I plan on switching regardless but let’s say I was on the fence… Aside from it not being owned by a for-profit company, why is Jellyfin better than Plex?
Plex is focused on making money, whether that is from the sale of your data or selling you products. Jellyfin is a community-driven project, so its focus is just on being better because it exists.
With Jellyfin, it’s truly self-hosting as opposed to leveraging a third party to do some of the legwork. Plex “offers” more, but it all comes at the cost of your data, or your data+an actual fee.
Jellyfin is available directly on most newer TV stores, iOS/Apple TV, Android, Chromecast, Fire stick, and Roku. It already takes some work to set up your media library in the relevant structures, so if you’re going to do the work anyway for a self-hosting option, why pay Plex extra for what Jellyfin can do for free since it is an open-source project?
why pay Plex extra for what Jellyfin can do for free since it is an open-source project?
One big reason for me is that I got Plex lifetime on sale for like 70 bucks and it comes with a discount on Tidal, something I already paid for. With the discount after about 1 year and 2 months I’ve gotten my Plex Pass value out of Tidal alone. Oh and the paid features for PlexAmp are also really nice to use for the point where I barely use the Tidal app anymore.
Honestly the clients for Plex are trash though. We had SO many issues with Plex and have almost none with Jellyfin. The only thing is Plex is a few more features than Jellyfin (one that comes to mind is an easy way to search for open subtitles to for a show without them hard-coded)
There’s STILL not a great option for AppleTV. I bit the bullet years ago and have a lifetime infuse option. But that’s not really any different than how I paid (also years ago) for a lifetime Plex Pass too.
There is no official support for LG TVs running WebOS 5 or older (which is pretty much any one made before like 2021 or 2022, mine is from 2018), you can add in one if you root the TV, but even in that case it’s just a wrapper for the web UI. When Plex forced me to drop them (I had just moved everything to Hetzner), I lost a few users as well since they didn’t have clients available for their older TVs. Of course this can easily be remedied by using a streaming stick/STB but the problem still exists.
I believe from last time I checked that it was more an issue of LG not approving the app to be listed rather than it not being available. It being a wrapper makes sense too on the older webOS apps as it’s basically a PWA with some JS libs to interact with the TV.
I got a chrome cast because nordvpn didn’t have an LG app and the jellyfin client works great on that. Still annoying it’s not baked in though.
There’s a few reasons, but number one for me is how incredibly clean the UI is.
Plex is a mess. Half of it is just premium shit they’re trying to convince you to use. The actual “stream my own media” functionality is buried at the bottom of the menus.
Trying to get nontechnical family to use Plex was always a challenge, just because of how busy it is. I’ve never had this problem since moving to Jellyfin.
There’s an option in sonarr to only create folders for shows when needed. That would at least help with the unaired shows. Also, I’m pretty sure when you choose to delete them from sonarr it deletes the folder too. And there’s also the option in jellyfin to allow users to delete shows, you have to activate it per user.
Jellyfin is 90% plex, and it’s impressive how it comes forward in leaps and bounds, but it’s not better than plex. People just appreciate it more.
If you only need that 90% that it does (and don’t need things like intro detection, conversions, mobile sync, ass/sas subtitles), then you’ll come away super happy with not having to pay plex and not being locked into plex.
It doesn’t really do much over that 90%, it’s just neat that the 90% isn’t plex
I’ve been a Plex user for over a decade, I have a lifetime PlexPass, and I’ve also used Jellyfin for a few years. Like you said, Plex is better in the sense that it offers more, but they’re also profit driven, which has become more annoying in the past few years.
Plex has way better logging than Jellyfin does, the latter suffers a lot from log spam, and the stack traces it produces when anything errors out are like 10-15 lines. They’re not of use to end users, and there’s no way to disable them/decrease the verbosity.
Now that’s the realistic answer I was looking for, thanks! Open source is really the only reason I want to switch. I bought the lifetime Plex pass like a decade ago so the cost doesn’t bother me. The lack of mobile sync is a bummer though
You can run both, since you have Plex paid for anyway. Then you get the best of both worlds, and can maybe get new users on the jellyfin. If they catch that last 10% difference or Plex goes to shit, and jellyfin is a platform you like since you’ll have low-stakes experience with it, maybe you’ll eventually want to move everyone over.
Plus if one service goes down the other may still be up which is nice.
I have remote access for Jellyfin using a domain I purchased just for self-hosting. Using Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) and a dynamic IP service. NPM handles directing the incoming traffic to the correct server. I point a subdomain back to my Jellyfin server. When traveling, I install the Jellyfin app on a smart TV where I am staying, or connect my laptop to the TV and just use the web interface and my subdomain. I also use the Jellyfin android app to connect remotely using a phone or tablet.
At home all my TVs use a Roku and the Jellyfin Roku app to connect locally.
I want to use Jellyfin because of its awesome open source and how much effort the devs obviously put into it, but when I use Plex (lifetime pass for $80 back in 2020) I don’t have to do any of this crazy looking text you’ve typed here. I sign into my account, and it’s off to the races.
So, with that being said, for the people in the back like me who this may look like the most complicated stuff in the world just to get some streaming started, are there ANY easy methods to achieve this such as with Plex?
Short answer no.
Plex works by having a centralised server run by Plex themselves, that facilitates your client connecting to your server.
The external facing part of Jellyfin server is basically a web server, and it’s a bad idea to expose that to the internet without putting a reverse proxy in front of it (hence the mention of NGINX above).
Another option is to have a VPN connection to where you are running Jellyfin and then only access Jellyfin pseudo locally (so potential security problems aren’t a big concern). This introduces other complications if you want to access it remotely via things like Roku or Chromecast, especially if you have multiple external (and probably not tech savvy) users.
I want to stress that none of this is prohibitively expensive or hard, but doing it involves learning and effort.
All the information and programs you need are available online for free.
If you only wanted to use Jellyfin at home (server in the cupboard, client on the tv), none of this other stuff matters.
If you want to access Jellyfin remotely, and the idea of running a reverse proxy or a vpn server with the corresponding exposed ports and domain configuration sounds scary, Jellyfin is probably not for you.
That is unfortunate. Thank you for the in depth explanation for those of us on Lemmy who don’t know all there is to know about Linux/CLI/Networking!
I’m the only one who uses my Plex, so the real issue is that I don’t want to fiddle around with settings, proxies, or VPNs just to stream an audiobook through my phone while driving to work. Maybe in the future there will be a more simple self host setup for people like me. I’ll keep an eye on it to see how it progresses. Thanks again! 😁
Do you know if there’s a good guide for setting that all up? I know all those words but I get nervous about trying to implement them all individually on my own.
Besides all the other stuff people mentioned, a concrete one is that you can stream TV via it for free vs Plex. Just add a TV tuner to it and away you go.
That’s always been pretty much a niche though (and I know as a former HDHomerun and Kodi user) and over time more people just stream their media anyway.
People mentioned a lot of things. I’ll add that plex doesn’t offer hardware transcoding without premium. Now, setting up hardware transcoding on an NVidia graphics card on linux is a bit complicated, setting it up on windows is really simple. While it’s not just clicking “enable hardware acceleration”, it’s not much more complicated than that.
Plex has a known and very old issue of improperly transcoding 5.1 audio to stereo and dropping the center channel. It makes movies seem super quiet. That’s why I switched.
I plan on switching regardless but let’s say I was on the fence… Aside from it not being owned by a for-profit company, why is Jellyfin better than Plex?
That “aside” is everything though.
Plex is focused on making money, whether that is from the sale of your data or selling you products. Jellyfin is a community-driven project, so its focus is just on being better because it exists.
With Jellyfin, it’s truly self-hosting as opposed to leveraging a third party to do some of the legwork. Plex “offers” more, but it all comes at the cost of your data, or your data+an actual fee.
Jellyfin is available directly on most newer TV stores, iOS/Apple TV, Android, Chromecast, Fire stick, and Roku. It already takes some work to set up your media library in the relevant structures, so if you’re going to do the work anyway for a self-hosting option, why pay Plex extra for what Jellyfin can do for free since it is an open-source project?
Their Roku devs are super responsive in their discord too. So much so it makes you wonder how they keep from burning out.
Always chugging away at fixes and then new feature requests.
Pretty impressive
🤘 Enjoy
And there’s one of them. A wild Jellyfin Roku dev appears
One big reason for me is that I got Plex lifetime on sale for like 70 bucks and it comes with a discount on Tidal, something I already paid for. With the discount after about 1 year and 2 months I’ve gotten my Plex Pass value out of Tidal alone. Oh and the paid features for PlexAmp are also really nice to use for the point where I barely use the Tidal app anymore.
But they said it’s so much better and keeps on giving. I assumed they meant feature-wise
Pretty much the only problem is the lack of clients for Jellyfin vs Plex.
Honestly the clients for Plex are trash though. We had SO many issues with Plex and have almost none with Jellyfin. The only thing is Plex is a few more features than Jellyfin (one that comes to mind is an easy way to search for open subtitles to for a show without them hard-coded)
Agreed, the only issues I’ve had with Jellyfin (other than the lack of available clients), is always server-side.
Which clients do you see missing, though?
I think this might have been the case when Jellyfin originally forked from Emby, but not so much today.
There’s STILL not a great option for AppleTV. I bit the bullet years ago and have a lifetime infuse option. But that’s not really any different than how I paid (also years ago) for a lifetime Plex Pass too.
There is no official support for LG TVs running WebOS 5 or older (which is pretty much any one made before like 2021 or 2022, mine is from 2018), you can add in one if you root the TV, but even in that case it’s just a wrapper for the web UI. When Plex forced me to drop them (I had just moved everything to Hetzner), I lost a few users as well since they didn’t have clients available for their older TVs. Of course this can easily be remedied by using a streaming stick/STB but the problem still exists.
I believe from last time I checked that it was more an issue of LG not approving the app to be listed rather than it not being available. It being a wrapper makes sense too on the older webOS apps as it’s basically a PWA with some JS libs to interact with the TV.
I got a chrome cast because nordvpn didn’t have an LG app and the jellyfin client works great on that. Still annoying it’s not baked in though.
Yeah, it exists, but it’s not like the one for version 6, which is a native app.
There’s a few reasons, but number one for me is how incredibly clean the UI is.
Plex is a mess. Half of it is just premium shit they’re trying to convince you to use. The actual “stream my own media” functionality is buried at the bottom of the menus.
Trying to get nontechnical family to use Plex was always a challenge, just because of how busy it is. I’ve never had this problem since moving to Jellyfin.
The biggest reason I use jellyfin: you don’t need to pay for plex premium to stream to your phone.
I get plex needs to make money. But talk about a basic feature that people need…
I can stream to my phone without premium with plex, only the downloads are linked to premium afaik
The biggest issue I have with Jellyfin is you can’t hide empty shows, and I have folders for shows that have not aired yet or watched in the past
There’s an option in sonarr to only create folders for shows when needed. That would at least help with the unaired shows. Also, I’m pretty sure when you choose to delete them from sonarr it deletes the folder too. And there’s also the option in jellyfin to allow users to delete shows, you have to activate it per user.
No internet needed, no sneaky ads
You can’t login to plex without internet. Why would I tell a company that I login to my server?
Jellyfin is 90% plex, and it’s impressive how it comes forward in leaps and bounds, but it’s not better than plex. People just appreciate it more.
If you only need that 90% that it does (and don’t need things like intro detection, conversions, mobile sync, ass/sas subtitles), then you’ll come away super happy with not having to pay plex and not being locked into plex.
It doesn’t really do much over that 90%, it’s just neat that the 90% isn’t plex
There’s an intro detection plugin for Jellyfin.
And incidentally, this is likely coming to Jellyfin 10.9 through endrl’s mediasegments PR
I’ve been a Plex user for over a decade, I have a lifetime PlexPass, and I’ve also used Jellyfin for a few years. Like you said, Plex is better in the sense that it offers more, but they’re also profit driven, which has become more annoying in the past few years.
Plex has way better logging than Jellyfin does, the latter suffers a lot from log spam, and the stack traces it produces when anything errors out are like 10-15 lines. They’re not of use to end users, and there’s no way to disable them/decrease the verbosity.
Now that’s the realistic answer I was looking for, thanks! Open source is really the only reason I want to switch. I bought the lifetime Plex pass like a decade ago so the cost doesn’t bother me. The lack of mobile sync is a bummer though
You can run both, since you have Plex paid for anyway. Then you get the best of both worlds, and can maybe get new users on the jellyfin. If they catch that last 10% difference or Plex goes to shit, and jellyfin is a platform you like since you’ll have low-stakes experience with it, maybe you’ll eventually want to move everyone over.
Plus if one service goes down the other may still be up which is nice.
I could ddg this, but how does the remote access work? Do I need to open ports out of my home to have users watch stuff?
I have remote access for Jellyfin using a domain I purchased just for self-hosting. Using Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) and a dynamic IP service. NPM handles directing the incoming traffic to the correct server. I point a subdomain back to my Jellyfin server. When traveling, I install the Jellyfin app on a smart TV where I am staying, or connect my laptop to the TV and just use the web interface and my subdomain. I also use the Jellyfin android app to connect remotely using a phone or tablet.
At home all my TVs use a Roku and the Jellyfin Roku app to connect locally.
Almost none of this made sense to me, honestly…
I want to use Jellyfin because of its awesome open source and how much effort the devs obviously put into it, but when I use Plex (lifetime pass for $80 back in 2020) I don’t have to do any of this crazy looking text you’ve typed here. I sign into my account, and it’s off to the races.
So, with that being said, for the people in the back like me who this may look like the most complicated stuff in the world just to get some streaming started, are there ANY easy methods to achieve this such as with Plex?
Short answer no.
Plex works by having a centralised server run by Plex themselves, that facilitates your client connecting to your server.
The external facing part of Jellyfin server is basically a web server, and it’s a bad idea to expose that to the internet without putting a reverse proxy in front of it (hence the mention of NGINX above).
Another option is to have a VPN connection to where you are running Jellyfin and then only access Jellyfin pseudo locally (so potential security problems aren’t a big concern). This introduces other complications if you want to access it remotely via things like Roku or Chromecast, especially if you have multiple external (and probably not tech savvy) users.
I want to stress that none of this is prohibitively expensive or hard, but doing it involves learning and effort.
All the information and programs you need are available online for free.
If you only wanted to use Jellyfin at home (server in the cupboard, client on the tv), none of this other stuff matters. If you want to access Jellyfin remotely, and the idea of running a reverse proxy or a vpn server with the corresponding exposed ports and domain configuration sounds scary, Jellyfin is probably not for you.
That is unfortunate. Thank you for the in depth explanation for those of us on Lemmy who don’t know all there is to know about Linux/CLI/Networking!
I’m the only one who uses my Plex, so the real issue is that I don’t want to fiddle around with settings, proxies, or VPNs just to stream an audiobook through my phone while driving to work. Maybe in the future there will be a more simple self host setup for people like me. I’ll keep an eye on it to see how it progresses. Thanks again! 😁
This is what I do as well, though I also do have tailscale set up on my network as well so that’s also an option.
Do you know if there’s a good guide for setting that all up? I know all those words but I get nervous about trying to implement them all individually on my own.
There’s mobile sync for music, not sure if that helps ^^
No link with their bs account system, their bs subscriptions and SyncPlay, SyncPlay is just awesome, I don’t know if plex has something similar
Plex has basically the same thing but it’s only within the plex ecosystem. Jelyfin has syncplay compatibility directly?
Jelly fin let’s you play on mobile without paying. Plex doesn’t
*Let’s you transcode for free completely for all platforms.
Besides all the other stuff people mentioned, a concrete one is that you can stream TV via it for free vs Plex. Just add a TV tuner to it and away you go.
That’s always been pretty much a niche though (and I know as a former HDHomerun and Kodi user) and over time more people just stream their media anyway.
The free version of plex doesn’t allow downloading, only allows streaming. Downloading is a huge feature IMO.
People mentioned a lot of things. I’ll add that plex doesn’t offer hardware transcoding without premium. Now, setting up hardware transcoding on an NVidia graphics card on linux is a bit complicated, setting it up on windows is really simple. While it’s not just clicking “enable hardware acceleration”, it’s not much more complicated than that.
Plex has a known and very old issue of improperly transcoding 5.1 audio to stereo and dropping the center channel. It makes movies seem super quiet. That’s why I switched.