I have frequent internet outages at my house and I've run into issues multiple times where Plex wouldn't stream my own local media because it couldn't connect to the internet. For this, Jellyfin has always just worked.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

jellyfin is quite literally seamless in this regard, the only thing that wont work is metadata scraping (which if like me you run a yt archive, can be relatively frequent, but often isn't even a huge problem) I only notice network outages when other shit breaks lmao.

[–] thundermoose@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

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.

[–] relic_@lemm.ee 0 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

I think it sounds like you want a paid product that just works out of the box. Jellyfin has some rough edges sure, but it's also a volunteer project for the most part.

I've got to disagree or clarify with some of these points. These points seem subjective and I feel the need to say something in case others are trying to compare plex/jellyfin.

  • Hardware acceleration works just fine? Unless there's some hardware specific issue?

  • The difference in apps is because there's two platforms. The web player (with CSS themeing) and the native (like on Android, which is a straight up android app, not a web page). There's some capabilities that you can only get on Android if you build an app instead of a web player. There's only like one guy building the android TV app.

  • Unfortunately just one guy working in his spare time on the android TV app. I've never had subtitle issues either (might be a good time to open a bug in report?)

  • Jellyfin "remote" is pretty rudimentary. You'd be better off just accessing it through a tunnel anyways -- and then youd have access to your own just not your server.

[–] thundermoose@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

This isn't about want, it's a reality check. OP said jellyfin is better than Plex now, and by objective measure it is not better for most people yet. False expectations hurt Jellyfin adoption, you need to try it with the expectation of jankiness or you'll just be annoyed by the edges.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Op's criteria wasn't "is it a good product?", it was "is it better than Plex?". Stop taking valid criticism as if it were an attack. If we want software to improve we have to be honest about its shortcomings.

[–] EVERGREEN@lemmy.one 3 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

For me, Plex would often end up having audio drift lag and it was annoying as fuck. It'd start fine, then the lag would gradually increase until you changed encoding back and forth, then gradually increase again.
Jellyfin just works.
That was enough to get me to switch and not look back. I'm also rid of the bullshit plex login that I never cared for, and also of their push for whatever "recommended" stuff is supposed to be about.

[–] RatzChatsubo@lemm.ee 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Idk PlexAmp is the killer app that I can't stop using. Does jellyfin have something similar?

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 hours ago

Symfonium is pretty good as a one time purchase.

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

The addons are great too. The intro/outro skip is slick and nearly flawless, background subtitle download is seamless, on and on.

[–] aeharding@vger.social 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I gotta try those

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 5 points 5 hours ago

Here's a pretty good list to get started with:

Awesome Jellyfin

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I think the music experience with Plex + Plexamp is still far better. That's the main thing I use Plex for.

[–] francois@jlai.lu 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

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

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 15 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] zqps@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Futureless or featureless?

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

both, probably.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah, first one, then the other.

In a side note, Google dictation is really getting bad these days :)

[–] gerowen@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Plex has recently started applying a green filter to certain content.

The files Plex has a problem with work just fine in Jellyfin.

[–] tabularasa@lemmy.ca 9 points 7 hours ago

Green filter? Are you talking about the issue where you try to play Dolby Vision content on a non DV TV?

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 hours ago

No, that issue can happen on Jellyfin as well, because it's happened to me. But that was before I used the Trash guides to set up Sonarr/Radarr so that Dolby Vision files were never fetched.

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