Wtf, look at the size of this comment section. Where are you guys hiding out in all the other topics?
Jellyfin: The Free Software Media System
Current stable release: 10.9.7
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Man I am so grateful for this project, I was afraid it would feel polished enough after having been with Plex for the last few years. But hot damn Jellyfin is so much better and keeps on giving!
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?
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.
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.
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.
No internet needed, no sneaky ads
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.
You can't login to plex without internet. Why would I tell a company that I login to my server?
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.
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
Jelly fin let's you play on mobile without paying. Plex doesn't
*Let's you transcode for free completely for all platforms.
Just donated to Jellyfin. Very happy with the work they do. Love you guys!
Any place to sign up for a newsletter to be let known? I'd like to trial moving to jellyfin but I might as well wait since it's not like Plex is that terrible that I have to switch now
Just star the project on GitHub. They have a feed on the startpage where you'll get notified of releases.
So I haven't taken the time to wrap my head around Jellyfin and the Arr family.
I currently use Kodi with Seren and Premiumize. Is there a guide for converting to something to replace Premiumize with what I assume is Sonarr and Radarr? I have a few months until my next renewal though I have to say I've not been unhappy with Premiumize, it's just another bill.
Completely different kind of service, the debrid services let you stream media. The arrs are so you can download and store media. I think it's overall more convenient to just have a premiumize or Real-Debrid subscription so you don't have to buy hard drives and keep a server running
Debrid services can be used to download as well. If you’re doing lite torrenting it works perfectly fine to grab files of any kind without exposing your IP, similar-ish to a VPN.
I’m guessing you’re talking about Stremio though, which covers a large amount of media. But will falter for older stuff, or non-popular titles. I don’t recall what it was, but I recently ran into a 2019 series that wasn’t possible to find with Torrentio.
Anyone have a good source that explains how to setup and find safe media. Computer literacy is not my strong point.
Buy Blurays and rip them to your machine. From there copy them into Jellyfin.
You will need a Bluray reader, Handbrake and MakeMKV
In this order:
- Rip the BluRay-Disk (or DVD) with MakeMKV, you will got the film with all languages and subtitles in one MKV-File;
- Shrink the MKV-File with Handbrake and save it as H264/H265 or better as AV1 (better because open-source and the future).
What do you mean by "safe media"?
Where I don't have to throw my PC out afterwards due to virus and malware.
When looking for media online, you pretty much just need a good adblocker and the sense not to run any random executables.
The media files themselves are very unlikely to have malware attached. They would need to exploit a bug in the specific video player you are using and then exploit another bug in your OS to get admin privileges before doing any real damage. It's pretty much just theoretical. Keep your stuff up to date and don't worry about it.
It’s worth mentioning that the biggest concern, depending on your country, is getting in trouble with your ISP. That’s where a VPN comes to play.
Only if you torrent. Newsgroups still work wonders!
I can't tell you how many times I've looked up some feature or low-priority bug only to find the answer is "there's a PR for this that will be added in 10.9", commented like a year ago, glad to see the future plan is more frequent but smaller feature releases!
I'm glad for people who were waiting on this release. It took so long that I wrote my own media server in the mean time to resolve all the problems I was having with Jellyfin. I hope they can get more frequent releases out for folks still using it. Having looked at the code base, I understand that the cruft from Emby slows down development.
Can we see your media server?
Tldr of what jellyfish is?
jellyfish
A gelatinous animal in the sea that stings you.
Jellyfin?
A server & client software pair that allows you to have all your personal media available on demand. Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos, Books, etc. All served from your server to a client device - Android, Roku, iOS, etc.